Supplier evaluation and selection using a FDEA model

Abstract

Due to the growth of global outsourcing, supplier evaluation and selection is one of the strategic decisions for purchasing management in the supply chain. In this chapter, we address the important attributes through the literature that constituent suppliers should possess in order to achieve the successful supply chain. These attributes (criteria) are obtained using an Affinity Diagram. Then, a committee of decision makers is formed to provide linguistic ratings to the candidate suppliers for the selected criteria. The linguistic ratings are then transformed into fuzzy numbers and fed into a fuzzy DEA (FDEA) model based on the α-cut approach assessment of candidate suppliers. A hypothetical application is provided to demonstrate the applicability and feasibility of the method. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.