An extended hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision model for sustainable and resilient supplier selection

Abstract

The formalization and solution of supplier selection problems (SSPs) based on sustainable (economic, environmental, and social) indicators have become a fundamental tool to perform a strategic analysis of the whole supply chain process and maximize the competitive advantage of firms. Over the last decade, sustainability issues have been often considered in combination with resilient indexes leading to the study of sustainable-resilient supplier selection problems (SRSSPs). The current research on sustainable development, particularly concerned with the strong impact that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has had on supply chains, has been paying increasing attention to the resilience concept and its role within SSPs. This study proposes a hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method to solve SRSSPs. The fuzzy best-worst method is used first to determine the importance weights of the selection criteria. A combined grey relational analysis and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method is used next to evaluate the suppliers in a fuzzy environment. Triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) are used to express the weights of criteria and alternatives to account for the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent to subjective evaluations. However, the proposed method can be easily extended to other fuzzy settings depending on the uncertainty facing managers and decision-makers. A real-life application is presented to demonstrate the applicability and efficacy of the proposed model. Sixteen evaluation criteria are identified and classified as economic, environmental, social, or resilient. The results obtained through the case study show that “pollution control,” “environmental management system,” and “risk awareness” are the most influential criteria when studying SRSSPs related to the manufacturing industry. Finally, three different sensitivity analysis methods are applied to validate the robustness of the proposed framework, namely, changing the weights of the criteria, comparing the results with those of other common fuzzy MCDM methods, and changing the components of the principal decision matrix.

A Review of Sustainable Supplier Selection with Decision-Making Methods from 2018 to 2022

“…Refs. [11,15,18,[51][52][53][54] adopted conventional BMW approaches to determine the appropriate SSS. Refs.…”

A multi-criteria decision-making framework for electric vehicle supplier selection of government agencies and public bodies in China

“…After determining the criteria weights, the problem comes to selecting the optimal solution from alternatives. Various MCDM techniques are used to deal with SS, such as VIKOR (Kumar and Barman 2021;Wu et al 2019a), TOPSIS (Afrasiabi et al 2022;Ambrin et al 2021), ANP (Khan et al 2018), and so on. Yu et al (2019) used TOPSIS technique to rank the alternatives from the perspective of sustainability.…”

A Markovian-based fuzzy decision-making approach for the customer-based sustainable-resilient supplier selection problem

“…They considered the uncertainties parameters in the model subjections and solved their model based on a real case study. Afrasiabi et al ( 2022 ) suggested a hybrid model based on MCDM techniques for sustainable and resilient supplier selection. They tried to consider the uncertainties and disruptions may occur during COVID-19 pandemic.…”