Evaluating and selecting maritime suppliers

Abstract

The topic of supplier evaluation and selection has been discussed for several decades in various industries but is rarely researched in maritime supply chain management. To maintain a ship's seaworthiness, shipowners must expend money and provide all supplies that are required for repairs and consumption on board, including parts, stores, bunkers and lubricators. These expenditures can amount to over tens of thousands of dollars; thereby, an efficient and effective supply chain system for the provision of supplies is a top priority for shipowners. The evaluation and selection of suppliers is critical to the success of this system. This study aims to establish an appropriate and common approach for maritime supplier evaluation and selection. Because decisionmakers in shipping companies typically confront an uncertain environment, we adopt a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) approach to analyse the behaviour of decision-makers and obtain the best maritime supplier. Meanwhile, via a survey for Taiwanese shipping companies, we also found that supply capability and risk control are the most important criteria.

Evaluation of Ship Repair Services: A Case Study of Taiwan Shipping Companies' Selection

“…The FMCDM is one of the appropriate approaches to systematically clarify the critical factors with the fuzzy concept and group investigation in order to come to the best conclusion. Many aforementioned studies have applied this approach to deal with the professional issues, such as the ship supplier selection (Hsu, Lu, and Chu 2016).…”

“…Membership Function of Linguistic Variables for the Weightings and Ratings ( Source : Hsu, Lu, and Chu 2016). …”

“…In addition, they also found that mathematical programming techniques (Talluri and Narasimhan 2003; Ng 2008), analytic hierarchy process (AHP) models (Chan et al 2007; Hou and Su 2007), and other multiple‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) approaches (Ding et al 2005; Kaman and Seyed 2009; Wu et al 2010) were common methodologies used to address the supplier selection problem. Hsu, Lu, and Chu (2016) discussed the evaluation and selection problem of ship suppliers in the maritime supply chain system, using a fuzzy multicriteria decision‐making (FMCDM) approach. The fuzzy concept was also combined into supplier selection for supply chain management (Qin, Liu, and Pedrycz 2017; Sarkar, Pratihar, and Sarkar 2018).…”

The influence of selection criteria on the development of value co-creation in shipping companies

“…Studies have also examined the criteria shipping companies use when selecting other partners such as shipping registries, provision of supplies and third-party ship management companies. Cost, marker conditions, national and international laws and restrictions are the most important criteria for shipping companies when choosing shipping registries (Chou, 2018), while supply capability, risk control, time delivery and quality are important criteria when selecting companies for provision suppliers (Hsu et al, 2016).…”