Decision Making Model for Supplier Evaluation and Selection Using MCDM Methods

Supplier selection is viewed as one of the most important responsibility of purchasing department in any supply chain process. Purchasing managers needs to periodically evaluate supplier performance in order to retain those suppliers who meet their requirements. For many reasons supplier selection has received a great deal of attention from practitioners and researchers. Industries strive to achieve either a minimum cost of production or a good quality product. Supplier selection is complex problem involving both qualitative and quantitative issues. A trade-off between these tangible and intangible factors is essential in selecting the best supplier. To select the best supplier there is a need to rank all the potential suppliers based on the performance measure given by them. This paper presents the combination of TOPSIS with ANN method for supplier selection and also gives the logical procedure for supplier selection using both qualitative and quantitative data. A case study for supplier evaluation and selection is also presented to demonstrate the application of proposed model.