Flexibility in supplier selection using fuzzy numbers with nonlinear membership functions

Abstract

Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision making problem. It can critically influence the competitiveness in the entire supply chain network. It simultaneously takes into account several quantitative and qualitative factors. In this paper, a fuzzy approach is utilized for the supplier selection problem, using some important criteria as discussed in the supply chain literature, e.g. net purchasing cost, quality, service and commit date deliveries. These parameters are defined using fuzzy numbers with nonlinear membership functions to handle the vagueness, uncertainty and the inexactness in the data and to capture a real life like scenario. Further they are weighted using Analytic Hierarchical Process, for their relative importance so as to match the organization's ultimate goal. A multi objective program is modeled to determine promising suppliers and the ordered quantities in a multi-product, quantity discounted environment. Finally a single objective fuzzy linear program is devised to solve the proposed model efficiently. The model developed in this paper is illustrated with the help of a numerical example. © 2013 Springer.