Quantifying the Sustainability of Products and Suppliers in Food Distribution Companies

[EN] Supplier evaluation is a relevant task of supply chain management where multicriteria methods make great contributions to manufacturing industries. This is not the case in food distribution companies, which have a key role in providing safe and affordable food to society. The purpose of this research is to measure the sustainability of products and suppliers in food distribution companies through a multiple criteria approach. Firstly, the system proposed provides indicators to qualify products and assess the food quality, using the compensatory Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) model. Secondly, these indicators are included in supplier evaluation, which takes economic, environmental, and social criteria into account. MAUT and Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE), a non-compensatory method, are used for supplier evaluation. This approach has been validated for fresh food in a supermarket chain, mainly using historical data. Partial indicators, such as food safety scores, together with global indicators of suppliers, inform the most appropriate decisions and the most appropriate relations between companies and providers. Poor performance in food safety can lead to the disqualification of some suppliers. MAUT is good for qualifying products and is easy to apply at the operational level in logistic platforms, while PROMETHEE is more suitable for supplier segmentation, as it helps to identify supplier strengths and weaknesses.This research was funded by the Regional Ministry of Education, Research, Culture and Sport of the Autonomous Government of the Valencian Region, Spain, grant number AICO/2017/066.Segura Maroto, M.; Maroto Álvarez, MC.; Segura García Del Río, B. (2019). Quantifying the Sustainability of Products and Suppliers in Food Distribution Companies. Sustainability. 11(21):1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11215875S1181121Thies, C., Kieckhäfer, K., Spengler, T. S., & Sodhi, M. S. (2019). 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Enhancing the cosmetics industry sustainability through a renewed sustainable supplier selection model

The cosmetics industry requires a long-term sustainable strategy to balance its continuously growing trend worldwide and its resources consumption. In this view, the suppliers' selection process is gaining more attention affecting products' overall sustainability. The objective of this contribution is hence to develop and validate the Cosmetics Sustainable Supplier Selection (C-SSS) model allowing the selection of sustainable suppliers for the cosmetic industry, evaluating them in an objective and balanced manner. The model was built relying on both scientific and grey literature, by incorporating the characteristics of existing SSS models usually used separately. The C-SSS enabled to integrate the EMM approach (to reduce the subjectivity), the ANP approach (to evaluate criteria interconnections), and the TOPSIS and ELECTRE models (to create a hybrid compensation model) to support managers in objectively selecting the most sustainable suppliers. The C-SSS model was applied and validated through an industrial use case in a cosmetics Italian company

A multiple criteria supplier segmentation using outranking and value function methods

[EN] Suppliers play a key role in supply chain management which involves evaluation for supplier selection problem, as well as other complex issues that companies should take into account. The purpose of this research is to develop and test an integrated system, which allows qualifying providers and also supplier segmentation by monitoring their performance based on a multiple criteria tool for systematic decision making. This proposal consists in a general procedure to assess suppliers based mainly on exploiting all reliable databases of the company. Firstly, for each group of products, their evaluation criteria are defined collaboratively in order to determine their critical and strategic performance, which are then integrated with other criteria that are specific of the suppliers and represent relevant aspects for the company, also classified by critical and strategic dimensions. Two multiple criteria methods, compensatory and non-compensatory, are used and compared so as to point out their strengths, weaknesses and flexibility for the supplier evaluation in different contexts, which are usually relevant in the supply chain management. A value function approach is the appropriate method to qualify providers to be included in the panel of approved suppliers of the company as this process depends only on own features of the supplier. On the other hand, outranking methods such as PROMETHEE have shown greater potential and robustness to develop portfolios with suppliers that should be partners of the company, as well as to identify other types of relationships, such as long term contracts, market policies or to highlight those to be removed from their portfolio. These results and conclusions are based on an empirical research in a multinational company for food, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. This system has shown a great impact as it represents the first supplier segmentation proposal applied to industry, in which decision making not only takes into account opinions and judgements, but also integrates historical data and expert knowledge. This approach provides a robust support system to inform operative, tactical and strategic decisions, which is very relevant when applying an advanced management in practice.This research has been partially developed with the support of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Ref. ECO2011-27369) and Ministry of Education (Marina Segura, scholarship of Training Plan of University Teaching).Segura, M.; Maroto, C. (2017). A multiple criteria supplier segmentation using outranking and value function methods. Expert Systems with Applications. 69:87-100. doi:10.1016/eswa.2016.10.031S871006

Multicriteria sorting method based on global and local search for supplier segmentation

[EN] The aim of this research is to develop a robust multicriteria method to classify suppliers into ordered cate-gories and its validation in real contexts. The proposed technique is based on a property of net flows of thePROMETHEE method and uses global and local search concepts, which are common in the optimisationfield. The results obtained are compared to those from the most cited sorting algorithm, and an empiricalvalidation and sensitivity analysis is performed using real supplier evaluation data. Furthermore, it does notrequire additional information from decision-makers as other sorting algorithms do for assigning incompa-rable or indifferent alternatives to groups. An extension of the silhouette concept from data mining is alsocontributed to measure the quality of ordered classes. Both contributions are easy to apply and integrate intodecision support systems for automated decisions in the supply chain management. Finally, this practicalapproach is also useful to classify customers and any type of alternatives or actions into ordered categories,which have an increasing number of real applications.Barrera, F.; Segura Maroto, M.; Maroto Álvarez, MC. (2023). Multicriteria sorting method based on global and local search for supplier segmentation. International Transactions in Operational Research. 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/itor.1328812

COMBINING THE SUITABILITY-FEASIBILITY-ACCEPTABILITY (SFA) STRATEGY WITH THE MCDM APPROACH

Suitability-Feasibility-Acceptability (SFA) is a fundamental tool for the development and selection of strategy. Any type of decision-making problem can be resolved by Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods. In this research, we explore the complexity of determining the proper goal market for the Chilean fish market. This study proposed a combined approach of SFA with MCDM methods in a real case study. The proposed structure helps to assign the best market for Chilean export fish to West Asia. Three countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) are selected as a target market in this region, and then related criteria are obtained from various sources. In order to develop a new market for the Chilean fishery industry, five major criteria, including the potential of a target market, region's economic attractiveness, consumption of the seafood, location, cost of transportation, and country risks, were selected based on the SFA framework. Calculating the criteria weights is performed by the Best-Worst (BWM) method, and ordering the alternatives is operated by Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to compromise Solution (MARCOS) methods. The results showed that Oman is the best destination (importer) for the Chilean fish market (Salmon fish as the case)

MCDA for sustainability assessment – insights to Helmholtz Association activities

The "MCDA for sustainability assessment – insights to Helmholtz Association activities" Working Paper aims to compile and reflect previous and on-going work within the Helmholtz Association related to MCDA, in particular, to present use cases and key methodological aspects. It has a focus on but is not limited to energy technologies and systems and is mainly based on the presentations held at the online workshop “Multi criteria decision analysis for sustainability assessment of energy technologies and systems”. The workshop was organized within the activities of the Helmholtz program ESD Topic 1 "Energy System Transformation" and took place on November 22nd, 2021

Sustainability as a Multi-criteria Concept

Sustainability is a fairly old concept, born in the 18th century in the field of forestry, within a mono-functionality perspective. The concept has considerably evolved in the last few years towards a multi-functionality context, with applications reported in practically all areas of economic interest. On the other hand, modern sustainability is a complex problem, for two reasons: a) The multiplicity of functions of a very different nature involved in the process and b) The manner in which different segments of the society or stakeholders perceive the relative importance of these functions. For the above reasons, a realistic approach for dealing with the sustainability issue requires taking into consideration multiple criteria of different nature (economic, environmental and social), and in many cases within a participatory decision making framework. This book presents a collection of papers, dealing with different theoretical and applied issues of sustainability, with the help of a modern multi-criteria decision-making theory, with a single as well as several stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Hopefully, this material will encourage academics and practitioners to alter their research in this hot and vital topic. After all, the sustainable management of the environment and its embedded resources is one of the most important, if not the major challenge of the 21st century

Multicriteria Model for the Choice of Best Battery Provider

The choice of suppliers is a matter of great importance in organizations. The cost, quality and delivery time provided to customers may depend to a large extent on this decision. This paper, therefore, describes a model applicable to a real organization, using multicriteria decision techniques to choose the best supplier of batteries. In order to establish concordance and discordance thresholds the values provided by the decision-maker of the company will be compared with those obtained by the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process. Both valuations of the thresholds will be applied in the ELECTRE II technique