A fuzzy decision tool to evaluate the sustainable performance of suppliers in an agrifood value chain

Sustainable supply chain management has received much attention from both academia and industry due to various issues such as economic stability, environment conservation, and social ethics. To improve the sustainable performance of a value chain, its members need to carefully select their suppliers in relation to their own strategy. Thus, an effective tool for sustainable supplier selection and evaluation is essential, which considers the triple bottom line (TBL) of economic, environmental and social aspects by means of criteria adapted to the situation analysed. This paper develops a fuzzy decision tool to evaluate the sustainable performance of suppliers according to TBL. Sustainability criteria are identified to take into account the real hotspots in a food value chain. The proposed model integrates triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN), AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) in a novel way to consider quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as objective and subjective data. This is missing in most existing research when building their fuzzy models for supplier selection, but critical in dealing with the heterogeneous data available for TBL assessment. The application in a sustainable agrifood value chain illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed tool

A Decision Tool for Supplier Selection That Takes into Account Power and Performance

Companies select their suppliers to provide required performance while being successful partners. An important aspect of collaboration is the power relationship between the company and its suppliers. Although the significance of power in supplier selection is acknowledged, published work rarely includes assessment of power. An empirical study on selecting suppliers for new product developments in a major European diesel engine manufacturing company, supported by three smaller studies with electronic engineering companies, frames overall questions regarding the importance of incorporating power into supplier selection and how this might be achieved. This research proposes an approach that assesses both performance and power and integrates the assessment results by modelling the relative effects of power and performance. It positions the suppliers into six scenarios (ideal, satisfying, tolerable, unfavourable, risky and tough) which depict to what extent a supplier is ‘suitable’ to work with. A reverse analysis reviews the relationship when several suppliers appear suitable. An assessment method is developed incorporating both subjective and objective data for qualitative and quantitative criteria. It combines two decision making methods, AHP and TOPSIS, with triangular fuzzy numbers. Multiple judgements from several decision makers are synthesised. This method is adapted for performance assessment of single, group and cross-group suppliers. Weights are calculated for the criteria, and combined with calculations of supplier performance against each criterion to provide an overall assessment and supplier profile. Power is quantified against a set of power determinants and power relations (supplier dominance, buyer dominance and balanced) are determined. The effects of supplier perceptions (objective, optimistic and pessimistic) are estimated in the calculation. The proposed approach involves complex calculations and a prototype software tool is developed with graphical interfaces. The tool includes performance criteria and power determinants collected from literature and allows users to define new ones. Application to an agriculture case enables the sustainable performance of suppliers (farmers) to be evaluated and compared

Assessing Suppliers for Complex Products from the Perspective of Power

Innovation steps in complex products often go hand in hand with the selection of suppliers. The suppliers are involved in the development of innovative elements of products, supplementing the capabilities of companies. Strategic relationships are established with these suppliers, where the companies need them to be flexible and willing to adapt to changing demands. Flexibility is usually evaluated against a variety of indicators. However, a high score on flexibility does not guarantee cooperative suppliers. Companies also require power to get a supplier to be flexible. They need suppliers who are malleable to their changing needs that are an inevitable part of design processes. The empirical study at a leading European engine company reported in this paper shows that the relative power between companies and suppliers influences the responsiveness of suppliers to requests. This paper analyses malleability as a combination of flexibility and relative power. It unpacks power and flexibility into sets of measurable indicators and proposes a tool which assesses both the relative power between buyer and supplier and the supplier’s flexibility, to provide a malleability index, which indicates to what extent a supplier is suitable to work with

An agent-based negotiation model to support partner selection in a virtual enterprise

Session - MP-Fd Supply Chain Management & Logistics 4: cie182hk-1Conference Theme: Soft Computing Techniques for Advanced Manufacturing and Service SystemsIn response to the global business competitive environment, it is common for several companies to participate in a virtual enterprise (VE) to cooperate and collaborate dynamically to complete a common business opportunity. This paper proposes an agent-based negotiation model to support the partner selection process in a VE. To begin with, the VE partner selection problem is abstracted as a buyer-seller relationship such that the VE initiator is the buyer and the VE partners are sellers or vice verse. In the multi-agent system (MAS) that supports the proposed negotiation model, autonomous agents are established to represent various parties and functions of the VE. For instance, a buyer agent represents the VE initiator and the potential partners are represented by seller agents. Thus, the VE partner evaluation and selection problem is the process of finding the partners that are able to provide the buyer with the right quality products and services at the right price and at the right time. Evaluation and selection of partners is a typical multiattribute decision making (MADM) problem involving various issues that can both be qualitative and quantitative.published_or_final_versionThe 40th International Conference on Computers & Industrial Engineering (CIE40), Awaji City, Japan, 25-28 July 2010. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, 2010, p. 1-

CONTAINER SHIPPING RISK MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF TAIWAN CONTAINER SHIPPING INDUSTRY

Whilst container shipping has become increasingly important over the past few decades due to its obvious advantages, container shipping companies have faced various risks from different sources in their operations. Systematic academic studies on this topic are few; and in light of this, this study aims to systematically explore and analyse the risks in container shipping operations and to examine the applicable risk mitigation strategies in a logistics perspective, including information flow, physical flow, and payment flow. This thesis uses Taiwan container shipping industry as a case study, and borrows four steps of risk management as the main method, which includes risk identification, risk analysis, risk mitigation strategies identification, and strategies evaluation. In order to ensure the analysis is inclusive and systematic, risk factors and risk mitigation strategies are identified through a related literature review and are validated through a set of interviews. Risk analysis is conducted through using questionnaires, and then through risk ranking, risk matrix, risk mapping, and P-I graph. Risk mitigation strategies are evaluated through classic AHP and fuzzy AHP analysis. A number of significant findings have been obtained. Firstly, 35 risk factors are identified and classified into three categories: risks associated with information flow, risks associated with physical flow, and risks associated with payment flow. After collecting and analysing the risk-factor survey, the results indicate that the risk associated with physical flow has the more significant impact on shipping companies’ operation. However, one risk factor associated with information flow, “shippers hiding cargo information”, has the most significant impact among the 35 risk factors. Secondly, 20 risk mitigation strategies are identified and classified into three categories: intra-organisational strategies, intra-channel strategies, and inter-channel strategies. After collecting the AHP survey and analysing through classic AHP and fuzzy AHP, the result indicates that “slot exchange, slot charter, joint fleet, ship charter with other container shipping companies” is the most important strategy. The main contributions of this thesis include: (1) based on the literature review, there have been no research on risk management in the context of container shipping operation from a broad logistics perspective, and this thesis is the first attempt to fill this research gap; (2) this thesis uses Taiwan shipping industry as a case study to apply the framework, which generates useful managerial insights; (3) the conceptual model of risk management developed in this thesis can be applied to container shipping operations in other countries and regions; (4) compared with several studies using secondary data, this thesis uses empirical data to conduct the risk analysis, and make the results more close to the reality situation in container shipping; (5) in terms of risk analysis, this thesis ranks the total 35 risk factors rather than only identify the most important one, this can be used to be generalised to the whole container shipping companies in Taiwan, or even to the whole world; (6) in terms of risk management, the previous studies usually analyse only the importance of strategies. However, this thesis analyses the results of AHP from three different angles: reducing financial loss, reducing reputation loss, and reducing safety and security incident related loss. This can provide different angles for the managers who are considering different aspects

APLIKASI PEMILIHAN OPERATOR SUMUR PRODUKSI MENGGUNAKAN FUZZY AHP DAN FUZZY TOPSIS DI PT. GEOTAMA ENERGI

Dalam penentuan karyawan operator sumur produksi pada suatu sumur minyak terdapat beberapa faktor yang menjadi penilaian.Penilaian ini berdasarkan penilaian kinerja, yakni pengetahuan tentang Peralatan Kerja,    HSE Awareness,    Production System,     Production Lifting Method,     Operasi Perawatan Sumur dan  Operasi Tekanan Dasar Sumur. Demi efisiensi dan efektifitas kerja maka pengambilan keputusan yang tepat sangat diperlukan. Makalah ini bertujuan untuk membangun sebuah sistem pendukung keputusan yang mempunyai kemampuan analisa pemilihan karyawan berprestasi dengan menggunakan metode Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), dimana masing-masing kriteria dalam hal ini faktor- faktor penilaian dan alternatif dalam hal ini para karyawan dibandingkan satu dengan yang lainnya sehingga memberikan output nilai intensitas prioritas yang menghasilkan suatu sistem yang memberikan penilaian terhadap setiap karyawan. Sistem pendukung keputusan ini membantu melakukan penilaian setiap karyawan, melakukan perubahan kriteria,dan perubahan nilai bobot. Hal ini berguna untuk memudahkan pengambil keputusan yang terkait dengan masalah pemilihan karyawan berprestasi, sehingga akan di dapatkan karyawan yang paling layak ditempatkan menjadi Operator Sumur Produksi

Supplier evaluation and selection in fuzzy environments: a review of MADM approaches

In past years, the multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approaches have been extensively applied by researchers to the supplier evaluation and selection problem. Many of these studies were performed in an uncertain environment described by fuzzy sets. This study provides a review of applications of MADM approaches for evaluation and selection of suppliers in a fuzzy environment. To this aim, a total of 339 publications were examined, including papers in peer-reviewed journals and reputable conferences and also some book chapters over the period of 2001 to 2016. These publications were extracted from many online databases and classified in some categories and subcategories according to the MADM approaches, and then they were analysed based on the frequency of approaches, number of citations, year of publication, country of origin and publishing journals. The results of this study show that the AHP and TOPSIS methods are the most popular approaches. Moreover, China and Taiwan are the top countries in terms of number of publications and number of citations, respectively. The top three journals with highest number of publications were: Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal of Production Research and The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology

A multi-attribute decision making procedure using fuzzy numbers and hybrid aggregators

The classical Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has two limitations. Firstly, it disregards the aspect of uncertainty that usually embedded in the data or information expressed by human. Secondly, it ignores the aspect of interdependencies among attributes during aggregation. The application of fuzzy numbers aids in confronting the former issue whereas, the usage of Choquet Integral operator helps in dealing with the later issue. However, the application of fuzzy numbers into multi-attribute decision making (MADM) demands some additional steps and inputs from decision maker(s). Similarly, identification of monotone measure weights prior to employing Choquet Integral requires huge number of computational steps and amount of inputs from decision makers, especially with the increasing number of attributes. Therefore, this research proposed a MADM procedure which able to reduce the number of computational steps and amount of information required from the decision makers when dealing with these two aspects simultaneously. To attain primary goal of this research, five phases were executed. First, the concept of fuzzy set theory and its application in AHP were investigated. Second, an analysis on the aggregation operators was conducted. Third, the investigation was narrowed on Choquet Integral and its associate monotone measure. Subsequently, the proposed procedure was developed with the convergence of five major components namely Factor Analysis, Fuzzy-Linguistic Estimator, Choquet Integral, Mikhailov‘s Fuzzy AHP, and Simple Weighted Average. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed procedure was verified by solving a real MADM problem where the image of three stores located in Sabak Bernam, Selangor, Malaysia was analysed from the homemakers‘ perspective. This research has a potential in motivating more decision makers to simultaneously include uncertainties in human‘s data and interdependencies among attributes when solving any MADM problems

A novel technique for evaluating and selecting logistics service providers based on the logistics resource view

The increasing importance of logistics outsourcing and availability of logistics services providers (LSPs) highlights the significance and complexity of the LSP evaluation and selection process. Most existing LSP evaluation and selection studies use historical performance data and assume independence among decision criteria. This paper proposes an integrated logistics outsourcing approach to evaluate and select LSPs based on their logistics resources and capabilities. This novel approach combines a fuzzy decision making trial, valuation laboratory (FDEMATEL) and fuzzy techniques to order preferences by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPS IS) methods. The new multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model addresses the impact relationships between decision criteria and ranks LSP alternatives against weighted resources and capabilities. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through a real case study and a two-phase sensitivity analysis confirms its robustness