Multi criteria supplier selection from social aspects in Thai tyre rubber industry

One of the main issues for companies and organisations is choosing the most appropriate supplier regarding social issues. Besides traditional criteria, companies started to focus on social issues in supplier selection. The methods of group decision making are well established approaches to tackle this issue which could allow decision makers to determine socially selected suppliers' problems. Many existing researches, nonetheless, encompasses scant review of ambiguity which is involved in the process of selecting suppliers. Hence, this study aims to propose a method combines the strength of the Fuzzy sets to deal with an uncertainty or vagueness with AHP-TOPSIS approach to select suppliers by concerning social aspects. AHP method used to identify criteria weights and TOPSIS approach is utilized to sort and select the best appropriate supplier. According to the literature review and company requirements, the criteria in social perspectives was developed to eight criteria. This study uses the questionnaire to gather data from top five manager's judgements who had been chosen based on purpose and self-selection sampling in each department. A case study was carried out in Thailand in the Tyre rubber sector to validate result. The findings demonstrate that Job security (34%) is the most important criteria, following by Employees' health and safety (16%) and Training programs (12%) respectively. The study also presents that "Supplier D" is the most suitable supplier above other suppliers

Reducing Environmental Impact in Procurement by Integrating Material Parameters in Information Systems: The Example of Apple Sourcing

Legislation, customer pressure, and energy costs are increasing the interest of enterprises in environmental performance indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage. Currently, business users take decisions across the value chain, from product design to disposal, without the ability to compare the environmental impact of alternatives within their information systems, thus limiting the optimization potential. In this paper we consider procurement as an example business operation and show how capturing previously-unknown material parameters in the respective information system can significantly increase the achievable optimizations. We use apple procurement into the U.K. to illustrate the paper’s idea, and conduct Monte Carlo analysis to quantify the realizable impact reductions as each additional life cycle parameter is tracked. The results show that taking into account the production country alone achieves a decrease in energy consumption of around 1250MJ per ton of apples, equivalent to 28% reduction from the base case

AI and OR in management of operations: history and trends

The last decade has seen a considerable growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for operations management with the aim of finding solutions to problems that are increasing in complexity and scale. This paper begins by setting the context for the survey through a historical perspective of OR and AI. An extensive survey of applications of AI techniques for operations management, covering a total of over 1200 papers published from 1995 to 2004 is then presented. The survey utilizes Elsevier's ScienceDirect database as a source. Hence, the survey may not cover all the relevant journals but includes a sufficiently wide range of publications to make it representative of the research in the field. The papers are categorized into four areas of operations management: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Each of the four areas is categorized in terms of the AI techniques used: genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems, fuzzy logic and hybrid techniques. The trends over the last decade are identified, discussed with respect to expected trends and directions for future work suggested

Green supplier evaluation and selection using fuzzy multi-criteria decision making in Thai tire rubber industry

Due to the challenges in increasing environmental consciousness, green supplier evaluation and selection has become an emerging issue. The objective of this paper is to propose a method for the evaluation and selection of green suppliers through an example in the Thai tire rubber industry. This study identifies seven key environmental criteria for assessing and selecting green suppliers in industry and introduces a successful implementation of Green supply chain management practices (GSCMP). The criteria have been sourced through extensive literature research and interviews with ten practicing industrial experts. The proposed methodology uses a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) framework to weight the criteria and select the supplier with the best set of environmental performances. The fuzzy approach was chosen to accommodate the typical vagueness and subjectivity in any typical expert decision-making process. The real-world case study discusses the application of the method with three alternative suppliers in the tire rubber industry. The findings show that Environmental standard certification, Green technology capability and pollution reduction capability can be identified as the first three most relevant criteria in the ranking of selection of green suppliers. To evaluate the proposed framework a case example of tire rubber manufacturing is selected. Results is depicted that supplier "S2" got the highest rank of candidate suppliers in overall criteria of study

Evaluation the suppliers using Analytic hierarchy process(AHP): An application in the textile firm

Tedarikçi seçimi, hem sayısal hem de sayısal olmayan kriterleri içeren karmaşık çok kriterli bir problemdir. Tedarikçileri seçmek için, birbirleriyle çatışan bu kriterler arasında değiş-tokuş yapmak gereklidir. Tedarikçi seçim problemini çözmek için literatürde farklı yaklaşımlar önerilmiştir. Özellikle Saaty‘nin geliştirdiği Analitik Hiyerarşi Süreci(AHS), problemin çözümünde sayısal ve sayısal olmayan tüm kriterleri göz önünde bulundurduğu için daha kullanışlı bir yaklaşımdır. Bu çalışmanın ana amacı, AHS‘yi kullanarak bir tekstil firmasının tedarikçi seçim problemini çözmektir. Önerilen model beş alternatif, yedi ana ve on üç alt kriter arasındaki ilişkilerin hiyerarşik bir yapıda temsilini içerir. Yirmi bir ikili karşılaştırma matrisinin elde edilmesinde odak grup yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Modelin çözüm sonuçları verilmiş ve duyarlılık analizleri yapılmıştır. Sonuç olarak, firma yönetimi için önemli çıkarsamalar ve öneriler sunulmuştur. Supplier selection is a complex multi-criteria problem which includes both qualitative and quantitative criteria. In order to select the suppliers, it is necessary to make a tradeoff between these criteria some of which may conflict. Different approaches are suggested to solve the supplier selection problem in the literature. Especially, Saaty‘s analytic hierarchy process (AHS) is more useful approach for the problem, because of its inherent capability to handle qualitative and quantitative criteria.The main purpose of this study is to solve the supplier selection problem of the textile firm by using AHS. The proposed model consists of a hierarchical network of connections among five alternatives, seven main and thirteen sub criteria. Twenty-one pairwise comparison matrices were obtained by using focus group methodology. The results are presented and the sensitivity analyses are performed. Finally, some suggestions and important clues for the management are presented

Review and critique of supplier selection process and practices

With increasingly competitive global world markets, companies are under intense pressure to find ways to cut production and material costs to survive and sustain their competitive position in their respective markets. Since a qualified supplier is a key element and a good resource for a buyer in reducing such costs, evaluation and selection of the potential suppliers has become an important component of supply chain management. Hence, development of an effective and rational supplier selection model is naturally desirable. Several evaluation and selection models for supplier selection have been proposed and reported in the supply chain literature. This paper reveals the findings of a wide ranging literature review of supplier selection practices and models. Altogether 147 refereed academic journal articles are reviewed and classified into five categories. A list and summary of the papers falling into each category with brief annotations is provided. The areas that have received little attention or lack of research interest are discussed and some new research settings are also suggested

Developing a conceptual model to evaluate green suppliers: Decision making method using DEMATEL

Nowadays stakeholder pressure and public awareness have been raised against companies‟ environmental impacts, so green supply chain management (GSCM) seems vital for companies‟ environmental compliance and business growth. Companies continuously seek novel ideas and methods enabling them to obtain and/or maintain environmental sustainability. Greening the supply chain is one of such innovative idea involving all of the business value-adding operations, comprising purchasing and in-bound logistics, production and manufacturing, distribution, out-bound logistics and collaboration with patrons and suppliers in a way that has the least negative environmental effect. The main objective of the present study is finding interrelationship between green supplier criteria. For this to happen, we investigated experts‟ opinions through nominal group technique (NGT) to find out the interrelationship and causal preferences of the green supplier evaluation aspects using Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method. A numerical example demonstrates the application of the proposed model.N/

A regional information-based multi-attribute and multi-objective decision-making approach for sustainable supplier selection and order allocation

Although extant studies proposed various models and frameworks for sustainable supplier selection problems, they paid limited attention to the incorporation of regional economic, social, and environmental factors simultaneously for global supply chain design due to the difficulty in reflecting varies dimensions of the global business environment and their associated risk in a decision model. Existing supplier selection models also tend to focus on the formulation of a simplified supply chain structure rather than considering more realistic supply chain operations under multiple sourcing and product designs. To facilitate the complex decision-making process of global supplier selection problems, this study proposes an integrated approach that consists of two phases to effectively reflect the multi-perspectives of global supply chain design for sustainability. The first phase identifies sustainable supplier regions through multi-attribute utility theory, considering four regional sustainability indices for economic and social factors in global business and logistics, to reflect the decision maker\u27s risk attitudes on global business opportunities. In the second phase, a multi-objective integer linear programming model for multiple sourcing and multiple product designs that minimizes economic and environmental objectives is applied to find optimal suppliers in the regions selected from the first phase and their order quantities. The proposed approach is illustrated through a bicycle supplier selection case study. The results show that the multi-objective sustainable decision under a multiple sourcing strategy for different product designs leads to a supply chain that is significantly different from the single-objective non-sustainable decisions. The case study under different decision scenarios shows that a decision maker should hold a balanced perspective under the multi-objective decision environment for sustainable supply chain design

An integrated model for sustainable supplier selection and multi-period multi-product lot-sizing for packaging film industry in Iran

The emergence of sustainability issues has created increasing interest among those involved in the field of sustainable supply chain management. Companies are motivated to modify their supply chains activities based on sustainability issues to enhance their overall level of sustainability in order to fulfil demanding environmental and social legislation and to deal with increasing market forces from different stakeholder groups. Within supply chain activities, selecting appropriate suppliers based on the criteria of sustainability, e.g., economic, environmental, and societal might help companies move towards sustainable development. Although several studies have been accomplished to incorporate sustainability criteria into supplier selection problem, little attention has been paid to developing a comprehensive mathematical model that allocates the exact quantities of orders to suppliers considering lot-sizing problems. Moreover, the effect of inflation as an important issue for companies in the developing countries has been neglected in studies that examined multi-period multi-product lot-sizing along with supplier selection. In this study, a multi-objective mathematical model for sustainable supplier selection integrated with multi-period multi-product lot-sizing problem under the effects of inflation was developed. The model consists of four objective functions which are minimizing total cost, maximizing total social, total environmental score, and total economic qualitative scores. The mathematical model was developed based on the parameters discovered by preprocessing the social, environmental, and economic data of suppliers using a rule-based-weighted fuzzy approach and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process. The model attempted to simultaneously balance different costs under inflationary conditions to optimize the total cost of purchasing and other objective functions. A comprehensive framework was developed as a road map for procurement organizations in order to facilitate the allocation of optimal order quantities to suppliers in a sustainable supply chain. The proficiency and applicability of a proposed approach was illustrated using a case study of packaging films from the food industry. For each main criterion of sustainability, their related subcriteria and influencing factors were extracted from literature and the most related ones were selected by company’s experts. In this research, green competencies, environmental management system, pollution, occupational safety and health, training and education, contractual stakeholder, economic qualitative, and cost were selected by company’s experts as the main subcriteria of sustainable supplier selection. The consideration of sustainability criteria in the proposed multi-objective model revealed that a higher value of sustainable purchasing can be achieved in comparison with a single objective costbased model. In addition, the results show that the proposed model can provide a purchasing plan for the company while monitoring the effect of inflation and assuaging its concerns regarding sustainability issues

Operational excellence in a green supply chain for environmental management: a case study

Nowadays, organizations have started to become more conscious about the environment in their supply chain operations. The greening process has guided supply chain practices into new ways of thinking according to green standards. The assessment of the performance of green supply chain management (GSCM) requires a holistic view for the whole supply chain. In this context, given that becoming green in the operational side of activities is essential, the performance assessment of operational activities also requires a holistic view to be taken. In this paper, an attempt has been made to improve the performance of GSCM by examining and evaluating the green operational excellence of a hot dip galvanizing company. The framework includes several green operational excellence key criteria, namely, quality management, efficiency management, green production/manufacturing, eco-packaging, and green design. First, the weights of the criteria and the respective measurements were found by fuzzy analytic network process. Then, the overall operational performance score was found by a weighted scoring method. Finally, both managerial and theoretical implications were suggested according to the outcomes and findings of the case study