A novel approach for vendor combination selection in supply chain management

To make full use of inside and outside resources in a competitive globalization market, many manufacturers and service providers are seeking a strategic cooperation with suitable vendors to improve their supply chain management (SCM) so that they can concentrate their efforts on their own core business. In this research, a comprehensive evaluation approach is presented for optimal combination selection among candidate vendors and outsourced parts. An evaluation system with a set of vendor selection indices is established. Also, a hierarchical fuzzy model for vendor selection is developed. And thus, a progressively-simplified approach is presented to deal with the vendor combination selection problem in a supply chain system. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.