Supplier evaluation and selection with QFD and FAHP in a pharmaceutical company

In this paper, quality function deployment (QFD) approach is used for selecting the vendors in pharmaceutical company and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process has been used to determine the importance of the "weights" in QFD. Determining the importance of the weights for the customer requirements is essential and crucial in QFD process. Using fuzzy approach can reflect the customer requirement more precisely and provides a decision tool that facilitates the vendor selection especially for a pharmaceutical company, since those companies face a very specific challenge: consumers do not have discretion over their choices; ethical drugs must be prescribed by physicians to be bought and used by final consumers.