Selection of Construction Products Suppliers According to the Condorcet Criterion

The continuous growth of competition on the construction market results in the fact that construction companies are forced to keep searching for solutions facilitating the building process and construction logistics. In the recent decades, one of the most fascinating ideas which enable a real improvement in the aspect of a company's competitiveness on the market is supply chain management. It has undergone a transformation from fragmented actions to integrated operations intending to optimize the flow of physical resources and information. The first step towards the application of the modern logistics tools is the selection and evaluation of entities involved in a cooperation within the supply chain framework. The selection of reliable partners to supply a construction site or a building company may reduce the operational costs, minimize inventory and improve timeliness as well as the quality of offered services. Any mistakes made in the process of supplier selection may lead to issues such as supply delays, difficulties in keeping contract deadlines and even complete failure of a project or bankruptcy of a construction company. An 18th century criterion for the selection of the most preferable candidate developed by Nicolas de Condorcet is commonly accepted owing to its fair rules of choice (anyone who defeats most of their competitors in a direct confrontation wins). Due to its democratic approach, most criteria decide as to the selection of the winner. Should the choice of a winner or establishing a Condorcet ranking from the perspective of the social choice theory prove impossible, the selected candidate ought to be as much similar to a winner in the Condorcet sense as possible. The theory was developed in order to facilitate the selection of the most suitable candidate in the election, however it may also find application in the selection of a supply chain elements evaluated with the use of multiple criteria. There are a number of decision-making methods which fulfil the Condorcet criterion. They vary in their computational complexity and may provide different final order. The intention of this paper is to review the methods which may offer support while selecting the most preferable supplier of construction products.