Supplier selection for managing supply risks in supply chain: a fuzzy approach

Supplier selection is one of the most important tasks for supply chain decision making, and there are many quantitative and qualitative factors that affect this process. This paper develops a simple and user-friendly supplier selection process for a supply chain which considers various selection criteria for managing supply risks. A rule-based fuzzy inference system (FIS) model is developed using the fuzzy logic toolbox in MATLAB R2012a to select the most excellent supplier by considering both quantitative and qualitative selection criteria. We identify a total of 18 selection criteria, of which four are quantitative and 14 qualitative. Risk factors are also incorporated in the model by developing fuzzy input and output criteria, and the best supplier is selected based on the aggregated supplier ranking index value. Finally, a numerical example presented to explain the usefulness of the developed model.