Developing fuzzy expert system for supplier and subcontractor evaluation in construction industry

Increasing competition in the global market to gain customer satisfaction and maximize profitability has been a challenge in the last decade for many construction corporations. In recent years, Supply Chain Management (SCM) has been introduced as one of the most effective approaches in the construction industry literature; further, the first step in SCM implementation is supplier evaluation and thus finding and resolving its weaknesses. In this regard, this research identified the criteria for evaluation of two types of suppliers in the construction industry (first, material and equipment suppliers named suppliers, and second, service suppliers named subcontractors) and their fuzzy membership functions, distinctly, through literature review, questionnaire survey, and statistical analysis of expert judgment. Since most of them are linguistic parameters, fuzzy approach through Mamdani's inference mechanism has been utilized to develop a new methodology of fuzzy expert system. Thus, the developed expert system would evaluate and select the subcontractors and suppliers, distinctly, through three main criteria which are Quality, Cost, and Work relations history-timely delivery. The developed system was tested in three major companies and the results revealed significant performance improvement of these construction companies. (C) 2016 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.