An integrated fuzzy model for supplier management: A case study of ISP selection and evaluation

Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem which consists of both qualitative and quantitative metrics. A lot of investigations have been published in the supplier selection area and it has been notified that in the majority of these publications supplier selection and evaluation and development have the same meaning. However, one needs integrated models to cover all of these stages. In addition, most of the proposed models focused on manufacturing environments and a few papers have been allocated for service industries. To Our knowledge, no Internet service provider (ISP) selection and evaluation has been published Lip to now. In this paper, we propose a new framework on the basis of company's strategy for supplier management including supplier selection, evaluation, and development. In the first phase, quality function deployment (QFD) is utilized to rank the best ISPs based on qualitative criteria. Then, a quantitative model is adopted to consider quantitative metrics. Finally, we compose two models and select the best ISPs. In the next phase, we propose a novel algorithm to evaluate selected ISPs from three perspectives: customer, performance, and competition. Meanwhile, the fuzzy logic and triangular fuzzy numbers are utilized to deal with vagueness of human thought. Furthermore, a case study is conducted to illustrate the stages of ISP selection and evaluation. The implementation of the proposed model is easy and do not need optimization background. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.