Modeling and implementation of supplier selection procedures for e-commerce initiatives

The main work in this paper covers a methodology, tools and implementation techniques for automation of supplier selection procedures as an e-commerce application. The work could be divided into two main parts. First, the development of a modeling methodology which can be used for automation of supplier selection procedures. By this modeling methodology, supplier selection procedures are divided into pre-selection, selection and the post-selection procedures. The selection procedure is further divided into the following stages: bidder selection, partner selection, and performance evaluation. The second part is about realization of automation. Three modules for automation are identified; they are the data collection system for bidder selection stage, the inference engine for partner selection stage, and the performance evaluation engine for the performance evaluation stage.