A hybrid MCDM approach to supplier selection

An organisation's progress strongly depends on the selection of an appropriate supplier. The selection of suitable supplier is a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, which is based on several qualitative, quantitative and even conflicting criteria. This paper aims to propose a hybrid MCDM technique for the supplier selection problem. The fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) is used to analyse the structure of supplier selection problem and to determine the weights of the criteria. The preference ranking organisation method for enrichment evaluation (PROMETHEE) is used to obtain the final ranking of the suppliers. The effectiveness of the proposed FAHP-PROMETHEE method is compared to AHP-PROMETHEE and it is illustrated using a real-time case study from a refrigerator manufacturing industry.