Supplier Selection Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods

Supplier selection is a continuous and never-ending process for acquiring the necessary raw materials and components to support the final output of business organizations. The suppliers are supposed to provide the required materials, products, components, parts or services within the scheduled time period in an efficient manner to the purchaser. In other words, the most important and critical function of the purchasing department of any organization is to procure materials and components having the right quality, in right quantity, at right time and at affordable price. There may be numerous suppliers in the market, but the selection of the most suitable supplier is the key to the success of the business organization. Thus, the main objective of supplier selection is to choose the highly potential suppliers through which all the goals of the organization can be achieved. Due to these reasons, supplier selection has got considerable attention from academicians and researchers. This paper mainly deals with the selection of the most suitable supplier for a specific situation based on various selection criteria using five different Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods. In this context, a real time example is cited to illustrate the applicability and potentiality of these MCDM methods while solving supplier selection decision-making problems