Supplier selection for industry: a fuzzy rule-based scoring approach with a focus on usability

Compared to other selection problems, supplier selection is a particularly challenging application as often there's incomplete or imprecise information about the candidates and the key factors frequently are frequently difficult to quantify. Although the literature is replete with research to support this process, supplier selection decisions remain firmly in the domain of the human expert, while sophisticated decision support methodologies go unused in industry. This paper explores the issue of usability in supplier selection literature and proposes a usability focused methodology that combines elements from fuzzy rule-based expert systems and attribute scoring approaches. The objectives are twofold: to capture the nuances of supplier evaluation to the extent that will satisfy decision makers and to accomplish this in an intuitive manner so that the methodology can find acceptance in industry. The methodology is followed by a discussion of the tests carried out with an apparel company.