Proposal of a supplier evaluation and ranking method based on fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS

As companies increasingly focus on their core competences, the relationship with suppliers becomes more crucial. In complex supply chains, it is vital to continuously evaluate suppliers to aid the purchasing process, thus prioritising suppliers with greater performance. However, the evaluation of suppliers depends on the purchased item and requires the adoption of multiple criteria, which often are qualitative and assessed under uncertainty. This paper contributes to the field of supplier evaluation by proposing a supplier evaluation model that uses qualitative criteria to rank a set of suppliers of a given strategic item. Initially, the model uses fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to weigh the criteria and later it uses fuzzy TOPSIS to evaluate suppliers. A real application was carried out in a shoe manufacturer to evaluate leather suppliers, which enabled both the ranking of the current three suppliers and deciding on guidelines on order quantities and supply base development.