Open Access

ARTICLE

Sustainable Supplier Selection Model in Supply Chains During the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Chia-Nan Wang¹, Chao-Fen Pan^1,*, Viet Tinh Nguyen², Syed Tam Husain²

1 Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, 80778, Taiwan
2 Faculty of Commerce, Van Lang University, Ho Chi Minh City, 70000, Vietnam

* Corresponding Author: Chao-Fen Pan. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Application of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Learning Approach for Learning Process in COVID-19/Industrial Revolution 4.0)

Computers, Materials & Continua 2022, 70(2), 3005-3019. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2022.020206

Received 14 May 2021; Accepted 20 June 2021; Issue published 27 September 2021

Abstract

As global supply chains become more developed and complicated, supplier quality has become increasingly influential on the competitiveness of businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Consequently, supplier selection is an increasingly important process for any business around the globe. Choosing a supplier is a complex decision that can result in lower procurement costs and increased profits without increasing the cost or lowering the quality of the product. However, these decision-making problems can be complicated in cases with multiple potential suppliers. Vietnam's textile and garment industry, for example, has made rapid progress in recent years but is still facing great difficulties as the supply of raw materials and machinery depends heavily on foreign countries. Therefore, it is extremely important for textile and garment manufacturing companies in Vietnam to implement an effective supplier evaluation and selection process. While multicriteria decision-making models are frequently employed to assist with supplier evaluation and selection problems, few of these models consider the problem under the condition of a fuzzy decision-making environment. The aim of this paper is to create a hybrid MCDM model using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) model and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to assist the supplier selection process in the garment industry in a fuzzy decision-making environment. In this study, the FAHP method is used to evaluate the performance and the weight of each criterion. TOPSIS is then used to rank all potential suppliers. The proposed model is then applied to a real-world case study to demonstrate both the process of calculation as well as its real-world applicability. The results from the case study provide empirical evidence that the model is feasible. The proposed approach can also be used in combination with other MCDM models to better support decision makers and can be modified to be applied in similar supplier selection processes for different industries.

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