Purpose: Most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are strategically involved in supplier
base rationalization and increased consciousness of sustainable development. This reinforces
need for accurately considering sustainability in supplier selection to improve organizational
performance. In real industrial case, problems are unavoidable and pose huge challenge to
accurately incorporate sustainability factors into supplier selection. Such problems include
imprecise data, ambiguity of human judgment, uncertainty among sustainability factors and the
need to capture all subjective and objective criteria
Design/methodology/approach: This study develops a model based on integrated multicriteria
decision making (MCDM) methods to solve such problems. The developed model
applies Fuzzy logic, DEMATEL and TOPSIS to effectively analyze the interdependencies
between sustainability criteria and to select the best sustainable supplier in fuzzy environment
while capturing all subjective and objective criteria. A case study is illustrated to test the
proposed model in a gear manufacturing company, an OEM to provide insights and for
practical applications.
Findings: Results show that social factors of sustainability ranks as the most important in
sustainable supplier selection. RFP ranks as the most important sub- criterion with score of 3.
7442. Also, the highest net causers are WS and quality with scores of 1.2818 and 0.3409 respectively. This implies that during sustainable supplier selection, it is suggested that emphasis
should be placed on work safety and quality of the respective suppliers. A6 is identified as the
best possible sustainable supplier with a relative closeness to the ideal solution Li of 0.527. This
is as a result of A6 being closest to the positive ideal solution and farthest from the negativeideal
solution during implementing sustainable supplier selection in the case study.
Originality/value: The model is capable of capturing all subjective and objective criteria in
fuzzy environment to accurately incorporate sustainability factors in supplier selection. Work
safety and quality necessitates the most emphasis during implementing sustainable supplier
selection because they highly influence all other sub- criteria.
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