Green supplier appraisement in fuzzy environment

• Published in: Benchmarking : an international journal 2014-01, Vol.21 (3), p.412-429
• Main Authors: Kumar Sahu, Nitin, Datta, Saurav, Sankar Mahapatra, Siba
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Benchmarking; Carbon; Carbon footprint; Competitive advantage; Component and supplier management; Criteria; Data envelopment analysis; Decision making; Environmental management; Environmental performance; Fuzzy logic; Fuzzy sets; Fuzzy systems; India; Neural networks; Operations management; Organizational performance; Performance measurement; Product development; Strategy; Studies; Suppliers; Supply chain management; Supply chains; Vendor supplier relations
• ISSN: 1463-5771; 1758-4094
• DOI: 10.1108/BIJ-06-2012-0042

Purpose – In recent years, stimulated environmental awareness (green consciousness) has favored the emergence of the green supply chain paradigm. Therefore, apart from traditional supplier selection criterions, green criteria are necessarily to be incorporated in the supplier selection problem. In this context, the present study aims to highlight an efficient supplier appraisement platform by considering green performance criteria, in fuzzy environment. Design/methodology/approach – The present work exhibits an efficient fuzzy-based supplier performance assessment system using generalized trapezoidal fuzzy numbers set. A fuzzy overall evaluation index has been estimated towards assessing suppliers' green performance extent, thus facilitating supplier appraisement cum selection decision-making. Findings – The proposed method has been found efficient for solving the group decision-making problem under uncertain environment due to vagueness, ambiguity associated with decision-makers' subjective judgment. The proposed appraisement platform has been explored by an Indian automobile part manufacturing company at eastern part of India. Suppliers have been evaluated individually to check their performance level with respect to green attributes. Apart from estimating overall performance metric, the model presented here can identify ill-performing areas that necessitate future attention. Originality/value – The major contributions of this work have been summarized as follows: Development and implementation of an efficient decision-making procedural hierarchy to support suppliers' green performance extent evaluation. An overall performance metric has been introduced. Concept of generalized trapezoidal fuzzy numbers has been efficiently explored to facilitate such an appraisement cum selection decision-making. The appraisement index system has been extended with the capability to search ill-performing areas that require future progress.