An intelligent approach to supplier evaluation in automotive sector

During the process of supplier evaluation, selecting the best desirable supplier is one of the most critical problems of companies since improperly selected suppliers may cause losing time, cost and market share of a company. For this multiple-criteria decision making selection problem, in this paper, a fuzzy extension of analytic network process (ANP), which uses uncertain human preferences as input information in the decision-making process, is applied since conventional methods such as analytic hierarchy process cannot accommodate the variety of interactions, dependencies and feedback between higher and lower level elements. The resulting fuzzy ANP enhances the potential of the conventional ANP for dealing with imprecise and uncertain human comparison judgments. In short, in this paper, an intelligent approach to supplier selection problem through fuzzy ANP is proposed by taking into consideration quantitative and qualitative elements to evaluate supplier alternatives, and a case study in automotive sector is presented.