Research on Sustainable Supplier Selection Based on the Rough DEMATEL and FVIKOR Methods

Jing Zhang, Dong Yang, Qiang Li, Benjamin Lev and Yanfang Ma
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Jing Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China
Dong Yang: School of Economics and Management, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China
Qiang Li: School of Economics and Management, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China
Benjamin Lev: LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, Philadephia, PA 19104, USA
Yanfang Ma: School of Economics and Management, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-24

Abstract: In competitive global markets, sustainable suppliers are critical success factors for sustainable supply chain operations. Sustainable supplier selection must be based on a complex network of numerous indicators and experts’ fuzzy linguistic terms. Considering the correlation between the evaluation criteria and the ambiguity of the criteria values, this paper proposes combining the rough DEMATEL method and the fuzzy VIKOR (FVIKOR) method to solve sustainable supplier selection problem. We determine 15 sustainable supplier evaluation criteria from economic, environmental and social dimensions. We also apply the rough DEMATEL method to determine the weight of evaluation indicators that are interrelated or even conflicting and use the FVIKOR method to determine supplier rankings by converting the fuzzy linguistic terms into precise information. The practicability of the proposed method is verified by an example of sustainable supplier selection.

Keywords: sustainable supplier selection; multi-criteria evaluation; rough DEMATEL method; fuzzy VIKOR method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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