Multi-criteria decision making for supplier selection: a literature critique

Abstract

In contemporary supply chain management, a company’s performance is largely dependent on its strategic choice of suppliers. The complexity of supplier evaluation and selection is driving the development of novel support techniques and their integration into multi-criteria decision-making processes. This review identifies the most prevalent approaches in the supply chain management literature (1998–2018), analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, and discusses the most popular supplier selection attributes. The non-conventional, emerging methods in domain literature are also discussed, and future research directions are proposed. Supplier selection approaches are classified into individual, integrated, and non-conventional approaches. To overcome the limitations associated with these tools when used individually, most of the published works have used integrated techniques, among which integrated fuzzy and analytic hierarchy process methods are most popular. We conclude that while some of the methodologies are common, the more non-conventional approaches, such as market utility-based models, are rarely used in the supplier selection literature, leaving much opportunity to further develop these less-used approaches and, ultimately, aid decision-makers in supply chain management.