Food supplier sorting model for strategic supply chain sustainable development

Abstract

AbstractThe sustainable supplier assessment has emerged as a strategic activity that seeks to green the value chain. Plentiful studies evaluating sustainable suppliers in the agroindustry field have been proposed. These investigations focus on selecting or ranking from the best to the worst performance. However, the sorting approach that would be more adequate when it comes to investigating the performance of partners with a view to making improvements to their systems is generally not considered to solve this problem, being an important gap in the literature. In this scenario, this research provides a food supplier sorting model using Value‐Focused Thinking (VFT) and Flexible and Interactive Tradeoff (FITradeoff) method for sorting problematic to suggest upgrades and advancements in the operation of the suppliers searching for a sustainable development. The suppliers were sorted into predefined categories depending on sustainability level: sustainable suppliers; suppliers in path of development; and non‐green suppliers. The method was applied for evaluating suppliers in a Colombian food industry. Finding shows that the proposed model is useful to categorize suppliers, serving to design particular green programs for each class to improve them, while also suggesting a strategic direction to greener the food supply chain in accordance with the goals of the sustainable development.