A Fuzzy Multicriteria Decision-Making (MCDM) Model for Sustainable Supplier Evaluation and Selection Based on Triple Bottom Line Approaches in the Garment Industry

Abstract

Vietnam’s garment industry is facing many challenges, including domestic competition and the global market. The free trade agreement, which Vietnam signed, includes environmental barriers, sustainable development, and green development. The agreement further requires businesses to make efforts to improve not only product quality but also the production process. In cases when enterprises cause environmental pollution in the production process and do not apply solutions to reduce waste, save energy, and natural resources, there is a risk of no longer receiving orders or orders being rejected, especially orders from the world’s major branded garment companies. In this research, the authors propose a multicriteria decision-making model (MCDM) for optimizing the supplier evaluation and selection process for the garment industry using sustainability considerations. In the first stage of this research, all criteria affecting supplier selection are determined by a triple bottom line (TBL) model (economic, environmental, and social aspects) and literature reviews; in addition, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) method was utilized to identify the weight of all criteria in the second stage. The technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) is a multicriteria decision analysis method, which is used for ranking potential suppliers in the final stage. As a result, decision-making unit 10 (DMU/10) is found to be the best supplier for the garment industry. The contribution of this research includes modeling the supplier selection decision problem based on the TBL concept. The proposed model also addresses different complex problems in supplier selection, is a flexible design model for considering the evaluation criteria, and is applicable to supplier selection in other industries.