How to assess sustainable suppliers using multi-criteria methods? Steel company case study

Abstract

The recent focus on sustainability and its three pillars (economic, environmental, and social) brought new issues to be addressed, especially for manufacturing companies. One of the areas of sustainable manufacturing is to work with material suppliers as part of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). The main hypothesis of the research is that choosing the right supplier, characterized by a high level of sustainable development, is able to positively influence the evaluation result of the sustainability of the supplied enterprise. Considering the above, the aim of the paper is to present the process of selecting and assessing a sustainable supplier based on the identified sustainability criteria (economic, environmental, social), which should be taken into account when deciding to cooperate with a selected supplier. The analysis uses the multi-criteria decision-making analysis (MCDM) Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluation II group decision support system (PROMETHEE II GDSS) method. The research was carried out in a steel industry enterprise in Poland.