IMPROVING EFFECTIVENESS OF SUPPLY CHAIN BY SELECTING AN APPROPRIATE SUPPLIER: AN ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS APPROACH

Abstract

The supply chain is an important element for the development of all industries. It can improve efficiency and effectiveness of product transfer and information sharing between complex hierarchies of all the tiers. Supplier selection is an important step in the supply chain design. In many existing decision models for supplier selection, only quantitative criteria are considered. However, supplier selection is a multi-objective problem containing quantitative as well as qualitative factors. Hence, this paper attempts to demonstrate the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to overcome the above-mentioned problem. From an extensive analysis of the results, it is evident that selection of an appropriate supplier would result in improving effectiveness of supply chain.