Supplier selection in sustainable supply chains: Using the integrated BWM, fuzzy Shannon entropy, and fuzzy MULTIMOORA methods

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection and social responsibility, sustainable supplier selection (SSS) has been receiving more and more attention. However, traditional methods for selecting sustainable suppliers suffer from three main drawbacks: (i) Few existing studies have considered criteria weightings that have been determined both subjectively and objectively, reasonably and simultaneously. Moreover, among these limited studies, existing methods for combining weightings that have been calculated both subjectively and objectively provide only a poor degree of differentiation. (ii) Although MULTIMOORA method has high potential to solve the complex SSS problem, few researchers have given it much attention. (iii) The current Reference Point Approach within MULTIMOORA is not comprehensive as it only considers the distance between the alternative and the positive ideal point. Together, these drawbacks result in both inefficiency and ineffectiveness in SSS. This paper proposes a novel fuzzy MULTIMOORA-based method for SSS. The proposed method, firstly, obtains weights by both group Best Worst Method (subjective method) and fuzzy Shannon Entropy Method (objective method), respectively. Then the two types of weights are combined by Deviation Maximization method, reasonably and effectively. Finally, the paper introduces an improved fuzzy MULTIMOORA method to rank alternative suppliers, which considers both the minimum distance from the positive ideal point and the maximum distance from the negative ideal point. The practicability and effectiveness of the proposed method is verified in an illustrative application in Company L, a well-known international forklift truck manufacturer in China.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a novel fuzzy MULTIMOORA-based method for sustainable supplier selection (SSS). The method combines subjective and objective approaches to determine criteria weightings and introduces an improved fuzzy MULTIMOORA method to rank alternative suppliers. The practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method is verified in an illustrative application.