A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach for Optimizing Sustainable Supplier Selection Using Analytical Network Process (ANP)

Abstract

Sustainable supplier selection is an essential part of the decision-making process in sustainable supply chains. This choice is focusing on social, economic, and environmental criteria in evaluation of suppliers. Sustainable supplier selection approaches have used both qualitative and quantitative data. Therefore, it is meaningful to use scientific methods that treatment both quantitative and qualitative data, as well as multiple criteria. 

Analytical network process (ANP) is a one of the important multi-criteria decisions –making approaches.  Also, the ANP technique is a general form that allows possible independency among criteria factors. This paper aims to select the best suppliers using an (ANP) approach which helps decision-makers to reach the best strategy with correct decisions. Using ANP each criterion has its assign weight, which reflects its importance for the process of comparison between alternatives to suppliers. The presented approach consists of the three main steps:  the first step is to identify the criteria used in the comparison process between suppliers, the second step is to identify the decision matrix using AHP and the third step is to construct the super matrix and limiting super matrix and compare between the alternatives, and rank them from the best to the worst through using ANP. This work has used the data as in [30] which represents data for a company that has four suppliers and five criteria. The results show that the best supplier is supplier 2, which has weight equal to 39%. Also, our results are matching the AHP result that is presented in [30]. Moreover, this work can be extended for future work using fuzzy environment and real application such as Iraqi oil companies.