Integrated Multicriteria Decision-Making Methods to Solve Supplier Selection Problem: A Case Study in a Hospital

Abstract

In supply chain literature, supplier evaluation and selection problem is one of the most studied subjects because of the significant roles of suppliers in terms of the chain’s sustainability and profitability. Therefore, it is important for organizations to adopt a systematic way to evaluate and select the best supplier according to their respective criteria in today’s competitive environment. Multicriteria decision-making methods provide for this need of organizations because determination of an appropriate supplier selection is a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problem essentially. Although a lot of applications of these methods for supplier evaluation and selection can be seen in the literature, studies in the health-care sector are insufficient. Hospitals in the health-care sector also have to consider their supplier-related decisions to decrease risks and threads which affect their effectiveness. The aim of this study was to fill this gap by providing different hybrid models for selecting the best supplier for hospitals. Supplier evaluation and selection process start with recognizing the related criteria according to the studies in the literature. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is deployed to weight the criteria, and suppliers are listed via technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), elimination and choice translating reality English (ELECTRE), grey relational analysis (GRA), and simple additive weighting (SAW) methods. The main aim of this study was to present different hybrid MCDM methods and show their efficiency and consistency with each other. In this study, hybrid multicriteria decision-making models (AHP-TOPSIS, AHP-ELECTRE, AHP-GRA, and AHP-SAW) are presented and compared. The results show that the presented hybrid methods in this study are consistent with each other and give the same ranking for the selection of the best supplier. It can be considered as a useful guideline for hospitals.