Global supplier selection considering sustainability and carbon footprint issue: AHP multi-objective fuzzy linear programming approach

Abstract

With growing concern about environmental protection, carbon emission has become an important factor for global supplier evaluation. Most of the earlier models have focused on cost, quality, geographical location, risk, etc., issues but not given enough importance to carbon emission for global supplier evaluation. Few studies have addressed sustainability but not succeeded to quantify carbon footprint for outsourcing. This paper quantifies the outsourcing carbon footprint that is used as objective function in multi-objective fuzzy linear programming for global supplier evaluation and quota allocation. As specific contribution, different carbon management factors and outsourcing carbon cap are introduced in the model. In multi-objective formulation, total cost, quality rejection, late delivered item, carbon footprint, and total value of purchasing (TVP) are considered as five objectives that have to be optimised simultaneously. AHP is used to calculate the performance of suppliers’ on qualitative criteria. Further, suppliers’ performance is used to determine the TVP value. The model is illustrated through a case study and tested for deterministic as well as fuzzy environment. Sensitivity analysis is conducted for the model.