Sustainable Supplier Selection based on Self-organizing Map Neural Network and Multi Criteria Decision Making Approaches

Abstract

Due to increasing public awareness, government regulation and market pressure on sustainability issues, companies have found out that in order to have a competitive edge, sustainable operational activities should be adopted with their supply chain. Sustainable supplier selection as a crucial decision can affect the overall degree of sustainability in a supply chain. In this paper, an integrated approach of clustering and multi criteria decision making methods have been proposed in order to solve sustainable supplier selection problem. Firstly, self- organizing map as one of the well-known neural network methods has been utilized in order to cluster and prequalify the suppliers based on customer demand attribute and sustainability elements. Then, multi criteria decision making methods will be utilized in order to rank the cluster of suppliers to make coordination between them and customers. A case study has been carried out in order to show the efficiency of proposed approach.