Integrating environmental criteria into the supplier selection process

In this paper, a framework for integrating environmental factors into the supplier selection process is presented. Traditionally, companies consider factors like quality, flexibility, etc. when evaluating supplier performance. However, environmental pressure is increasing, resulting in many companies (mainly large companies) beginning to consider environmental issues and the measurement of their suppliers' environmental performance. This paper aims to develop a decision support tool which should help companies to integrate environmental criteria into their supplier selection process. Subsequently, a framework of the supplier selection process which incorporates environmental performance is developed. Finally, a knowledge-based system is constructed based on the proposed framework is presented and an example is used to illustrate how the knowledge-based system would be implemented. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.