Fuzzy AHP approach for supplier selection in a washing machine company

Supplier selection process has gained importance recently, since the cost of raw materials and component parts constitutes the main cost of a product and most of the firms have to spend considerable amount of their revenues on purchasing. Supplier selection is one of the most important decision making problems including both qualitative and quantitative factors to identify suppliers with the highest potential for meeting a firm's needs consistently and at an acceptable cost. In this study, supplier selection problem of a well-known washing machine company in Turkey is investigated and a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process based methodology is used to select the best supplier firm providing the most customer satisfaction for the criteria determined. After the main attributes and sub-attributes for supplier selection are defined to design the hierarchy structure, the weights of them and alternatives are calculated using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process approach. The supplier with the highest priority weight is selected as the best supplier. Macros in MS Excel are written to calculate the priority weights of the alternatives based on the questionnaire forms used to facilitate comparisons of main attributes, sub-attributes and alternatives. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.