A fuzzy multicriteria approach for evaluating environmental performance of suppliers

In this paper, we present a fuzzy multicriteria approach for evaluating environmental performance of suppliers. The proposed approach consists of three steps. The first step involves identification of criteria for assessing environmental performance of suppliers. In step 2, the experts rate the selected criteria and the various alternatives (suppliers) against each of the criteria. Linguistic assessments are used to rate the criteria and the alternatives. These linguistic ratings are then combined through fuzzy TOPSIS to generate an overall performance score for each alternative. The alternative with the highest score is chosen as the one with highest environmental performance. The advantage of using fuzzy TOPSIS is that it distinguishes between Benefit (the more the better) and the Cost (the less the better) category criteria and selects solutions that are close to the positive ideal solutions and far from negative ideal solutions. In step 3, sensitivity analysis is conducted to evaluate the influence of criteria weights on the environmental performance evaluation of suppliers. The strength of the proposed approach is its practical applicability and ability to provide solution under partial or lack of quantitative information. A numerical application is provided to demonstrate the proposed approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.