An application of the fuzzy ELECTRE method for supplier selection

Supplier selection is vital to the success of a manufacturing firm. Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem and is of strategic importance for most companies. As the conventional methods for supplier selection are inadequate for dealing with the imprecise or vague nature of linguistic assessment, a new method called the fuzzy technique for ELECTRE (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalite) is proposed. The aim of this study is to compare and contrast crisp and fuzzy ELECTRE methods for supplier selection. The proposed methods are applied to a manufacturing company in Turkey. After determining the criteria that affect the supplier selection decisions, the results for both crisp and fuzzy ELECTRE methods are presented.