Evaluating firm's green supply chain management in linguistic preferences

There has been an increasing interest towards firms' environmental sustainability activities to improve practices in their supply chain. Stringent environmental regulations in Europe and US challenge manufacturers to comply with these without losing their competitiveness. This study illustrates the case of a printed circuit board manufacturer in Taiwan that seeks to implement green supply chain management (GSCM) and selects a green supplier to meet its requirements. Choosing the suitable supplier is a key strategic direction in eliminating environmental impact on supply chain management for manufacturing firms. The firm's criteria and supplier selection need to be unified as a system to improve the firm's performance. This study identified the appropriate environmental and non-environmental GSCM criteria for the case firm and developed the following selection method: (i) evaluate the weights of criteria and alternatives as described both by qualitative and quantitative information; and (ii) rank alternative suppliers using a grey relational analysis. The result shows Alternative 3 ranks first among the four evaluated suppliers and demonstrated strong performance in the top three important criteria, namely, environmental management systems, profitability of supplier and relationship supplier closeness. Additionally, the perception weights on criteria itself are same as the most top five in weighted alternative. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.