Title: A decision model to support sustainable procurement in trading industry

Authors: Janiz Hau Yi Heung; T.N. Wong

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

Abstract: The majority of Hong Kong's trading companies' involvement in the supply chain is to bid orders from global distributors and retailers, and then search for appropriate contract manufacturers to produce the goods. This paper is on the establishment of a sustainable procurement model for trading companies. The model is defined with a hierarchy of sustainable procurement criteria with the incorporation of economic, environmental and social aspects. A two-stage ranking and selection approach is implemented in the proposed sustainable procurement model. The pre-screening mechanism is to shortlist suppliers to enter the second stage which is the conventional AHP-based selection process. The original list of criteria is also consolidated into a refined criteria hierarchy after pre-screening. The tedious pairwise comparisons in the AHP-based final selection stage are reduced significantly as only a few shortlisted suppliers are to be evaluated, while the performance indicators are also reduced in the refined criteria hierarchy.

Keywords: sustainable procurement; trading industry; supplier evaluation; supplier selection; AHP; analytical hierarchy process; Hong Kong; supply chain management; SCM; economic sustainability; environmental sustainability; social sustainability; sustainable development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCOR.2015.069926

International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience, 2015 Vol.1 No.2, pp.157 - 180

Received: 23 Oct 2013
Accepted: 11 Apr 2014

Published online: 16 Jun 2015 *

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