Title: A model for selection of suppliers by comparison of two clustering algorithms

Authors: P. Parthiban, M. Punniyamoorthy, K. Ganesh, G. Ranga Janardhana

Addresses: Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli – 620 015, India. ' Department of Management Studies, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli – 620 015, India. ' Supply Chain, Global Business Services, IBM India Private Limited, Bandra East, Mumbai – 400051, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, J.N.T.University, Kukatpally, Hyderabad-500 072, India

Abstract: This paper deals with the study of consumer durables suppliers and retailers, and assessment of these suppliers with multiple products and multiple brands based on multiple criteria. The objective is to identify the set of suppliers for set of products. We develop two phase logical model. The first phase includes Fast-Slow-Non moving (FSN) and High-Medium-Low (HML). FSN and HML analysis were carried out to categorise the products. The second phase is the cluster analysis. We used two clustering methods, divisive and K-means clustering for comparison. Cluster analysis assists in selecting the final list of suppliers by parameterised clustering.

Keywords: supplier selection; fast-slow-non moving analysis; high-medium-low value analysis; clustering; consumer durables; cluster analysis; supply chain management; SCM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2009.031183

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2009 Vol.2 No.4, pp.422 - 443

Published online: 24 Jan 2010 *

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