Title: Supplier evaluation in agile supply chain in fuzzy paradigm

Authors: Swagatika Mishra; Chitrasen Samantra; Saurav Datta; Siba Sankar Mahapatra

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India

Abstract: In today's turbulent business environment it is evident that a business must be agile as well as efficient. Supply chains can help in achieving this through enhancing the ability to respond quickly to customer demand and by reducing operating costs. One of the biggest challenges facing organisations today is the need to respond to ever increasing levels of volatility in demand. Agility is defined as the capability of surviving and prospering in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable change by reacting quickly and effectively to changing markets, driven by customer designed high-quality, high-performance, products and services (Chandna, 2008). Agile supply chains need to be highly flexible in order to reconfigure quickly in response to changes in their environment. Supplier lies in the first node of the supply chain. Rational supplier evaluation (and selection) is really important to the entire supply chain's agility. An effective supplier selection process is indeed essential for this. To this end, present work highlights an integrated performance appraisement module towards suppliers' evaluation in agile supply chains. Apart from evaluating suppliers' overall performance index; the study has been extended to identify ill-performing areas in which suppliers should prosper in the future. Fuzzy logic has been adapted here to facilitate the said appraisement modelling.

Keywords: agile supply chains; ASC; fuzzy logic; supplier evaluation; supply chain management; SCM; agility; performance evaluation; supplier performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2013.055556

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2013 Vol.16 No.1, pp.1 - 41

Published online: 02 Jul 2014 *

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