Determination of causal relationships of influential factors in resilient supplier selection

With globalization and expansion of companies’ activities, supply chain has turned into a series of complex processes that will lead to more vulnerability. Supplier selection is one of the complex and multifaceted actions in supply chain that has the greatest impact on successful performance of a supply chain. The aim of this paper is to specify the effective criteria and also to determine the structural relationships of these criteria in resilient supplier selection. Referring to industry experts, interviewing and providing questionnaires to refine the criteria listed from the extensive literature of this field in the world and using methods determining structural relationships of effective criteria due to the inherent uncertainty and data uncertainty in the environment of this industry are the considerations of the selected method of the study. In the present study Grey DEMATEL technique is employed to determine the causal relationship of influential factors in resilient supplier selection.
Findings: Formulation of a structural model and introduction of instruments such as Grey DEMATEL for analysis and selection of suppliers with respect to resilience paradigm are the findings of this study.
Innovation: In decision-making processes, there are different levels of uncertainty that in some levels, due to their high uncertainty, a phased approach will not work. Therefore, in the current study due to the high level of uncertainty, DEMATEL technique with grey approach was employed