Global purchasing in clothing supply chain: An integrated fuzzy-group multi-attribute decision making approach

In the today competitive world, it is very important to provide quality and flexible products at the right time to design an effective supply chain and have long-term partnerships. Also, the close relationship between the buyer and supplier is known as a factor in the success of the supply chain. Therefore, in this paper, a real-case supplier selection problem is studied using a hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach and in a group decision-making setting. Also, a set of important criteria in the global sourcing of textile industry is comprehensively provided. In other words, through the questionnaire, the weight of the important criteria associated with the process of selecting a global supplier in the garment industry is obtained. Then, an integrated approach to the analytical hierarchy process is used with a fuzzy group decision-making and fuzzy TOPSIS that is based on order preference by similarity to ideal solution. Finally, a numerical study is carried out to select international suppliers in the textile and clothing industry to show model applicability.