Evaluation and selection of supplier in supply chain with fuzzy analytical network process approach

One of the most important issues concerning the designing a supply chain is selecting the supplier. Selecting proper suppliers is one of the most crucial activities of an organization towards the gradual improvement and a promotion in performance. This intricacy is because suppliers fulfil a part of customer’s expectancy and selecting among them is multi-criteria decision, which needs a systematic and organized approach without which this decision may lead to failure. The purpose of this research is proposing a new method for assessment and rating the suppliers. We have identified several evaluation criteria and attributes; the selection among them was by the Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) method, then we have specified the connection and the influence of the criteria on each other by DEMATEL method. After that, suppliers were graded by using the Fuzzy Analytical Network Process (FANP) approach and the most efficient one was selected. The innovation of this research is combining the SMART method, DEMATEL method, and Analytical Network Process in Fuzzy state which lead to more exact and efficient results which is proposed for the first time by the researchers of this study.