Supply chain management and evaluation of supplier selection criteria: An application to medical products

Supply Chain Management is a process that delivering a product from raw material to the end customer, to carrying out activities such as sourcing, production and installation, storage and stock tracking, order tracking, distribution and delivery. Hospitals are obliged to carry out their activities with suppliying the materials and services that they need anytime, anywhere, with specific quality and price. Hereby supply chain management is essential for the healthcare sector in order to cut the costs, to reduce waste, to prevent medical errors and to improve service quality. In this study, medical devices and the selection of suppliers and preferred criteria in product supply were determined; similarities and differences were evaluated for the medical firms which they supply materials to health institutions. The selection of criterias were made by healthcare workers who has a decisional authority on to purchasing process and by the medical firms. Criterias of healthcare workers based on suppliers, along with criterias of the medical firms based on the product that they supply; were oriented with the definition 23 criterias of Dickson'. The defined criterias were sorted according to their importance. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is one of the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods, was used to during the comparison of the criterias and defining their importance. It has been identified as the most important criteria Ministry of Health assent and procedure criteria for the product in terms of medical firms; the suppliers technical service criteria in terms of healthcare workers.