Selection of supplier with fuzzy TODIM method:An application in food sector

The continuous change in customer demands in today's economic conditions, the diversity of the expectations of customers and the redundancy in the number of suppliers have made the selection of supplier for enterprises a difficult-to-solve problem. The fact that the decision criteria are diverse and considering the fact that there are multiple supplier alternatives, supplier selection should be considered as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. The decision-makers are able to make a choice easily in certain situations by using the MCDM methods. However, real life is a complex and fuzzy environment, which contains many uncertainties. Classical MCDM techniques based on exact data may be insufficient to model human thinking and judgment of decision-makers. In order to handle with real-life problems including uncertainty more rationally, decision-makers benefit from fuzzy logic principles developed by Zadeh in 1965. In this study, supplier selection problem was solved by using fuzzy TODIM method, which is a fuzzy MCDM technique. The selection of the most suitable supplier has been conducted in a food company producing halva in Konya province. Consequently, fuzzy TODIM method was found to be a practical method which can be used for the solution of other MCDM problems as well as supplier selection. Being among the few studies that have addressed supplier selection problem with fuzzy TODIM method is one of the main contributions of this study. Keywords: Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), fuzzy logic, fuzzy TODIM, supplier selection