Supplier evaluation with factor analysis and multi-criteria decision making techniques

Along with the success of the company, the success of all the suppliers which cooperates with, is also significant to substantiate of the future plans of the companies. Working with the most suitable suppliers is an important decision process for businesses. Supplier selection and evaluation, which is a Çok kriterli Karar Verme (ÇKKV) problem, has been tried to be solved by using many methods in the literature. For a leading company in the retail business, which is fed with 450 suppliers discussed in the study, the strength of all the links in the supply chain was much more vital for the success of the company. Therefore, the performances of the 6 suppliers, from which the company supplies the most products from the same product group, were evaluated in this study comparatively. In the first step, in order to determine the evaluation criteria suitable for the company's own dynamics, statistical hypotheses were established based on the criteria used in the literature, taking into account the retail sector in which the company is located. In order to make a test the established hypotheses, a questionnaire containing the reverse items and validation questions was created and applied to the experts working in one-to-one contact with the suppliers. When the validity and reliability of the questionnaire were evaluated by Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) methods, it was determined that it was statistically significant and consistent. The importance levels of the delivery time, delivery quantity, rejection rate, quality and order compliance criteria determined as a result of the survey were calculated with the SWARA method, while the most important criterion was the delivery time, the least important criterion was found to be order compliance. After the criterion weights were determined, alternative and optimum suppliers were evaluated by using ARAS and VİKOR methods and ranked from best to worst. The suppliers were listed as A>C>B>E>D>F with the VIKOR method and as A>D>C>B>E>F with the ARAS method. As a result of the two methods, the most suitable supplier A was selected, whereas the worst supplier was defined as F. The collection of criteria over hypotheses in the study and the application of hypothesis tests and ÇKKV methods together indicate the originality of the study