The use of fuzzy AHP and Taguchi loss function for in the selection of the suppliers: A case study in the hotel industry

Working with the suppliers who timely deliver the high quality and affordable products, effects the costs directly and customer satisfaction indirectly. Therefore, since the supplier selection is one of the strategic decisions in the hotel business, it is a very important decision that must be made rapidly and effectively by evaluating a lot of criteria. It is possible to solve these kind of problems by utilizing the multi-criteria decision-making techniques. In this study, to allow monitoring the decision-making process steps by the managers more effectively, a decision support tool was integrated into the "Merlon" software that is already used in many hotels. By means of this tool, administrators do not loose unnecessary time to follow every step. The software, designed as decision support system, calculates the importance degrees of determined criteria by collecting the necessary information through the system. The suppliers are evaluated based on these calculated weights and a proposal is presented to decision-makers. During the study, all calculations were done according to the food product group. The values obtained from the fuzzy scale surveys, applied to Purchasing department, were weighted with the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and then Taguchi function was applied by using these weights. Keywords: Multi-Criteria Decision Making, AHP, Fuzzy AHP, Taguchi Loss Function, Supplier Selection in Hotel Industry, Decision Support Tool, Purchasing Management