Evaluation of the
supplier performance
using an evolutionary
fuzzy-based approach
Vipul Jain
M.K. Tiwari and
F.T.S. Chan
The authors
Vipul Jain and M.K. Tiwari are based in the Department of
Manufacturing Engineering, National Institute of Foundry and
Forge Technology (NIFFT), Ranchi, India.
F.T.S. Chan is based in the Department of Industrial and
Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of
Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China.
Keywords
Supply chain management, Supplier evaluation
Abstract
Different entities in a supply chain network operate in a highly
interdependent environment when it comes to improving
performance of the network in terms of objectives such as
delivery performance, quality assurance and cost minimization,
etc. In this research, an attempt has been made to evaluate the
supplier performance by adopting evolutionary fuzzy system
owing to the linguistic nature of the attributes associated with
the suppliers and manufacturing units. The proposed
methodology offers consistently good performance when
applied to a variety of standard problems related to evaluation of
supplier’s performance available in the literatures.
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1. Introduction and related research
A supply chain can be defined as a network of
autonomous or semi-autonomous business entities
involved, through upstream and downstream links,
in different processes and activities that yield
physical goods or deliver services to the customer
(Lee and Billington, 1993; Swaminathan et al.,
1997). Figure 1 shows a generic supply chain
network (SCN) where nodes represent business
and production entities connected by material flow
links. Operation of different entities in a supply
chain is restricted by different sets of constraints
and objectives. Performance improvement of the
supply chain considering the main objectives of on
time delivery, quality assurance and cost
minimization are highly interdependent. This
affects the performance of any entity in a supply
chain, which depends on the performance of
others, and their willingness and ability to
coordinate activities within a supply chain. Several
researchers in the recent past discussed these
important issues and common processes,
occurring in different types of supply chains to
develop a realistic framework (Swaminathan et al.,
1997; Sabel et al., 1989). Variations in supply
chains are observed in terms of stages of decision-
making, heterogeneity in supply chain and
relationship with suppliers. For instance, in the
supply chain dealing with the manufacture of
computers, it was observed that decision-making
process was centralized to a large extent, more
preference were accorded to few suppliers while
others were controlled by the manufacturers
themselves.
One of the important issues that has been
studied is the performance of SCNs. Several
empirical studies have reported observations of the
global and local performance of SCNs. Cash and
Konsynski (1985), Swaminathan et al. (1995)
mentioned in their study that sometime, taking a
global perspective may have unfavorable effects on
some of the entities of the supply chains
(Swaminathan et al., 1997). Albino et al. (1998)
have applied the concept of vulnerability to
production systems in order to provide a little
insight into the effect of uncertainty and variability
on systems performance.
In order to ensure the uninterrupted supply of
items, it has been observed that more than one
supplier or vendor is normally available for each
item. Periodic evaluation of supplier quality is
carried out to ensure the meeting of relevant
quality standards for all incoming items. Price
alone should not be the yardstick for assessing the
supplier performance, rather the “cost of
Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management
Volume 15 · Number 8 · 2004 · pp. 735–744
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 1741-038X
DOI 10.1108/17410380410565320
Received: 29 March 2003
Accepted: 20 March 2004
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