Employing fuzzy TOPSIS and SWOT for supplier selection and order allocation problem

Supplier selection is a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem which is affected by several conflicting factors. In the business market of flaming competition in recent years, more attention has been paid to this problem. In this paper, a model is proposed in two phases. At first, suppliers are evaluated according to both qualitative and quantitative criteria arising from strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. SWOT, as a useful technique in strategic management, is utilized to determine criteria and deal with suppliers' situation in a competitive market. Moreover, fuzzy set theory is employed to deal with the vagueness of human thought. Then, fuzzy logic is integrated with technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) technique to calculate weights of criteria. In the second phase, results from fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS) are used as an input for linear programming to allocate orders. Finally, a case study has been used simultaneously to validate the proposed model.