A MULTIOBJECTIVE APPROACH TO VENDOR SELECTION

Purchases from vendors involve significant costs for many firms. Decis ions related to these purchases include the selection of vendors and t he determination of order quantities to be placed with the selected ve ndors. Such decisions are frequently multiobjective in nature. That is , they are evaluated by more than one criterion. At least 23 criteria for various vendor selection problems have been identified. In this ar ticle, we present a multiobjective approach to systematically analyze the inherent tradeoffs involved in multicriteria vendor selection prob lems. The approach is motivated by, and demonstrated with, an actual p urchasing problem facing a division of a Fortune 500 company.