Supplier selection and order quantity assignment using conditional entropy and Chebyshev goal programming approach

Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem that involves both quantitative and qualitative factors. In order to select best suppliers, tangible and intangible factors, some of which lead to conflict, must be considered. The availability of discounts also complicatessupplier selection problem. Over the years, several studies have been done in this field, but novel efficient methods always attract more attention of researchers in this field. To achieve this goal, a new method called Chebyshev goal programming approach has been used in this paper. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of this method, four suppliers are considered at first and a number of criteria and sub-criteria are also included in order to rank them. Weighing these criteria and sub-criteria is done through conditional entropy and ranking suppliers is done by TOPSIS method. A Multi-Objective Integration Planning problem is proposed to determine the order quantity assigned to suppliers in multi-source and multi-product conditions with several indicators and capacity constraints of suppliers. Regarding discounts importance, this research applies discounts on entire business volume and uses Chebyshev goal programming approach to allocate orders to suppliers in optimal multi-objective conditions. Numerical example expressed and the results show the efficiency of proposed method

Keywords:

Supplier selection , Discounts , Conditional Entropy , TOPSIS Method , Chebyshev goal programming approach