Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen und Management

Supplier selection of foreign trade sourcing company using ANP-VIKOR method in hesitant fuzzy environment

Abstract

Shu-Ping Wan, Yu Zheng

International supplier selection which includes different criteria can be regarded as a kind of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems. By combining the analytic network process (ANP) with the Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method in hesitant fuzzy (HF) environment, this paper proposes a HF-ANP-VIKOR method. First, a novel HF-ANP approach is presented to determine the weight of each criterion. In this approach, the preference relations between criteria are hesitant fuzzy preference relations (HFPRs) whose elements are hesitant fuzzy elements (HFEs). According to the distance between two HFPRs, a new compatibility measure for HFPRs is proposed to measure the compatibility degrees of HFPRs. If the HFPRs are acceptable compatibility, they are converted into fuzzy preference relations by which the weights of sub-criteria are determined. Subsequently, extending the classical VIKOR method into HF environment, a new HF-VIKOR method is put forward to rank the alternatives. Finally, a case of Nantong uasia import and export limited company is studied to illustrate the practicability and effectiveness of the HF-ANP-VIKOR method proposed in this paper.