Application of integrated QFD and fuzzy AHP approach in selection of suppliers

Limited business resources and a fierce market competition require quality management which considers stakeholders’ needs. For every production company important stakeholders are suppliers of components embedded in the final product. The selection of suppliers of product components plays a very important role in the realization of the production process. Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem which often consists of qualitative metrics. Many authors presented different approaches in supplier selection. Variants of the integrated QFD (quality function deployment) methods (Ju & Hwang, 2004) have been used in selecting and ranking suppliers. For example, a supplier selection methodology based on QFD and data mining technique has been proposed (Ni et al., 2007). Many researchers have proposed the introduction of fuzzy numbers in the QFD approach for the supplier selection process (Bevilacqua et al., 2006). Gencer & Gurpinar (2007) proposed a model for usage of an analytic network process (ANP) in supplier selection. & (2009) published a paper about the Internet service provider selection, using fuzzy numbers in combination with the QFD method. Kilincci & Onal (2011) presented one supplier selection problem of a washing machine company in Turkey that used a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology. Zouggari & Benyoucef (2012) presented an approach for the supplier selection problem, using the fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) technique.