Comparison of Fuzzy logic, AHP, FAHP and Hybrid Fuzzy AHP for new supplier selection and its performance analysis

The supplier selection exercise is a critical factor towards the success of a company. This paper compares four different methods to support decision makers in selecting the most appropriate supplier. When using Fuzzy logic, the importance of each criterion gets influenced by the level of decomposition in the hierarchical model. Fuzzy logic does not have the capability to measure the level of consistency in the judgments provided by a decision maker. On the other hand, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) cannot capture subjectivity (or fuzziness) of human judgments as the verbal assessments are converted into crisp values. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is a merger of the two methods, Fuzzy logic and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which inherits the advantages of both and, therefore, addresses the above mentioned problems. The FAHP method is useful in identifying a suitable supplier and to evaluate its performance as demonstrated in the described case study. It can also be applied in any other selection or ranking problem. Finally, we introduce the Hybrid Fuzzy AHP, which can handle direct or pairwise, crisp or fuzzy evaluations.