Balanced evaluation of suppliers performance by applying a hybrid DEMATEL-DEA approach in presence of undesirable factors

One of the most complicated decision making problems for managers in supply chain is the evaluation of supply chain performance which can be done in different ways. Though several studies have been developed on supply chain performance evaluation based on balanced scorecard (BSC), a few studies focused on relationships among four perspectives of BSC. This paper focuses on these relationships, especially on relationships with feedback structures. For this purpose, after identification of the BSC’s more important factors in evaluation of the suppliers, DEMATEL technique is employed to determine feedback relationships among these factors and to attain to the critical factors from the influential and to be influenced point of view. Next, these factors are used as the inputs and outputs of data envelopment analysis (DEA) weak disposability model in presence of undesirable factors to evaluate the suppliers and determine their efficiency scores. Finally, the efficient units were ranked based on the Anderson-Peterson (AP) super efficiency model. The proposed procedure is applied as a framework to evaluate the suppliers of Pars Khazar Company.