Using AHP-TOPSIS methodologies in the selection of sustainable suppliers in an electronics supply chain

Suppliers play an important role in achieving an organization's sustainability goals. By engaging sustainable suppliers, an organization gets clean and green materials to ensure that their end-products are environmentally friendly. Sustainable supplier selection is a challenging task as it involves a complex decision making process involving different objectives and organization priorities. We propose a combined AHP-TOPSIS multiple criteria decision-making approach to solve this problem considering the uncertainty involved and to evaluate the quantitative and qualitative data. In this research, ethics is taken as the fourth dimension of sustainability along with Triple Bottom Line, considering that ethics plays a crucial role in purchasing activity and supplier selection. These four dimensions for sustainable supplier selection criteria have been divided into 16 sub-criteria to evaluate the suppliers. The model is demonstrated by its application to select a sustainable supplier in a real world electronics case company. The results indicate that economic factors still dominate during sustainable supplier selection. In selecting a sustainable supplier, it is found that prominence is given to human rights, safety systems and occupational health, pollution control and resource reduction and consumption, code of conduct, and transparency in suppliers' business and accounting criteria, which covers the other dimensions of sustainability. The application of the proposed model demonstrates the evaluation of tangible and intangible sustainability criteria in selecting a supplier. The result provides a ranking for the suppliers by showing their distances from the positive ideal solution of a sustainable supplier.