Intelligent Decision System for Supplier Assessment

It is concluded in the paper that IDS can be used not only to deal with problems that traditional methods can solve, but also more complicated decision problems thattraditional methods are incapable of handling.

Abstract

Supplier assessment has become increasingly important to a business and getting a right supplier can bring real competitive advantages, whilst failure in supplier selection can lead to significant operational and financial consequences to the point of jeopardising the survival of the business. In this paper, the application of the Intelligent Decision System (IDS) to supplier assessment for a large international company is illustrated. IDS is a Windows-based software package that has been developed on the basis of the Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach, a recent development in handling hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MADA) problems of both a quantitative and qualitative with uncertainties. In this paper, the ER approach will be briefly described first, and its major differences from and the relationships with conventional MADA methods will also be discussed. Then the main features, advantages and benefits of IDS will be demonstrated and explained through its application to the assessment of five suppliers of the company using two types of model, one for manufacturing suppliers and the other for service suppliers. It is concluded in the paper that IDS can be used not only to deal with problems that traditional methods can solve, but also to model and analyse more complicated decision problems that traditional methods are incapable of handling.