An integrated green supplier selection approach with analytic network process and improved Grey relational analysis

With increased worldwide awareness of environmental protection, green supply chain management (GSCM) has received much attention from both researchers and practitioners over the past decade. Traditionally, organizations have considered criteria such as cost, quality, and delivery to evaluate the performance of their suppliers. Although there is an abundance of studies considering the conventional criteria in supplier selection, there are a rather limited number taking into account the environmental issues. In this study, we use both economic and environmental criteria and propose a comprehensive green supplier selection model. The analytic network process (ANP) is used to deal with the interdependencies among the criteria, and the traditional Grey relational analysis (GRA) has been modified to better address the uncertainties inherent in supplier selection decisions. We utilize the ANP and an improved GRA to weight the criteria and rank the suppliers respectively. The proposed approach is novel, and allows decision-makers to participate in the assessment process and use linguistic evaluation in the green supplier selection process. A case study in the automotive industry is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.