Supplier selection for emergency material based on group exponential TODIM method considering hesitant fuzzy linguistic set: A case study of China

Motivated by the practical needs of improving the rescue efficiency of emergency events and reducing the damage, the problem of emergency material supplier selection arises. This paper aims to propose a novel group decision making framework, this framework can aggregate experts’ opinions from different backgrounds to evaluate emergency material suppliers. Firstly, an evaluation indicator system considering the supplier’s emergency supply capacity is established, to make up for the insufficient applicability of the traditional supplier evaluation indicator system in the field of emergency material supplier evaluation. Then, the game theory integrated weight (GTIW) method is used to gather the initial weights obtained by Maximum Consensus Minimum Hesitation Model (MCMHM) and expert background weights. Moreover, Exponential TODIM (ExpTODIM) method based on Hesitant fuzzy linguistic set (HFLs) named HF-ExpTODIM is introduced to solve the problem of emergency material supplier selection, TODIM is an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive and Multi-criteria Decision Making. Again, a case study of China on emergency medical mask supplier selection is presented, and the corresponding results are discussed. Finally, the practicality of the proposed framework in a real-world context is discussed, including the necessary preparation, operational priorities and caveats. This paper can provide a reference for group decision making of material supplier selection in emergencies.