Maximising the purchaser's satisfaction through supply chain upstream management

In supply chain management one of the most important research areas is upstream management. Most studies and proposed models on this issue were with partial solutions and some were specifically academic hypotheses. This paper wraps three issues; supplier selection decision criteria, supplier evaluation and selection and purchase allocation to selected supplier(s) with methodological framework and examples. The findings and subsequent discussions were aimed to provide practical guidance for SCM researchers to manage the upstream of supply chain. To cope with the complexity, manufacturers are considered as coupling point and the whole chain is divided into upstream and downstream. Vast decision criteria were handled statistically and in later two OR tools, AHP and LP, were used to select the best supplier panel and to maximise the purchaser's satisfaction. The model ensures optimal satisfaction of manufacturers with a proper management of their upstream players and will contribute to dig out the optimal satisfaction of supply chain.