An Integrated Methodology for Selecting and Evaluating Sustainable Suppliers in Supply Chains

Business companies have highlighted the significance of greening and sustainability in their supply chain via supplier selection as a result of increasing consumer awareness and ecological demands from markets and different stakeholders. As a result, from the viewpoint of an organizational supply chain, a systematic and sustainability-focused assessment methodology for supplier selection is required. This paper offers a framework for evaluating sustainable supplier selection by combining an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), a multi-criteria optimization and compromise solution method. Initially, literature and expert views established 22 sustainable supplier selection criteria and three aspects of criteria (economic, environmental, and social). To illustrate the applicability of the suggested framework, a real-world example of an automotive business in India is presented. The top five sustainable supplier selection factors, according to the results, are “Environmental costs“, “Quality of product“, “Price of product“, “Occupational health and safety systems“, and “Environmental competences“. Furthermore, among the five sustainable supplier options, supplier number three received the highest ranking. The research provided in this article may assist managers and business professionals in not only identifying key supplier selection criteria, but also in evaluating the most efficient supplier for supply chain sustainability and market competitiveness. To evaluate the proposed framework’s resilience, a sensitivity analysis is performed.