A cloud-based fuzzy multi-criteria decision support system for procurement process in facility management

Abstract

Procurement in facilities management is a complex process for linking different stakeholders together to form an integrated service, it is a crucial process for identifying the best sources of supplier and best suited contractor in improving the efficiency of resources allocation, maintaining equipment reliability and availability to enhance facilities conditions in order to reduce business risks, attract tenants, increase asset and building value. Hence, a building's Return of Investment (ROI) and payback can be incredibly beneficial by enabling the procurement decision to meet its strategic objectives in an economic, efficient and effective manner. However, in current process, procurement is financially consuming and expensive as it requires high demand of manpower and involves enormous amount of paper work for managing requests, quotations, bid requirements and evaluations. Also, there is lack of quantitative measures by incorporating linguistic selection criteria from domain experts in the procurement selection process for improving competitive advantage. Even though applications of digitalization for conveying information to digital format in streamlining internal process have been considered, competiveness and capabilities assessment of current supply base, quantitative and qualitative data analysis on contractor selection and relevant performance feedback is lacking to support the decision-marking. Therefore, in this paper, a cloud-based Fuzzy multi-criteria decision support system (CFMDS) is proposed for integrating with procurement process for performing award analytics to identify the best suited supplier and contractor. The procurement officer can then formulate a follow up plan based on the recommended results.