Decision-making techniques in supplier selection : recent accomplishments and what lies ahead

Abstract

Supplier selection (SS) is considered a sophisticated, application-oriented, decision-making (DM) problem and has received considerable attention. In the past two decades, DM theories and techniques continue to be incorporated into and contribute to the development of SS applications. Maintaining the pace of the rapid transitions in this field, this paper systematically reviews the relevant articles published between 2013 and 2018. Articles that orient various DM techniques are selected and analyzed under a well-established framework. State-of-the-art developments in the adoption of DM techniques are summarized in a SS process. We pay particular attention to promising directions that can dominate future research in this field. This paper further extends the history of several interacting fields, including big data and economic theories, toward methodological rather than application dimensions. The potential of such fields for SS is discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective.