An effective AHP-based metaheuristic approach to solve supplier selection problem

The supplier selection problem is based on electing the best supplier from a group of pre-specified candidates, is identified as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), and is proportionately significant in terms of qualitative and quantitative attributes. It is a fundamental issue to achieve a trade-off between such quantifiable and unquantifiable attributes with an aim to accomplish the best solution to the above-mentioned problem. This article portrays a metaheuristic-based optimisation model to solve this NP-complete problem. Initially, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is implemented to generate an initial feasible solution of the problem. Thereafter, a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is exploited to improve the quality of the obtained solution. The Taguchi robust design method is exploited to solve the critical issues on the subject of the parameter selection of the SA technique. In order to verify the proposed methodology, the numerical results are demonstrated based on tangible industry data.