Supplier evaluation and selection has been a vital issue of strategic importance for long time. Different multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches have been proposed by the researchers in past, to solve the supplier evaluation and selection problem. In this paper, we present a review of various MCDM methodologies reported in the literature for solving the supplier evaluation and selection process. The review is solely based on sixty-eight research articles, including eight review articles in the academic literature from 2000 to 2011. We try to find out the most prevalent approach in the articles and thereby present the future scope of arriving at an optimal solution to the problem, based on the specifications, the strategies and the requirements of the buyers. The study presents that with the change in processes and the requirements, how the approach of the manufacturing industry has shifted from striving for operational effectiveness to the strategic partnership in the dyadic relationship.

Abstract-In today's highly competitive business environment, the rapidly changing customer demands and with the advent of enterprise wide information systems, the managers are bound to think beyond the conventional business processes and devise new ways to squeeze out costs and improve the performance without compromising on the quality at the same time. Supplier evaluation and selection is one such area which determines the success of any manufacturing firm. Supplier selection is the problem wherein the company decides which vendor to select to have that strategic and operational advantage of meeting the customers' varying demands and fight the fierce competition. This paper presents a simple model based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to help decision makers in supplier evaluation and selection, taking into account the firm's requirements. The article is intended to help new scholars and researchers understand the AHP model and see different facets in first sight.

In the increasing competition it has become important in business world to understand the different aspects of production and purchasing to understand the need for desired material in the organization. The managers have an important responsibility of selecting a good supplier by evaluating them on different parameters which is directly or indirectly associated with their overall performance. For decision making based on multiple criteria evaluation many methods of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is used by firms. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is prominently used by firms nowadays. In this paper, analysis of DEA is done by measuring supplier performance of two firms: multi-national telecommunication corporation and a manufacturing firm. The firm uses the methodology according to their requirement and criteria for evaluating their suppliers and find best among them.