Strategic Decision Making at a Steel Industry Assisted by Fuzzy Theory and Multicriteria Decision Making Model

Abstract

Steel production is one of the major focuses of Vietnamese government's industrial development plans in the last few decades and the industry has experienced sustained growth where enterprises have made great strides in terms of scale, output, and technology. The growth and expansion of the steel industry, however, must be carefully evaluated due to the sizeable amount of waste, including wastewater, gas, and solid waste, as well as the significant emission of pollutants. Vietnamese steel companies are confronted with the difficulty of establishing sustainable practices to satisfy the sustainability requirements of stakeholders. Green suppliers evaluation and selection is a complex process where multiple quantitative and qualitative criteria must be considered. In this study, a Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) model is developed to support the green suppliers evaluation process in the steel manufacturing industry in Vietnam. The proposed model combines Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) and Tomada de Decisao Interativa Multicriterio (TODIM) methods to determine the most suitable suppliers based on relevant criteria. The main contribution of this study is to develop a Fuzzy MCDM model to support decision makers in the steel industry in green steel suppliers evaluation proceess. The proposed model is then applied to a case study in Vietnam to demonstrate its application feasibility. The results suggested that among the potential alternatives, Supplier 5 (Viet Uc Steel) is identified as the optimal supplier.