Using MACBETH method for supplier selection in manufacturing environment

Abstract

Supplier selection is always found to be a complex decision-making problem in manufacturing environment. The presence of several independent and conflicting evaluation criteria, either qualitative or quantitative, makes the supplier selection problem a candidate to be solved by multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. Even several MCDM methods have already been proposed for solving the supplier selection problems, the need for an efficient method that can deal with qualitative judgments related to supplier selection still persists. In this paper, the applicability and usefulness of measuring attractiveness by a categorical-based evaluation technique (MACBETH) is demonstrated to act as a decision support tool while solving two real time supplier selection problems having qualitative performance measures. The ability of MACBETH method to quantify the qualitative performance measures helps to provide a numerical judgment scale for ranking the alternative suppliers and selecting the best one. The results obtained from MACBETH method exactly corroborate with those derived by the past researchers employing different mathematical approaches.

Integration of MACBETH and COPRAS methods to select air compressor for a textile company

“…The upper reference level denotes the score of 100 while lower reference level denotes the score of 0 on MACBETH scale. But 100 does not always show the best performance and also 0 does not indicate the worst performance of an alternative (Karande & Chakraborty, 2013).…”

“…MACBETH method uses a semantic scale set with seven categories to indicate the difference of attractiveness. The equivalent numerical scales and significances of these semantic scales can be seen in Table 1 (Karande & Chakraborty, 2013; Bana e Costa &Chagas, 2004). An alternative is extremely attractive over another…”

“…In order to obtain quantified MACBETH scores of qualitative performance levels, the following procedure is adopted (Karande & Chakraborty, 2013;Fakhfakh et al, 2011).…”

“…This method is also supported by M-MACBETH software (http://www.mmacbeth.com/en/downloads.html) developed using algorithm based on linear programming models (Karande and Chakraborty, 2013). In this paper, M-MACBETH software is used while determining the weights of the criteria.…”

Applying supplier selection methodologies in a multi-stakeholder environment: A case study and a critical assessment

“…Vendors are required to have an adequate set of competencies, in order to create a supply system capable of facing market challenges (de Boer et al, 2001;Zhao and Zhang, 2012;Garcìa et al, 2013;Karande and Chakraborty, 2013). In this context, some fundamental decision-making problems arise (Ho et al, 2010).…”