Dear Koen

You will not find it. There is not such a thing as the best method. What you can do is to choose amongst all methods the one that better fulfills your conditions and needs.

If your company has a list of suppliers, some of them for the same items, the better you can do is to establish conditions that they must comply with.

As an example:

CASE

CHOOSING A MAIN CONTRACTOR FOR A LARGE PROJECT

The project is the construction of a copper refinery in an isolated place in mountainous country.

There has been a request for tenders and 5 companies (‘Contractors’, from now on) have submitted bids. They are:

CONTRACTORS:

ALARCO  Corp

ITEA CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

TEAMIC SAIC

CONSPAC PACIFIC CONSTRUCTORS

G. AGST CONSTRUCTIONS

The decision-making process will evaluate their bids subject to 16 criteria established by the decision-maker as follows:

Maximize: Referrals from the construction industry

Maximize: Years in business

Maximize: Number of engineers

Maximize: Other technical specialties (Geologists, Architects, Hydro geologists, etc)

Maximize: Expertise on this type of project expressed as a number of projects executed

Maximize: Percentage of own equipment to be used in this project

Maximize: Number of projects finished in the last 15 years

Maximize: Amount in project value in hundreds of millions of Euros in the last 15 years

Maximize: Amount of working capital for this project in millions of Euros

Maximize: Number of own workers that will be in this project

Maximize: Square meters built in the last 3 years

Minimize: Average age of equipment to be utilized

Maximize: Number of projects delayed more than 10 % of initial schedule in the last 15 years

Minimize: Number of times taken to Court in the last 15 years

Maximize: Number of lawsuits won

Maximize: Liability insurance in millions of Euros

This example has been solved by the SIMUS model  (and you can have it), but  it is also amenable to be solved by others such as ELECTRE, PROMETHEE, TOPSIS, etc.

If your problem is more complicated, then I would recommend SIMUS

For instance you can be accepting joint ventures, or establishing precedence or

another conditions such as establishing minimum limits for deliveries, maximum quality, supplier productive capacity, frequency,  etc

Nolberto

Dear Koen,

I am wondering whether there could be the best method at all that could fit any company. Clearly, there are some crucial points with regard to supplier selection that could apply in each and every situation, like quality issues, delivery on time, competitive pricing and so on. But beyond these general points, I think that much depends on strategy of your company. With reference to Porter (1998), if your company wants to be a cost leader, you will need the less expensive, but a still reliable supplier. But if you are following a differentiation strategy, you will be in need of a supplier that will be able to cooperate with you closely and that will allow close monitoring in order to create a distinctive product.

For further reading on strategy, I would like to refer you to the following literature:

Porter, M. E. (1998). Competitive strategy. 1st export ed. New York: Free Press

Porter, M. E. (2004). Competitive advantage. 1st export ed. New York: Free Press

Johnson, G., Whittingtin, R., Scholes, K. (2011) Exploring corporate strategy. 9th ed. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.

Paul

Dear Koen H,

The cost effective way of selecting a supplier is to find the  existing suppliers  of the OEM (leader) in the Industry. Based on the vendor ratings you can chose the suppliers for each component of your requirement. Usually the prices,quality and  delivery commitments should be acceptable.

please refer to my papers 

Multi-criteria decision framework for supplier classification in collaborative supply chains: buyer’s perspective.

Multi-criteria supply chain performance evaluation: An Indian chemical industry case study 

On top of company specifics goals and strategy for supplier selection you could always add Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) marks and extend it all over the supply chain (end-to-end). You can emphasize the most important CSR marks and in such way connect them to specific company goals.

All best

Dear Koen H.

Please find some papers as attached files that probably support your research.

Best,

Pittawat