Comparison of MCDM Methods for Multi-echelon Inventory System Selection Problem

Abstract

Nowadays, Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods are becoming increasingly used in solving supply chain management problems due to the conflicting criteria involved in this area. In fact, Multi Criteria Decision Making methods help Decision Makers (DMs) deal with the evaluation of multiple alternatives with taking into account their preferences expressed as numerous criteria. Controlling stocks in multi-echelon inventory systems presents many challenges due to the complexity of the supply chains and the inter-dependencies between their nodes. In particular, choosing a multi-echelon inventory policy to send a batch from an installation to another may depend to the inventory status at all sites, which make this decision difficult to take. Most of the time, the Decision Maker seems to be looking for fitting the decision problem to the MCDM method framework and not adjusting the method to the problem situation. We aim in this paper to guide DMs choose the appropriate MCDM method that will aid them select the best multi-echelon inventory policies to adopt for their supply chains. A comparison of different MCDM methods with the use of a set of evaluation criteria will be established in this research work. We intend to provide a framework for comparing multiple MCDM methods for the multi-echelon inventory system selection problem.