A new multicriteria decision support tool based on Fuzzy SWARA and TOPSIS

The problem of selecting 3PL (Third Party Logistics) suppliers is a major issue in the management of the supply chain and the improvement of the production management of a manufacturing company. A 3PL supplier can be defined as a company that provides contract logistics services to a manufacturer, supplier or main user of a product or service. It is called a third party because the logistics provider does not own the products but participates in the supply chain between the manufacturer and the user of a given product. In actual cases, several decision-makers intervene in the selection of 3PL suppliers and each one has his own points of view and wishes to take into account criteria which are not generally the same for all the decision-makers. Furthermore, the criteria have different weights. In this study, we propose a method to solve this problem. It consists of a combination of the fuzzy Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method with the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The objective is to optimize the decision-making process and have another, more dynamic model and satisfy the needs of the decision-maker. Fuzzy SWARA is one of the new methods being used for ranking evaluation criteria based on decision makers’ expected degree of importance to determine the weights of evaluation criteria (Selçuk, 2019). This method can be used to facilitate estimation of decision makers’ preferences regarding the meaning of attributes in the weight determination process. TOPSIS is a multi-criteria method for identifying solutions from a finite set of alternatives (Behzadian et al., 2012). To the best of our knowledge, this combination has not been developed in the literature, especially in the third-party logistic problems. The proposed model will be implemented to solve a 3PL problem of a company selling steel products. Keywords: multicriteria decision support, 3PL suppliers, Fuzzy SWARA, TOPSIS