Green supplier selection for textile industry: a case study using BWM-TODIM integration under interval type-2 fuzzy sets

Abstract

Although environmental awareness has reached a high level, enterprises-regardless of their working domains-follow the concept of greenness for their practices. This awareness among the stakeholders and supply chain experts has a positive impact on the purchasing departments of enterprises in various sectors to consider greenness in their procurement processes. The critical decision that must be made in green supply chain management (GSCM) is supplier selection. In the textile industry, a highly competitive market in recent years, suppliers for this industry have crucial roles in business activities considering environmental issues. Therefore, green supplier selection (GSS) in the textile industry is considered a must-be process for the stakeholders. In this study, a GSS problem is tackled as a multi-criteria decision process. Best worst method (BWM) and TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multi-criteria decision-making) methods are merged under an improved fuzzy concept of interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs). In determining green suppliers' evaluation criteria, BWM with interval type-2 fuzzy numbers (IT2F-BWM) is used. In selecting green suppliers, an interval type-2 fuzzy TODIM (IT2F-TODIM) is applied. Considering the characteristics of IT2FSs, BWM, and TODIM methods either individually and in integrated style, the proposed approach can handle uncertainty in the decision-making of GSS. To demonstrate the applicability of the approach, a case study in the Turkish textile industry is performed. Three green supplier alternatives (S1, S2, and S3) are assessed under forty-two sub-criteria. The study shows the most significant sub-criteria are recognized as dye and print quality, product design and pattern suitability, profit on the product, variation in price, and purchase cost. S2 green supplier has been selected as the most appropriate one. A sensitivity analysis is also fulfilled to check variation in the ranking of green suppliers.