A consensus based group decision making methodology for strategic selection problems of supply chain coordination

In a supply chain (SC), the partners often make collective decisions to solve a number of problems which are characterized by various quantitative and qualitative criteria. This article presents a fuzzy TOPSIS and soft consensus based group decision making methodology to solve the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems in supply chain coordination, i.e., selection problems. This methodology is proposed to improve the coordination in decentralized supply chains, i.e., supply chains that comprise several independent, legally separated entities with their own decision authorities. In order to address the imprecision of supply chain partners in formulating the preference value of various criteria, a fuzzy TOPSIS based methodology is proposed. Moreover, a soft consensus based group decision making approach is used for consensus forming among the supply chain partners, regarding the preference values of various criteria for different alternatives. Correlation coefficient and standard deviation (CCSD) based objective weight determination method is also used for enumeration of the weights of the criterion for fuzzy TOPSIS. To demonstrate the applicability of proposed methodology, an illustrative example has been presented.