Evaluation and Selection of the Suppliers by TOPSIS Model (Case Study: East Azerbaijan National Gas Company)

Supply chain has been gained attention of the researchers and craftsmen in recent years. In today competitive world, the suppliers not only seek to improve domestic conditions but also they try to select the best markets and suppliers (according to the globalization phenomenon). Evaluation, selection and planning of the upper level and lower level members of the supply chain is important. Organizations should consider total supply chain, from providers of the primary materials to end users in order to satisfy their customers and reduce costs. Selection of the best alternatives in each of the above decision making processes requires to analysis of many factors that encounters the organization with multi dimensional decision making. The statistical population consists of the items and equipments supplier sector experts in East Azerbaijan Gas Company .In this article at first ,the important criteria in evaluation of the suppliers were determined by a questionnaire distributed among experts of the purchase sector. Then a questionnaire was designed for following four categories of the suppliers:1-common items, 2-leverage items, 3-bottleneck items, 4- strategic items; The suppliers were categorized in four groups based on the criteria and TOPSIS model. Since, investigation of all the mentioned groups is impossible in this article, only the suppliers of the strategic items were graded.