Applying grey relation clustering and PCA to performance evaluation of vendors in fresh milk supply chain

The complexity and limited data samples in performance evaluation of vendors in fresh milk supply chain are an obstacle for traditional evaluation method. This paper studied the performance evaluation methods for vendors in fresh milk supply chain by grey relation clustering and principal components analysis. Three major fresh milk supply vendor and typical evaluation indexes of fresh milk supply chain were selected to illustrate this evaluation. The result shows that principal components analysis is suitable for complex indexes in fresh milk supply chain and grey relation clustering can be a valuable method to determine the best vendor under limited data samples conditions.