Rough set based distributor selection study in supply chain

Distributor selection is a crucial issue in supply chain especially in today´s internationalized competitive environment. The existing research works provide only conceptual, descriptive, and simulation results, focusing mainly on firm resources and general marketing/selling factors. In this paper, the rough set theory (RST) is introduced for distributor selection with weight incorporate features. An empirical study was conducted with the help of the RSES (rough set exploration system) software, 5 rules were adopted and 9 attributers given by domain experts for distributors´ evaluation were reduced to 4 which are convenient in practice. And also the apparent implication is that the entire players in the supply chain should maintain a good relationship with each other therein. This paper concludes with discussion of empirical findings and future research directions.