Designing an integrated model to evaluate and select lean and agile suppliers to the automotive industry with a combined fuzzy Delphi, SWARA and ARAS approach

The main purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate suppliers based on traditional, lean and agility criteria and rank them with the combined approach of fuzzy Delphi,SWARA and ARAS in Saipa Company.The research method is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of data collection.First, key functional sub-criteria(traditional,lean and agile)were identified and then fuzzy Delphi technique,the effectiveness of these criteria was evaluated in Company.The statistical population in this part of the research is 30 experts and managers of the company, who due to the limited size of the community,all members of the community were considered as a sample.The fuzzy Delphi output showed that out of 20 sub-criteria identified after evaluating the experts,17criteria were finally approved.Then,using the new SWARA decision-making technique and applying the opinions of 30experts, the criteria and sub-criteria were evaluated and their weights were extracted.In traditional criteria,the sub-criteria"costs"with the highest weight in terms of importance in the first place and"operating capacity"in the last place;In lean criteria,the sub-criterion of"elimination of waste"as the most important and"supply of materials according to the needs of the industry"in the last rank;In the agility criteria, the sub-criteria of "flexibility"in the first place and"strong supplier communication"in the last place are extracted.In the final evaluation of the main criteria of the research,the criterion of"agility"was in the first place, the criterion of"lean"was in the second place and the criterion of"traditional"was in the last place.The proposed approach of this research provides a valuable conceptual framework to company managers to improve the status of suppliers.