Optimizing whole supply chain benefit versus buyer's benefit through supplier selection

A number of mathematical models have been developed for modeling the supplier selection problem. Most of these models have considered the buyer's viewpoint and maximized only the buyer's benefit. This does not necessarily lead to an optimal situation for all members of a supply chain. Co-ordination models have been presented to optimize the benefits of all the members and alignment of decisions between entities of a supply chain. In this paper, the issue of coordination between one buyer and multiple potential suppliers in the supplier selection process has been considered. On the other hand, in the objective function of the model, the total cost of the supply chain is minimized rather than only the buyer's cost. The total cost of the supply chain includes the buyer's cost and suppliers' costs. The model has been solved by applying mixed-integer nonlinear programming. Finally, the proposed method is illustrated by a numerical example. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.