Supplier selection using artificial neural network and genetic algorithm

This paper presents the integration of GA with ANN to develop a decision making model for the selection of the best supplier. This work integrates multi-attribute decision making models that give grades to suppliers on a set of criteria with the mathematical programming techniques that model the constraints and an objective function to select the best supplier. There exists a number of criteria for supplier selection and in this work based on the preliminary field visits some of the criteria are chosen for supplier selections that are more dominant in the Indian scenario. These selected criteria are: quality, delay time, unit cost, quantity and service. Supplier score was calculated based on the data collected from the reputed automobile industry. This supplier score was further used for ranking the suppliers among the number of options available.