A Novel Approach Integrating AHP and COPRAS Under Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets for Digital Supply Chain Partner Selection

Digital supply chains (DSCs) can be useful in unlocking supply chains to gain competitive advantage as a driver of growth, while enabling rapid response, supporting novel technology-driven approaches, and creating innovative products and services. Partner selection (PS) is one of the crucial tasks in the successful digitalization of supply chain. However, the selection of a suitable partner is not an easygoing process and is mostly associated with complexity. Various criteria are considered during the partner evaluation process. This paper delivers an efficient evaluation process to assess alternative DSC partners. The proposed approach integrates the Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs), analytic hierarchy process, and complex proportional assessment under a group decision making environment for the first time in the literature. PFSs can depict experts' evaluations with a richer structure, allowing for a more representative decision making. A case study from Turkey is conducted to validate proposed approach. This study contributes to the existing literature by developing a new evaluation model to improve DSC PS process and by proposing a new hybrid PFSs-based framework. This paper can be useful to practitioners and researchers to better understand DSC PS problem and designing effective DSC partner evaluation systems.