Supplier selection and collaboration for humanitarian relief supply chains

Abstract

Humanitarian logistics is mainly divided into the following three planning stages in the disaster life cycle: (pre-disaster) mitigation phase, (post-disaster) response phase, and recovery phase. Relief supplier selection and collaboration is a very crucial part of the pre-disaster period to overcome the difficulties in the response phase which could not be done by government itself. The main objective of this study is to select the most appropriate relief suppliers in the pre-disaster period in terms of determined criteria. As a case study, the Anatolian side of Istanbul, Turkey is considered as the affected area. In order to achieve this goal, first Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) is used to identify and rank the criteria and to find the interactions among them. Among 15 criteria determined through the literature review and face to face surveys with experts, seven of them are found to be more important and affecting than the others. These criteria are geographic position, collaboration attribute, using information technology tools, data accuracy, evaluation and certification system, resource and information sharing, and trust development. Second, Analytic Network Process (ANP) is used to determine the weights of the criteria selected by the ISM method. Finally, the candidate suppliers are evaluated and ranked in terms of these criteria using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-Rating technique. The framework proposed in this study provides practitioners with a tool for planning and carrying out humanitarian logistics activities.