A Hybrid Method for Vendor Selection using Neural Network

Problem of vendor evaluation and selection has always been viewed as the most important responsibility of purchasing department and for such reason, received a great deal of attention from practitioners and researchers. This solution has always been a complex process as various criteria, known and half known are involved in making a decision. This work attempts to develop a rule based model, to evaluate the performance of vendors, supplying components and raw materials to a multinational organization engaged in designing, manufacturing and delivering a range of products covering various stages of electric power transmission and distribution system. To select the vendors, there is a need to rank all the potential vendors according to a performance measure because in this industry almost all items are outsourced from vendors and input material cost constitute almost 80% cost of the product. For such reason any organization is required to select suitable vendors who can supply input materials