Using DEMATEL Method to Develop Conceptual Model for Evaluating Green Suppliers

Nowadays stakeholders and public awareness have increased the pressure on companies for environmental issues. Thus, green supply chain management (GSCM) seems vital for companies' environmental compliance and business growth. Companies continuously seek novel ideas and methods, that can enable them to obtain and/or maintain environmental sustainability. Greening the supply chain is one such innovative idea that rapidly spreads in the industry. The traditional internal measures, such as performing waste-reduction strategies, installing pollution control technologies, substituting hazardous-materials with environmentally friendly ones, are becoming less important as companies strive to find more innovative solutions. Accordingly, the main objective of the present study is to find interrelationship among green supplier criteria. For this to happen, we investigated experts' opinions through nominal group technique (NGT) to find out the interrelationship and causal preferences of the green supplier evaluation aspects using Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method. A numerical example demonstrates the application of the proposed model.