Supplier Selection in the Food Sector: An Integrated Approach Using LODECI and CORASO Methods

As a major component of the world economy, food affects human health, and food safety is an important factor in sustainable development. Variables including population increase, changing consumer preferences, and climate change have made the effective management of the food supply chain ever more important. In this regard, supplier choice presents a multi-criteria decision-making difficulty that directly affects the strategic success of companies. This study identifies the best supplier for a milk and dairy manufacturing company using the LODECI and CORASO approaches. These two approaches, taken simultaneously for the first time, provide a more rigorous and exact assessment tool for decision-makers. Five main categories define the criteria developed in the study: cost, quality, delivery, financial strength, and capacity. These five factors comprise eleven sub-criteria, using which fifteen milk suppliers were evaluated. The findings show that whilst the MSU4-coded milk supplier showed the worst performance, the MSU2-coded milk supplier was determined to be the best milk supplier. Using comparison with other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques, the accuracy of the CORASO approach was assessed, and it is shown to be a reliable method with high correlation coefficients.