A resilient vendor selection approach

Conventionally, decision makers evaluate vendors vis-a-vis traditional criteria (e.g., costs, implementation reliability and quality). However, this approach ignores other important concerns such as resilient implementation and running of a project that is a crucial aspect towards service continuity. This research presents a decision-making approach that helps managers to evaluate vendors profiles based on their submitted tenders to accomplish a proposed radio frequency identification (RFID)-based passport tracking system. First, this evaluation is conducted based on two sets of traditional and resilience criteria presented in a unified framework based on literature and the case company’s experts. Second, the weights of identified criteria are quantified by using the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) algorithm. Third, the ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité (ELECTRE) algorithm is applied to evaluate the performance of vendors to recommend the best one. Four employees from the case company participated in evaluating the applicability of the proposed decision-making tool. This includes the selection of one vendor out of 6 submitted their proposals to implement RFID-based passport tracking system.