Supplier Choice Knowledge Support in the Supply Chain

The paper focuses on the issue of choice of suppliers in the market environment. It discusses expert systems as modern methods of its computer support. The issue of supplier choice is presented and viewpoints for the formulation of the decision-making task introduced. The piece of writing furthermore pinpoints the expert character of the solution of this task, making use of the knowledge of experienced professionals. It introduces the principles of fuzzy oriented expert systems as a suitable solution of the task at hand. Language models of the expert systems formalise the high quality mental models of an experienced expert. The global decision-making task is split into partial tasks; the expert modules for their formalisation are integrated into the hierarchic structure. The paper presents the structures of language models and the implementation of the structure of expert systems in the MATLAB-Simulink program environment. Special attention is paid to the issue of supplier flexibility. The efficiency of the decision-making system is proven by the solution of a simulation exercise which represents the classification of two current and two newly contemplated suppliers with various characteristics. The results are analysed and commented on.