Towards a Learning Organization Perspective to Supplier Selection for Global Supply Chain Management: an Integrated Framework

In this paper the authors present a framework for supplier evaluation in a global environment. Global supply chains may involve very different relationships, from strategic/long term to tactical/short term relationships in which data necessary for evaluation are often unavailable, ambiguous, and difficult to measure. Given the wide range of purchasing situations and the different types of supply relationships it does not seem practicable neither to identify a single and optimal solution to the problem of defining a suitable evaluation method, nor to reduce evaluation to a simple one-stage data aggregation process. To cope with such complexity, companies can adopt a learning organization approach to supplier selection, here intended as a long term, strategic and ongoing process through which companies can learn how to better manage their global supply chain and effectively select their suppliers on a worldwide scale. By assuming the learning organization perspective and through the integration of methodologies drawn from knowledge engineering and soft computing, the proposed framework is intended to support supply chain managers in supplier selection both in the problem setting and in problem solving stage. It represents a systematic approach for supplier assessment using data related to the strategic characteristics of the supply chain relationship, supplier performance, and local characteristics.