The best vendor selection for conducting the recycled material based on a hybrid MCDM model combining DANP with VIKOR

Environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery (ECMPRO) has become an obligation of manufacturers, and it has been extended to be the policy and strategy of businesses. Producing recyclable products and using recycled materials are optimal strategies for ECMPRO. Vendor selection (VS) is one of the multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems in strategic supply chain management. The purpose of this article is to propose how the best selection to conduct the recycled materials can be implemented for enhancing and increasing the efficiency of using resources in the manufacturing process through recycled materials VS. Aluminum composite panel (ACP) is a global product, and ACP companies in Taiwan use recycled materials in more than 80% for their products on a quantity basis. Therefore, we selected the ACP industry of Taiwan as an empirical model to study VS and to reveal methods of improving gaps in each criterion for achieving the aspired levels of performance. We use the MCDM model combining DEMATEL-based on ANP (called DANP) with VIKOR to solve the recycled materials VS problems of multiple dimensions and criteria that are interdependent, instead of the independent assumption of an analytic hierarchy process, for mimicking the real-world scenario.