Automating Supplier Selection Procedures

This book describes a methodology for automating
supplier selection procedures of small and medium-
sized agile virtual enterprises.

Firstly, a modeling approach is given that divides
the supplier selection procedures broadly into three
stages, the pre-selection, selection, and post-
selection stages. Then the methodology identifies
the steps within the selection stage that can be
automated. The methodology also proposes three
modules for automating the selection stage. To
assist automation, the selection stage is further
divided into three sub-stages, namely, bidder
selection, partner selection and performance
evaluation sub-
stages. By this methodology, each sub-stage of the
selection stage employs a module for automation:
the data collection system for automating on-site
selection sub-stage, the inference engine for
selecting the best supplier from a list of potential
suppliers, and the performance evaluation engine for
performance evaluation of the supplier that is
selected as the best supplier by the inference
engine.