Abstract:
In the supply chain management one of the most important research areas is upstream
management (such as supplier selection, order allocation etc.) and has been the subject of
extensive research in the recent literature. Apparel manufacturers of Bangladesh are
playing a vital role for the apparel supply chain and deal with a number of upstream
players under different categories. The performance and contributions of the apparel
manufacturers to the chain mainly depends on the upstream players. Therefore, this paper
aims to design and implement a suitable methodology for upstream management of
apparel manufacturers of Bangladesh.
A structural framework consists of three phases was designed to cover the supplier
selection criteria, supplier selection and order allocation. The first phase was an
exploratory survey to select the key supplier selection criteria and the other phases were
case study. In the second phase supplier were selected through the implementation of
Analytical Hierarchy Process of a case and the last phase offered a guideline to allocate
an order to the suppliers according to total score of each supplier. Total score of
suppliers were calculated considering the satisfaction matrix of suppliers’ offer and
weights matrix of Order Qualifier Criteria (OQC).
The designed framework consists of seventeen criteria patterning under eight principal
components as key factors for supplier selection decision variables for apparel
manufacturers of Bangladesh. The upstream evaluation and selection of a 100% export
oriented manufacturer results the company to reduce 65% suppliers through AHP model.
The designed framework also consists of order allocation procedure using AHP weights
of OQC and suppliers offers scorecard. The order allocation procedure extracts most
satisfying offer to manufacturer from the selected suppliers.
As the key factors for supplier selection were geographically limited to one industry and
one country, implementing these to other geographical areas and industries may not be
possible. But with a cross validation of the framework would widen its applicability to
other areas. The paper provides a framework that allows other researchers to manage
upstream of any supply chains.
