Prediction of future demand and selection of supplier considering multiple criteria for a raw material-a case study

Abstract

RMG sector is the single most important manufacturing industry in Bangladesh. Most of the raw materials in this sector are being imported from abroad. Hence, incoming material management is of paramount importance for effective and efficient management of the supply chain in this sector. Demand forecasting and supplier selection are two major components of incoming material management.Efficient demand forecasting plays a vital role to make the supply chain effective and successful and an analytical way to reach the best decision is more preferable in many business platforms.This work focuses on to develop a forecasting model based on Artificial Neural Networking (ANN) to predict the future demand of a raw material in RMG factory. A particular raw material, which is widely used, is taken into consideration to implement this technique. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) technique will be implemented to find out suitable supplier of this raw material considering multiple criteria like quality, cost, lead-time, reputation, capacity etc. This will help the RMG sector to improve their supply chain efficiency.