Abstract
The awareness of environmental protection/conservation and sustainable development has increased in the last two decades. In the competitive thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) industry, green supplier evaluation/selection involves environmental criteria in the traditional evaluation process and emphasizes that TFT-LCD manufacturers should improve the performance of their suppliers with limited resources. In addition, the modern green supplier evaluation/selection further focuses on how to maintain long-term relationships between a company and its suppliers. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a hybrid multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods with outranking methods to evaluate and improve the performance of green suppliers in the TFT-LCD industry. The procedure of green supplier evaluation/selection can be divided into three stages. In the first stage, a hierarchy decision framework for green supplier evaluation/selection is developed based on literatures and supplier audit forms provided by an anonymous flat panel display manufacturer in Taiwan. Then, we proposed a hybrid MCDM method to evaluate green suppliers and provided final ranking results and different opinions from each department. In the second stage, the proposed evaluation procedure is as follows: (1) to develop a decision framework by an influential network relation map (INRM); (2) to obtain the influential weights of the criteria; (3) to involve the concept of aspiration levels into the proposed methods; and (4) to evaluate and reduce the gaps of suppliers in each criterion. In the third stage, we further develop two managerial indexes: “immediate improvement degree” and “aspiration level gap” for achieving aspiration levels. Subsequently, the proposed procedure can assist the TFT-LCD manufacturer and its subsidiary to set and improve joint long-term strategic goals for achieving aspiration levels for each criterion based on the INRM. The improvement strategy includes the ranking results as well as the suppliers’ strength/weakness and the improvement priority with integrating multiple business-function perspectives. In the evaluation procedure, the managers place importance on “green management”, “technology” and “organization” aspects. This dissertation examines a subsidiary supplier of the TFT-LCD manufacturer in real-world case, and the results indicate the subsidiary supplier should improve its R&D capability immediately. Then, for the long-term perspective, the TFT-LCD manufacturer may plan to assist its subsidiary to improve the performance of health and safety, green product, delivery, current capability and quality control. Besides, its R&D capability will also subsequently be enhanced.