Abstract—This study proposes a pattern classification model for usage in the vendor selection problem. The usage of classification techniques has been an area of interest in decision sciences since ages. The major challenge in classification models is that they need huge amount of data points to train the models properly and hence are not suitable for adaptation in many business applications where the number of available data points to train similar decision support models is too less. A classification technique using fuzzy linear programming and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process has been proposed in this paper which addresses this challenge for providing decision support in the vendor selection problem where data availability is a challenge.
Index Terms—Vendor selection, supplier selection, classification, analytic hierarchy process, fuzzy linear programming.
Authors are with XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India (email: akpani@xlri.ac.in).
Cite: Arpan K. Kar, Ashis K. Pani, Bijaya K. Mangaraj, and Supriya K. De, "A Soft Classification Model for Vendor Selection," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 268-272, 2011.