The effectiveness of decision support system for the supplier selection in e-marketplace: A case study

Despite the fact that the sourcing process in B2B e-marketplaces is one of the most important tasks, the evaluation and selection process of suppliers have been ad-hoc based and mainly dependent on the experience of sourcing managers' subjective knowledge. To remedy the problem, we developed a decision support system (called Wise-I) that helps sourcing managers evaluate suppliers in a more systematic way. The system reflects company's strategy and know-how by adopting company enforced weighted scores for different factors and employing a more scientific method of considering factors other than price and on-time delivery rate, utilizing the AHP method. This paper reports the effectiveness of the system as well as the detailed description of the system. To investigate the effectiveness of the system, we collected information through interview and questionnaire survey. The information was also augmented through the firm key index system, which monitors average delivery lead time and on-time delivery rate. The result indicates that the system leads to the efficiency of purchasing section and the transparency of buying process, therefore reduces delivery time and cost.