A hybrid fuzzy decision-making approach for evaluating the suppliers based on industry 5.0 and viable supply chain dimensions: a case study in medical devices manufacturing

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant crisis in society's health, industries, and businesses. In this regard, the medical devices industry has played an important role in crisis management and providing healthcare and has faced several major challenges in supplying raw materials, production activities, and distribution activities due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic. One of the critically important issues in the medical devices supply chain is supplier selection. Hence, this research investigates the supplier selection problem considering the emerging concepts that have dramatically attracted the attention of researchers after the COVID-19 pandemic, namely viability and Industry 5.0.Methodology: In this study, a hybrid fuzzy decision-making approach is developed to investigate the viable supplier selection problem considering the Industry 5.0 dimensions. In this regard, in the first stage, according to the literature and experts, the main indicators of the research problem are extracted, and their weights are calculated using the fuzzy best-worst method. In the next stage, the feasible suppliers are evaluated by employing the fuzzy VIKOR method. Also, to show the robustness and validation of the proposed approach, its results are compared with those of traditional approaches.Findings: In this study, a list of indicators, including six aspects and 34 criteria, is provided for the research problem based on its nature, and their importance has been computed. Based on the outputs, the general metric is the most important aspect, and the human-centricity metric is the least significant. Also, the results show that in addition to the general criteria, such as cost and quality, other criteria, such as reliability, technical capability, pollution control, risk reduction, and service, also play a significant role in the process of selecting suppliers. The results indicate that managers in today's competitive and industrial markets should redirect their attention from traditional criteria to those contributing to the sustainability and improvement of their systems' performance.Originality/Value: Reading the results of this research can help Industrial and organizational managers evaluate the potential suppliers of their companies based on the viability and Industry 5.0 dimensions and select the best ones, which can significantly improve the performance and efficiency of their businesses.