A material supplier selection model for property developers using Fuzzy Principal Component Analysis

Nowadays, the participants in construction industry are facing pressure to meet the higher customer expectations under a tighter budget. On the other hand, an effective and efficient material supplier selection system has a significant effect in the business success of property developers. The aim of this study is to investigate a selection model based on Fuzzy Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for solving the material supplier selection problem from the perspective of property developers. First, the Triangular Fuzzy Numbers is used to quantify the decision makers' subjective judgments. Second, PCA is employed to compress the data of the selection criteria and eliminating the multicollinearity among them. Third, the linear combined score of PCA (SCORE_PCA) is used to rank the suppliers. Four material purchases are used to validate the proposed selection model. The results show that the proposed model can be adopted in construction material supplier selection by the property developers. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.