Supplier selection is one of the intricate decisions of managers in modern business era. There are different methods and techniques for supplier selection. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a popular decision-making method that can be used for this purpose. In this paper, a new dynamic DEA approach is proposed which is capable of evaluating the suppliers in consecutive periods based on their inputs, outputs, and the relationships between the periods classified as desirable relationships, undesirable relationships, and free relationships with positive and negative natures. To this aim various social, economic, and environmental criteria are taken into account. A new method for constructing an ideal decision-making unit (DMU) is proposed in this paper which differs from the existing ones in the literature according to its capability of considering periods with unit efficiencies which do not necessarily belong to a unique DMU. Furthermore, the new ideal DMU has the required ability to rank the suppliers with the same efficiency ratio. In the concerned problem, the supplier that has unit efficiency in each period is selected to construct an ideal supplier. Since it is possible to have more than one supplier with unit efficiency in each period, the ideal supplier can be made with different scenarios with a given probability. To deal with such uncertain condition, a new robust dynamic DEA model is elaborated based on a scenario-based robust optimization approach. Computational results indicate that the proposed robust optimization approach can evaluate and rank the suppliers with unit efficiencies which could not be ranked previously. Furthermore, the proposed ideal DMU can be appropriately used as a benchmark for other DMUs to adjust the probable improvement plans.

中文翻译：

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用于供应商可持续评估的新的鲁棒动态数据包络分析方法

供应商的选择是现代商业时代管理者的复杂决定之一。选择供应商有不同的方法和技术。数据包络分析（DEA）是一种流行的决策方法，可用于此目的。在本文中，提出了一种新的动态DEA方法，该方法能够根据供应商的输入，输出以及分为正向关系，负向关系和具有正负性质的自由关系的时间段之间的关系来评估连续期间的供应商。 。为此，考虑了各种社会，经济和环境标准。本文提出了一种新的理想决策单位（DMU）的构建方法，该方法与文献中已有的方法有所不同，因为它具有考虑单位效率的周期的能力，这些周期不一定属于唯一的DMU。此外，新的理想DMU具有所需的能力，可以以相同的效率比率对供应商进行排名。在所关心的问题中，选择在每个时期具有单位效率的供应商来构建理想的供应商。由于每个时期可能有不止一个供应商具有单位效率，因此可以以给定的概率在不同的情况下制造理想的供应商。为了解决这种不确定条件，基于基于场景的鲁棒优化方法，提出了一种新的鲁棒动态DEA模型。计算结果表明，所提出的鲁棒优化方法可以评估和排名具有以前无法排名的单位效率的供应商。此外，建议的理想DMU可以适当地用作其他DMU的基准，以调整可能的改进计划。