Modeling and implementation of supplier selection procedures for e‐commerce initiatives

The main work in this paper covers a methodology, tools and implementation techniques for automation of supplier selection procedures as an e‐commerce application. The work could be divided into two main parts. First, the development of a modeling methodology which can be used for automation of supplier selection procedures. By this modeling methodology, supplier selection procedures are divided into pre‐selection, selection and the post‐selection procedures. The selection procedure is further divided into the following stages: bidder selection, partner selection, and performance evaluation. The second part is about realization of automation. Three modules for automation are identified; they are the data collection system for bidder selection stage, the inference engine for partner selection stage, and the performance evaluation engine for the performance evaluation stage.