C HAPTER 6
3. Analysis of the Reviewed Papers 1 Frequency Analysis of DM Approaches
Frequency of the approaches was analysed for single approaches and hybrid approaches.
Many of the reviewed papers (78%) used a single technique and 68 papers (22%) used a hybrid approach in their analysis. Table 6 shows the frequency of all approaches. According to the Table, FAHP with 24% (58 paper) and FTOPSIS with 24% (57 paper) are the most popular approaches in the single approach category. These are followed by F-MP with 16% (38 paper), FANP with 8% (20 paper), FVIKOR with 5% (13 paper), FDEA with 4% (10 paper), FDEMATEL and FQFD with 3% (seven paper), FELECTRE (six paper), FBWM (five paper) and FMOORA (four paper) with 2%, and FPROMETHEE with 1% (three paper).
In the hybrid approach category, F-MP based approaches are the most popular with 38% (26 paper). In terms of MCDM alone, the FAHP‒FTOPSIS approach is the most frequent with 25% (17 paper). This is followed by Other FAHP-based approaches and Other FTOPSIS-based approaches with 12% (eight paper) equally. 13% (nine paper) of hybrid approaches are studies using more than two methods (such as FDEMATEL-FANP-FTOPSIS or FSWARA-FTOPSIS-FWASPAS- FARAS). Therefore, FAHP and FTOPSIS can be considered the most popular approaches in hybrid approaches too.
In terms of total percentages, the ranking is as follows; FAHP with 19%, FTOPSIS with 18%, F-MP with 12%, Hybrid F-MCDM & F-MP approaches with 8%, FANP with 6%, FAHP‒FTOPSIS with 5%, FVIKOR with 4%, etc. Total percentages show that using FAHP (19%) and FTOPSIS (18%) methods, as a single approach constitutes a considerable number of papers on the evaluation and selection of suppliers in the fuzzy environment, therefore we can say they are the
84 Logistics 4.0: Digital Transformation of Supply Chain Management
Table 6: Frequency of approaches in the reviewed studies.
Categories Approaches Journal
paper Book
Chapter Conference
paper Total in its
category in total
Single
FAHP 30 6 22 58 24% 19%
FANP 14 0 6 20 8% 6%
FTOPSIS 39 2 16 57 24% 18%
FVIKOR 11 0 2 13 5% 4%
FMOORA 3 0 1 4 2% 1%
FELECTRE 6 0 0 6 2% 2%
FDEMATEL 5 0 2 7 3% 2%
FDEA 6 2 2 10 4% 3%
FPROMETHEE 1 1 1 3 1% 1%
FBWM 4 1 0 5 2% 2%
FQFD 6 1 0 7 3% 2%
F-MP 31 1 6 38 16% 12%
Other single fuzzy approaches 13 0 1 14 6% 5%
Hybrid
FAHP‒FTOPSIS 14 1 2 17 25% 5%
Other FAHP-based approaches 7 0 1 8 12% 3%
Other FTOPSIS-based approaches 6 1 1 8 12% 3%
Hybrid F-MCDM and F-MP
approaches 21 2 3 26 38% 8%
Other hybrid fuzzy approaches 8 0 1 9 13% 3%
most popular approaches in this research area. In addition, it is important to underline that F-MP is used in a significant number of papers in supplier selection problems both as a single approach and in hybrid approaches, since it is used to determine the amount of the order allocation after supplier selection.
3.2 Distribution Analysis of Publications by Years
The distribution of the 310 papers between 2003 and 2019 is shown in Table 7 and Figure 1 shows the graphical representation of the distribution. As can be seen, the general trend in the total number of papers, except for 2011, shows the increase in the number of studies to implement fuzzy MCDM approaches in the evaluation and selection of suppliers despite fluctuations in some years. In 2011, there was a noticeable increase in the number of papers compared to previous and following years. While the number of Journal papers showed the same tendency as the number of total papers, there is a continuous fluctuation of Conference papers by years and Book chapters started to reflect such studies after 2010.
Figure 2 provides the distribution of used approaches by years. As previously mentioned, the FAHP and FTOPSIS methods dominate other F-MCDM approaches in both single and hybrid approaches. FAHP is studied most in 2011 and 2019, and FTOPSIS is studied most in 2015, 2016 and 2019.
As a result, as can be seen from Figure 1 and 2, it is observed that there is a growth in the studies of the supplier evaluation and selection problem as type of both used approaches and papers (journal, chapter and conference) in recent years especially 2019. It is estimated that the number of studies will continue to increase in the coming years due to the importance and popularity of the issue.
3.3 Distribution Analysis of Papers by Journals
The reviewed papers were also analysed based on journals, books, conferences and publishers.
Figure 3 shows the journals with two and more than two papers on supplier selection and evaluation problems using F-MADM approaches. 73% of reviewed articles (164 articles) were published in 25 journals given in Figure 3.
Table 7: Distribution of papers by years.
Years Journal paper Book Chapter Conference paper Total
2005 and before 2 0 1 3
2006 4 0 2 6
2007 1 0 1 2
2008 4 1 8 13
2009 11 0 7 18
2010 10 1 4 15
2011 27 0 4 31
2012 11 0 3 14
2013 15 0 3 18
2014 12 4 3 19
2015 20 5 3 28
2016 19 0 7 26
2017 18 1 9 28
2018 30 1 4 35
2019 41 5 8 54
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Distribution of papers by years
Journal paper Book Chapter Conference paper Total Fig. 1: Distribution of papers by years.
According to this analysis, Expert Systems with Applications ranked first by publishing more articles with 39 (17%) papers. The second is Journal of Cleaner Production with 15 (7%) articles and then respectively, Computers & Industrial Engineering with 13 articles (6%), International Journal of Production Economics with 12 articles (5%), Applied Soft Computing and International Journal of Production Research with nine articles (4%), The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology eight articles (4%), Information Sciences with six articles (3%), Applied Mathematical Modeling and Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing with five articles (2%) are listed in the top 10 journals with the highest number of articles and contained more than half of all articles (121 articles—54%).
Except for one (in Emerging Applications in Supply Chains for Sustainable Business Development Book by IGI Global Publisher) of reviewed 18 Book chapters, others are in the books published by Springer. Two Book chapters are in Performance Measurement with Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis Book and others are in separate books.
In this study, 67 Conference papers presented in 50 different conferences were examined. One conference proceeding is published by IOP, 16 conference proceedings are published by Springer and the rest are published by IEEE. Figure 4, shows the conferences whose two and more papers were reviewed in this study.
86 Logistics 4.0: Digital Transformation of Supply Chain Management
Fig. 2: Distribution of used approaches by years.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Distribution of used approaches by years
FAHP FANP FTOPSIS FVIKOR FMOORA FELECTRE
FDEMATEL FDEA FPROMETHEE FBWM FQFD F-MP
F-O.S.A. FAHP‒FTOPSIS FAHP‒based FTOPSIS-based F-MCDM/F-MP F-O.H.A
Journals Title
99 6 8 55 44 44 33 33 3 22 22 22
Distribution of Articles by Journals
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management Journal of Manufacturing Systems International Journal of Fuzzy Systems IEEE Access Fuzzy Information and Engineering Computers & Operations Research Sustainability Soft Computing Procedia Computer Science Opsearch Mathematics Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences IFAC Proceedings Volumes European Journal of Operational Research Annals of Operations Research Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing Applied Mathematical Modelling Information Sciences The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology International Journal of Production Research Applied Soft Computing
International Journal of Production Economics 12 Computers & Industrial Engineering 13
Journal of Cleaner Production 15
Expert Systems with Applications 39
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Number of Articles Fig. 3: Distribution of Articles by Journals.
Distribution of Papers by Conferances
Conferans Title
International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management International Conference on Management and Service Science International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM) International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation
2 2 2 2 2 2 Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Manufacturing and Automation
International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management International Conference on Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems Chinese Control And Decision Conference (CCDC)
2 3 3
4 4
0 1 2 3 4 5
Number of reviewed conference papers Fig. 4: Distribution of Conference papers by Conferences.