Supplier Evaluation by using Trust Scores in a Blockchain Platform

Abstract

Supplier Evaluation plays a pivotal role in any organization as it helps to reduce cost, improve quality of product and improve the efficiency of a supply chain thereby increasing customer satisfaction.For any industry it is important to have a trusted relationship with your suppliers as it will yield more value for the business and will ultimately lead to a more responsive supply chain. Before selecting a supplier there are numerous key factors that needs to be considered by the consumer in order to create trust in the mind of the consumer.In this paperthe Key factors and their importance (on a scale from 1 to 5) were collected via telephonic conversation with managers and executives from manufacturing, FMCG, IT and E-commerce industries. The weights were calculated using AHP. Furthermore, we have used the output of this AHP analysis as input for a TOPSIS analysis to assigna value called trust score to different suppliers.Based on this, we have devised a modelby usingthe Blockchain platform to assign trust scores. This is done because Blockchain creates a mutual trust among the transacting parties and also helps to improve the trackability and traceability of products in a supply chain.This model will help consumers to evaluate various suppliers based on Key Performance Indicators and finally arrive at a decision to select the most appropriate supplier.