Maintenance Supplier Evaluation and Selection for Safe and Sustainable Production in the Chemical Industry: A Case Study

Abstract

Chemical industry plays a pivotal role in the economy in every country. As chemical hazardous materials are usually characterized as inflammable, explosive, toxic, corrosive, and carcinogenic, if accidents happen in chemical company it can lead to irreversible environmental and health damage to the public. The chemical industry attaches great importance to safe production, technical professionalism, and service standardization. Nowadays, under the trend of equipment maintenance service outsourcing in chemical companies, the selection of maintenance suppliers with safe and sustainable records come first and foremost in the supplier selection process. However, these concerns from the chemical industry are currently inadequately addressed by most general supplier selection models. Therefore, this paper proposes an applicable methodology for selecting and evaluating equipment maintenance suppliers in the chemical industry, compatible with a safe and sustainable production context. To achieve the goal of “safe operation and sustainable development in the future”, we established an evaluation criteria framework for equipment maintenance suppliers by combining the general supplier selection criteria and safe production characteristics together. Eight main criteria and 24 sub-criteria based on market acceptance, resource conditions, and safe production were included. Then a fuzzy TOPSIS model was presented to select the best equipment maintenance service supplier. Finally, by analyzing a case in W petrochemical company, the empirical results indicate that the proposed framework is of great practical value to select and evaluate equipment maintenance suppliers for safety and sustainable development in the chemical industry.

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