A. Mohaghar - Associate Professor, Dept. of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran,
M. Kashef - M.S of Industrial Management, Dept. of Management, University of Tehran, Iran,
E. Khanmohammadi - PHD. Candidate of Industrial Management, Dept. of Management, University of Tehran, Iran,

Considering the major change occurred in business cells from plant to chain and the critical need to choose the best partners to form the supply chain for competing in today’s business setting, one of the vital decisions made at the early steps of constructing a business is supplier selection. Given the fact that the early decisions are inherently strategic and therefore hard and costly to change, it’s been a point of consideration for industries to select the right supplier. It’s clear that different criteria must be investigated and interfered in deciding on the best partner(s) among the alternatives. Thereupon the problem might be regarded as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. There are a variety of techniques to solve a MCDM problem. In this paper we propose a novel technique by combination of decision making trial and evaluation laboratory and graph theory and matrix approach techniques. Eventually, the results are compared to three common techniques, including SAW (current used technique), TOPSIS and VIKOR, and discussed to come to a conclusion.

Supplier selection; Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory; DEMATEL; Graph Theory and Matrix Approach; GTMA