The green supplier selection as a key element in a supply chain: A review of cases studies

The current pressure of global competition is demanding faster, reliable, flexible, and cheaper products. Thus, in order to keep up with customer demands, companies need to continuously improve their manufacturing systems and develop new strategies. Supply chain management (SCM) is currently the most important tactic for modern companies to maintain their competitiveness. Supplier selection process (SSP) plays an important role in SCM and has been studied extensively in the past years as a tool to provide guidance and help to researchers and decision makers. Green supply chain management (GSCM) arose due to the recent increase in environmental protection. Consequently, the correspondent green supplier selection process (GSSP) has become more and more critical in GSCM. This paper presents a review of studies published in scientific journals during the last five years about green criteria utilized in multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) techniques for GSSP. Furthermore, it identifies the most commonly used MCDM techniques, in journals, universities, and academic departments where this type of research is being developed.