Overview on Supplier Selection of Goods versus 3PL Selection

Supplier selection is a strategic purchasing decision that affects the total performance of every company. That decision is a multicriteria problem and a complex process that requires the use of several often conflicting criteria. This paper presents a comparative study between the selection of suppliers of goods and that of suppliers of logistics services in terms of criteria and methods. It shows that some criteria are more specific to logistics services than products and vice versa. Moreover, the importance order of these criteria in both cases is not the same. In terms of methods, they can be classified in seven categories namely: linear weighting models, statistical/probabilistic approaches, artificial intelligence, mathematical programming, methods based on costs, outranking methods, and hybrid approaches.