Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study to introduce a new extended framework to evaluate and rank the sustainable suppliers based on the different sustainable criteria in the manufacturing companies using a new fuzzy decision-making approach. Design/methodology/approach This paper introduces a new approach using decision-making and Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) to assess the best sustainable supplier. To doing so, this study integrated the entropy, stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and weighted aggregates sum product assessment (WASPAS) methods under PFSs. To calculate the criteria weights, the combined entropy-SWARA method is used to compute the objective weight and subjective weight, respectively. Furthermore, the WASPAS model is utilized to rank sustainable supplier alternatives. Findings The results of the analysis found that occupational health and safety systems had the highest rank among other criteria, followed by green product and eco-design, green R&D and innovation and green technology. In addition, the findings of the paper demonstrated that the extended approach was efficient and useful for selecting and evaluating the best sustainable supplier in the manufacturing companies. Originality/value Recent years have witnessed a number of studies aimed at incorporating the sustainability standards into the supplier selection problem; however, only a little research has been conducted on developing a fuzzy method for decision-making in a manner to assess and choose suppliers with high sustainability in the insurance market, encompassing the three above-mentioned sustainability criteria.