Bidder Selection in Public Procurement using a Fuzzy Decision Support System

Abstract

Bidder selection in public procurement is a decision making problem whose primary purpose is to achieve the cost effectiveness and efficiency in the expenditure of public money. This principle is also known as the principle of "value for money". This selection is based on many alternatives and many quantitative and qualitative criteria where qualitative criteria are often expressed as linguistic uncertain variables. The theory of fuzzy sets is a tool suitable to model uncertainty when applied to a variety of problems in real life. However, many fuzzy methods require complex calculation and they are not appropriate for using in public procurement because they slow down this process. In this paper, in order to make a quick decision in public procurement, a Decision Support System based on the fuzzy extent analysis method is developed. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of this system, a real-life case scenario of public procurement is presented.