¹National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC

Correspondence: R-H Lin, Department of Industrial Engineering & Management, National Taipei University of Technology, No. 1, Section 3, Chung-Hsaio East Road, Taipei, Taiwan 106, ROC. E-mail: rhlin@ntut.edu.tw

Received August 2007; Accepted October 2008; Published online 25 February 2009.

Abstract

The rapid development of global economy and the resulting increase in competition have prompted attention to be focused on supply chain management (SCM) for improved competitiveness. Supplier selection for reducing supplier base is an important goal in SCM. This paper aims at contributing an effective method that combines an FP-growth algorithm with set theory to identify the primary and secondary suppliers. An example of the proposed method to find key suppliers is presented, and the results show the proposed method to be effective.