A Novel Interval Value Extension of Picture Fuzzy Sets Into Group Decision Making: An Approach to Support Supply Chain Sustainability in Catastrophic Disruptions

In critical times when disasters and unpredicted events collapse human judgments, formation and structure of social infrastructure gets to be rather important. Acute risk of catastrophic events such as a rare disaster, a coronavirus pandemic, trigger a global scale setback which has a substantial impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. Catastrophic events halt economic landscape, collapse commodity prices, and silence production engines which interact in complex ways. During this phase of volatility and opacity, roles of sustainable supply chain, productions and circular economy get more important than ever. Such disruptions are therefore to be addressed by identifying sustainable supply chain strategies. This paper intends to establish underlying patterns of disruptive factors in the supply chain to evaluate strategies in formation and structuring of sustainable supply chain by applying it to real world example in Turkish Kitchen Equipment Manufacturer (KEM). Selection of sustainable supply chain strategy is a complex Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) issue involving various parameters that may be contradictory at the same time. Analytical-Hierarchy-Process (AHP) and VlseKriterijumska-Optimizacija-I-Kompromisno-Resenje (VIKOR) methods can be used to solve such problems. In order to strengthen these methods in terms of their lacking capability of coping with uncertainty and incomplete information, they are extended with Interval-Valued Picture-Fuzzy Set (IVPFS) to better simulate human judgment. MCDM processes can be enhanced with Group-Decision-Making (GDM) to combine individual Decision Makers’ (DMs) opinions into group judgments. Found outcome reveal that supply chains to respond catastrophic disruptions, businesses should primarily diversify supply chain from a geographic perspective, and should diversify disruptive forces in motion from a physical perspective. Originality of article is based on integrated AHP and VIKOR approaches in IVPFS based GDM algorithm as a first in the literature and presentation of its application for supply chain sustainability in catastrophic disruptions as a decision support tool.