A Hybrid Supplier Evaluation Model for Personal Protective Equipment Procurement to Healthcare Employees

Healthcare workers face the risk and the danger of contracting several infectious diseases. In order to prevent from the risk of being infected by blood, contact, respiratory droplets, etc., healthcare workers need to use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Because of the increasing demand for quality PPE after COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for healthcare institutions to determine the best supplier. Evaluation of suppliers is a complex decision, which contains a number of alternative suppliers and conflicting criteria. The conflicts between supplier evaluation factors require institutions to make a compromise choice among alternative suppliers. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to develop an analytic supplier evaluation model for PPE procurement to healthcare institutions. To that end, a hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and VIse Kriterijumsa Optimiz acija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) is proposed. A case study for surgical mask procurement to a hospital is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model. The application results show that the proposed model is a useful decision support tool for PPE procurements to policy-makers of healthcare institutions.