Designing vendor selection and evaluation systems for supply networks

Supply chain management requires traditional tools for vendor selection (VS) and evaluation (VE) to be modified to foster customer-supplier collaboration and coordination. In this way it is possible to reduce information asymmetries and opportunistic behaviours of counterparts in supply networks. The aim of this paper is (1) to describe an integrated tool for VS and VE that overcomes the limits of the traditional tools in supply networks, (2) to give a detailed description of the implementation of such a tool and (3) to explain how the use of this tool can improve customerssuppliers relationships. These issues are discussed through the analysis of a successful case of a Italian company leader in the modular kitchen industry and its supplier network, who implemented a balanced and transparent web-base platform for vendor selection and evaluation.