IŶterŶatioŶal Syŵposiuŵ oŶ ResearĐh iŶ IŶŶovatioŶ aŶd SustaiŶaďility ϮϬϭϰ ;ISoRIS ’ϭϰͿ ϭϱ-16 October 2014, Malacca, Malaysia Specia issue Sci.Int.(Lahore),26(5),1841-1844,2014 ISSN 1013-5316; CODEN: SINTE 8 1841 SUSTAINABLE CRITERIA IN A SUPPLIER SELECTION: A PRE-REVIEW Wan Hasrulnizzam Wan Mahmood 1 , Rahayu Tukimin 1,2 , Mohd Razali Muhamad 1 , Muhamad Zaki Yusup 1,2 , 1 Sustainable and Responsive Manufacturing Research Group, Faculty of Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, 76100 Hang Tuah Jaya, Melaka, Malaysia 2 Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi MARA Kuantan, Km 8, Jalan Gambang, 25150 Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia Correspondent Email: rahayu@kktmkuantan.edu.my ABSTRACT : Recently, a supplier selection has received great attention since a cost of raw material constitutes a main cost of the product. Choosing the best supplier will ensure the gaining of the best quality of materials, on time, affordable price, and a good services. Due to the globalization in business, competitive market situations and the changing customers’ demands, organizations should add environmental and social aspects to the existing supplier selection criteria to retain the sustainable in supply chain. Reviewing the literature and considering the developed framework for sustainable supplier selection and semi-structured interview with a few of supply chain managers in the manufacturing sector, this paper aims to present the sustainable supplier selection criteria and show the interdependency between the criteria presented. KEYWORDS: Supplier Development; Supplier Selection; Supplier Selection Criteria; Sustainability 1.0 INTRODUCTION A supplier Development (SD) is widely defined as the process of working collaboratively with a supplier in improving or expanding the capabilities in supply chain. It is becomes one of the essential elements of the supply chain success and starts to gain traction as a business idea after the Second World War, predominantly in Japan [1]. An implementation of SD is suitable for the company that intends to reduce cost and streamline their operation while minimizing their defective product. SD program encourages constant communication between companies and their supplier, which enables supplier to better understand their roles towards the company success.. Generally, this program is needed for two reasons [2, 3]; (1) to reduce costs, improve quality, and delivery performance by completing projects jointly while the customer is on-site, (2) to teach suppliers a systematic process for improvements. A supplier selection (SS) is a first step in SD. SS process has become a very important and critical activity as its results have a great impact on the quality of goods and performance of organizations and supply chains [4, 5]. Selecting a right suppliers could bring benefit in the reduction in purchasing cost, decrease in supplying risk and improve a product quality. Setak et. al [6] suggested that the achievement of the company is highly influenced by the selection of a proper supplier. A number of researches in SS have examined the decision method and criteria used to assess supplier performance [6, 7, 8, 9]. Even though many publications exist on SS, unfortunately, very little research has been conducted on the sustainable SS. So, the objective of this paper is to highlight the sustainable SS process and to determine the most common criterion considered by the manufacturer for selecting and evaluating the most suitable supplier. Besides that, this paper also showed the relationship between the criteria presented. 2.0 SUSTAINABLE SUPPLIER SELECTION Numerous studies by researchers have highlighted several criteria in selecting and evaluating of the supplier. From review, three criteria namely; quality, delivery and price are the most vital criteria that been used in this process [9, 10, 11, 12]. By integrating all the criteria with agreement by a few supply chain managers, a supplier selection framework could be developed in strengthening supplier selection process, as shown in Figure 1. From Figure 1, the process of SS begins when the manufacturer searches for a new supplier for a completely new product, replacing current suppliers or choosing suppliers for a new product from the existing pool of suppliers. This step will involve maybe a very large number of suppliers. This situation demands a decision making approach to make a perfect choice. The manufacturer should convert their requirement into decision criteria as a guide of choice. There are several criteria, both quantitative and qualitative [13] that should be considered in the selection process. All the criteria and the influencing factors proposed by the researchers are categorized into three dimension of sustainability; economic, social and environmental. Traditionally, SS only consider economic aspects for many years. Due to the globalization in business, competitive market situations and changing of customers’ demands, organizations should add environmental and social aspects to the SS criteria to retain the sustainability in the supply chain. For instance Ho et. al [9] found that economic aspect which based on lowest cost could not guarantee that the selected supplier is a global optimal because other aspect were not being considered. Govindan et. al [14] stressed that the social aspect should integrated the economic and environmental aspect in meeting the increasing market pressures and demands from various stakeholders. Lee et. al [15] emphasized that organization should consider environmental criteria in order to extend the product life cycle and to pursue enterprise perpetuity. Besides that, it could also help to lessen the environmental risks and increase the competitiveness of the firm.