ORIGINAL PAPER Suppliers’ green performance evaluation using fuzzy extended ELECTRE approach Pravin Kumar 1 • Rajesh Kumar Singh 2 • Anurika Vaish 3 Received: 6 June 2016 / Accepted: 13 August 2016 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract In the present context of the globalized market, sustainable manufacturing has become a major concern for all organizations. The sustainable manufacturing system includes economic, environmental, and social sustainabil- ities. Green manufacturing enhances the environmental sustainability but, it also affects the economic and social sustainabilities. The compulsion to follow the environ- mental rules and regulation in any business activity has increased the awareness for the use of green products, recyclable materials for packaging, reduction of carbon emission, etc. Due to the involvement of extra costs in green manufacturing, some ignorance in the implementa- tion of green practices may be observed. To ensure sus- tainable systems, selection of suppliers based on green performance measures is very important. This study eval- uates the suppliers’ performances based on Green Practices as follows: environmental management and pollution control, cost, quality, and flexibility using the fuzzy-ex- tended Elimination and Choice Expressing Reality approach. This approach helps the managers to incorporate the linguistic decision of the decision makers and convert it into quantitative scale. This method is used to eliminate and outrank the poor performers. As poor performers are outranked, this approach helps to select the most suit- able green suppliers as per organization’s requirement. Keywords Green supply chain management  Sustainability  Supplier evaluation  Outranking  Fuzzy sets  ELECTRE Introduction In the recent past, climate change and its impacts on the society had been gaining momentum; and managing pol- lution-free environment is becoming very important in today’s business scenario (Mangla et al. 2014). Therefore, business managers/practitioners are under immense pres- sure to lessen the harmful ecological and social impacts in their supply chains (Ag ˘an et al. 2016). Sancha et al. (2015) established the relationship between institutional pressures and the sustainable supplier development in various loca- tions. Mansi (2015) discussed sustainable disclosure prac- tices in the purchasing activities of Indian government’s public sector enterprises. Green manufacturing is con- cerned with the replacement of hazardous or nonrenewable inputs by less-hazardous materials or renewable materials, respectively; better control of operations at higher effi- ciency; equipment modification; technology change; and product modification for minimization of the waste and the emission. The compulsion of linking the green practices Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10098-016-1268-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Pravin Kumar pravin.dce@gmail.com Rajesh Kumar Singh rksdce@yahoo.com Anurika Vaish anuriaka.vaish@gmail.com 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Shahbad-Daulatpur, Bawana Road, Delhi 110042, India 2 Department of Operations Management, Management Development Institute, Mehrauli Road, Sukhrali, Gurgaon 122001, Haryana, India 3 Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Devghat Jhalwa, Allahabad 211012, India 123 Clean Techn Environ Policy DOI 10.1007/s10098-016-1268-y