  The supplier selection problem is based on electing the best supplier from a
group of pre-specified candidates, is identified as a Multi Criteria Decision
Making (MCDM), is proportionately significant in terms of qualitative and
quantitative attributes. It is a fundamental issue to achieve a trade-off
between such quantifiable and unquantifiable attributes with an aim to
accomplish the best solution to the abovementioned problem. This article
portrays a metaheuristic based optimization model to solve this NP-Complete
problem. Initially the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is implemented to
generate an initial feasible solution of the problem. Thereafter a Simulated
Annealing (SA) algorithm is exploited to improve the quality of the obtained
solution. The Taguchi robust design method is exploited to solve the critical
issues on the subject of the parameter selection of the SA technique. In order
to verify the proposed methodology the numerical results are demonstrated based
on tangible industry data.
