An Empirical Study on Selection, Evaluation, and Management Strategies of Green Suppliers in Manufacturing Enterprises

Introduction

In manufacturing enterprises, the pollution caused by electronic products is becoming serious. Due to the ever-changing functions of electronic equipment and products, their replacement and disposal rate is higher than that of ordinary products. When electronic waste is incinerated or buried without proper treatment, a large amount of harmful substances will inevitably produce a serious impact on the environment. To greatly reduce the environmental load and effectively reduce the impact of motors and electronic equipment products on the environment and human beings, the EU has published the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations (WEEE) and the Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (RoHS) in 2003 (Beamon, 1999). The WEEE Regulations require all manufacturers selling the above items in the EU to take into account the environmental pollution caused by their product wastes, adopt an environment-friendly design that allows easy recycling, and bear the cost and responsibility of recycling. In addition, the EU also published the Directive of Eco-design Requirements of Energy-using Products (EUP) in 2005. The EUP Directive requires product manufacturers to adopt the thinking mode of life cycle and integrate the requirements of Eco-design into product design and development to improve product efficiency, reduce energy demand, improve energy efficiency, and meet high environmental protection requirements (Arentze and Timmermans, 2003; Zhu et al, 2007).

Furthermore, there are both driving and unfavorable factors for manufacturing enterprises in choosing green suppliers (GS). As a driving factor, green suppliers can establish the image of providing safe and reliable products and attaching importance to social responsibility, which can help improve the company’s green image and win the favor of customers. However, although green suppliers can improve the utilization efficiency of resources and reduce costs to a certain extent, green recycling and waste treatment will cost them a huge price, with the final cost running behind the suppliers’ expenses (Blome et al., 2014). These problems in management and decision-making cannot be solved only by a single research method.

Furthermore, this study suggested that with the increasing awareness of environmental protection, enterprises should pay more attention to the greening degree of their products and increase the damage evaluation on products to the surrounding environment. At the same time, it is necessary to study the green supplier selection model. Zhu and Sarkis (2004) mentioned that the dimensions of green design, green procurement, green management, green production, and reverse logistics in a green supply chain require further investigation. Hervani et al. (2005) pointed out that the green supply chain mainly comprises green procurement, green manufacturing, green distribution and marketing, and reverse logistics. Tsai et al. (2016) suggested that the four evaluation dimensions of the green supply chain include (1) green design, (2) green production, (3) green marketing, and (4) green recycling. Although the four major processes are considered general principles, their importance and degree of application vary in different countries and enterprises.

There are two major deficiencies in the traditional studies on the evaluation criteria of green suppliers of manufacturing enterprises. On the one hand, some studies assume that the evaluation criteria have equal weights without any difference. On the other hand, most studies assume that evaluation criteria are independent of each other—there is neither a mutual influence nor causal relationship among them.

Based on the research background presented above, this study raises the following three research questions:

• 1.

  Use Importance: Performance Analysis to evaluate the importance and satisfaction of various evaluation criteria of green suppliers.

• 2.

  Use the Decision: Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory to evaluate the causality and mutual influence of various evaluation criteria of green suppliers.

• 3.

  Integrate the Importance: Performance Analysis with the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory to put forward strategic suggestions for green supplier management.