A monitoring system to assess supplier performance of a passive components company in Taiwan by K-Means method

A case study of a passive components company in Taiwan is presented to assess the supplier performance evaluations in accordance with nine criteria. Except for coordination, the rest of eight criteria have the objective assessments. In order to establish a more objective assessment in supplier performance evaluations, a monitoring system is to be set up by considering the eight criteria to determine if a supplier performance is either underestimated or overestimated. K-means method is employed to classify all of the suppliers into three categories. The results based on the data from four quarters in 2017 and the first quarter in 2018 show that 4 of 43, 13 of 57, 24 of 58, 13 of 57, and 15 of 57 indicate the supplier performance seems to be abnormal, i.e., either underestimate or overestimate, for the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, and fourth quarter of 2017, and the first quarter of 2018, respectively. Therefore, further investigations on coordination criterion can be conducted to understand if the judgment on coordination is reasonable.