Assessing SME credit rating in supply chain finance with multi-phase QFD-based MULTIMOORA under uncertainty

Abstract

Presently, financial institutions have tentatively utilized supply chain finance as a means of assessing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) credit rating. However, traditional techniques cannot satisfy the requirements of such assessments because financial institutions need to assess SME credit rating from the perspective of the supply chain and core enterprise rather than only from the perspective of SME. In this study, a hybrid technique with quantitative and qualitative criteria called multi-phase quality function deployment (QFD)-based MULTIMOORA under interval type-2 fuzzy set (IT2FS) is proposed to overcome the defects of traditional techniques. First, the quantitative values were converted into IT2FSs using the developed formulas. Second, a multi-phase QFD model is proposed to obtain the SME credit rating matrix by integrating the core enterprise credit rating matrix and the criterion relationship matrices among SME, core enterprises and supply chains. Third, IT2FS-MULTIMOORA is enhanced by considering the improved Borda Rule and extended reference point simultaneously to derive the final rankings; therefore, a weight-determining technique is presented based on the correlation coefficients. Finally, the proposed technique was applied to the SME credit rating assessment problem. Comparisons with other techniques and the sensitivity analysis results provide suggestions for financial institutions to provide loans to SMEs. First published online 31 March 2025

Keywords

• multi-phase QFD
• MULTIMOORA
• SME credit rating
• supply chain finance