Supplier selection problem for multiple projects with uncertain demand and project life cycles

•A multi-project and multi-objective supplier selection problem is studied.•The project life cycles and demand uncertainty are considered.•We adapt the chaos optimization algorithm combing with a maximum similarity method.•A real case study from the auto industry is conducted.•Pareto solutions generated by the proposed policy and other policies are compared. This study investigates a multi-project, multi-period, multi-factory and multi-objective supplier selection problem with project life cycles and demand uncertainty. For this problem, we establish a multi-stage mixed integer stochastic programming model with three objectives (i.e., the procurement cost, number of quality defects and delayed delivery quantity). An adapted chaos optimization algorithm based on a maximum similarity method is developed to solve the model. The effectiveness of our solutions is validated by the real data from the auto industry. The sensitivity analysis indicates that all of the values of the three objectives increase and then decrease with the project life cycle