In the search for better competitive performance, there is a world trend towards the management of supply chains. As part of this trend, the selection of suppliers has become a strategic decision with a high impact on organisational performance. For this reason, this article makes an approach to the state of the art in supplier selection, taking major international specialised magazines as the point of reference. The objective of this document is to offer support as a point of reference for future research on them matter. Here, we propose a set of topics which suggest a general procedure in decision-making: an analysis of context of the particular characteristics of the supply chain, selection of criteria for decision in operational strategy, and identification of the set of methods used as an aid to selection.