Multi-criterion analysis of the most important aspects of the environmental pollution

Technological procedures for obtaining the useful mineral raw materials on the excavation site create the environmental pollution. This is manifested in several ways such as: blocking of land, degradation of soil and appearance the other forms of pollution (dust, gases, mineral water and noise, which affect the pollution of air, water, land, plants and human health). Consequently, in this paper, a multi-criterion analysis was carried out aiming to rank the all types of environmental pollution in order to identify the most difficult types of pollution. Also, the work presents the most important environmental protection measures, in accordance with the most severe types of pollution, and their ranking has been carried out with the aim of determining the most important measures. The AHP analysis was used for the multi-criterion analysi

Techno-economic assessment of small-scale renewable energy storage technologies

This paper proposes a framework for selecting energy storage technology (EST) for small-scale renewable energy systems. The present study was able to achieve this using the results that were generated from a Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) and a fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD) model. Using the FQFD model, experts' opinions were incorporated into the framework during the evaluation of the techno-economic requirements importance for the selection process. The FQFD model considered system safety, availability, flexibility, reliability and effectiveness as customers’ requirements, while nominal voltage, nominal discharge current, peak measured voltage, operating cost and cost of energy were among the techno-economic requirements. During the framework application, a questionnaire was used to collect information from experts on the techno-economic requirements importance, while information on the techno-economic (eleven) requirements for four ESTs were obtained from literature. The FQFD model results were incorporated into a PROMETHEE and TOPSIS models. The PROMETHEE and the TOPSIS models identified Lithium-Ion EST as the best EST for small-scale renewable energy systems

An integration of QFD and Fuzzy-AHP approach in hospital services, case study: a hospital in Iran

Purpose This paper shows a development of an integrated model to identify the customer needs and select the best solution to optimize the quality of healthcare systems, namely at hospitals. Design/methodology/approach After determining the patient's requirements by data gathering from experts and patients, a questionnaire was prepared to implement the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) method. Afterward, the requirement's weight has determined by the patients. Finally, the most important technical requirements were achieved applying the 3-phases Quality Function Deployment (QFD) model. Findings The results show that by adapting the FAHP on ideas of the patients and hospital's experts to determine the weights of patients' requirements, led to have more flotation in FAHP questionnaires in the hospital services. In this domain, adopting the decision-making tools help more precise ranking of patients' requirements. Originality/value Since high-quality urgent services are vital to the protection of human life, it is significant to precisely rank the patient’s requirements by novel methodologies. By the implementation of an integrated model using FAHP and QFD, we were able to show the improvement of the quality of an hospital in Iran. After precisely ranking the patient requirements, "increasing human resource" and "establishing requirements and instructions in initial measures and reducing medication errors", are obtained as the most important technical requirements.This work was supported by National Funds through FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), and the first author acknowledges the grant PD/BDE/143092/2018 provided by FCT. Also, this work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/202

Prioritization of engineering Characteristics in QFD in the case of customer requirements orderings

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is an effective tool to orient the design of a product and related production processes towards the real exigencies of the end-user. Its first phase – the House of Quality – is aimed at translating Customer Requirements (CRs) into Engineering Characteristics (ECs) of the product of interest, also determining an ECs’ prioritization. All of the techniques proposed for tackling this problem are based on the assumption that the importance of each CR is expressed on interval or ratio scales (i.e. cardinal scales). To this end, customer evaluations – naturally expressed on ordinal scales – are artfully turned into numbers. This paper introduces a novel technique – denominated as Ordinal Prioritization Method – that can be applied to prioritize ECs. The method addresses the problem of the prioritization of ECs when the importance of CRs is given on an ordinal scale. The description of the method is supported by a some application examples

Investigation Root Causes of Labour Turnover Problem in Seaport Logistics Sector

Labor turnover is a phenomenon with negative consequences in the field of seaport handling and operations. This study aims at determining the causes of labor turnover and proposing alternative solutions for companies and logistic firms that are in charge of seaport cargo handling work. The causes and relations among the factors that are effective in labor turnover problem were determined using fuzzy DEMATEL and the related alternatives were analyzed by fuzzy TOPSIS technique. The results of the study revealed that some causes of labor turnover in seaports could be summarized as “low wages”, “unguaranteed jobs”, “limited career opportunities” and “unwelcomed managers”. As alternatives to the labor turnover problem; “bonus pay”, “career opportunities” and “offering partnership” may be considered to overcome the problem. The study is based on data from expert evaluations obtained from the questionnaires. Finally, some recommendations are made to diminish the labor turnover frequency in seaport companies

Customer knowledge management antecedent factors for enterprise software quality

Customer Knowledge Management (CKM) plays an important role in the production of high quality software products. Previous studies have only focused on the technical aspects of software quality. However, because of the nature of enterprise software, there is a greater dependence on CKM for customization, enhancement, maintenance, and training. As CKM in Enterprise Software (ES) development is still immature, this raises questions on how CKM can help ES development companies to improve their software quality. In this research, Knowledge-Based View (KBV) and Theory of Technology were used to demonstrate the Organizational, Human, and Technological antecedent factors that enable the CKM process and lead to ES quality. Human, Organizational and Technological CKM antecedent factors were identified from the literature. The importance degree of each factor was determined by experts from ES development companies using Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). Moreover, based on high priority factors, a theoretical model was developed. The proposed model was evaluated by distributing a survey questionnaire to decision-makers in ES development companies. With 164 valid questionnaires received, the collected data was analyzed using the Partial Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results show that Customer Involvement together with Senior Management Support were the most influential factors. There was no impact from Organizational Training, Customer Knowledge Map, and CKM Strategy Development. The results revealed that the impact of CKM on software quality is significant. The model developed in this research can be used as a guideline for the successful application of CKM in enterprise software development companies to improve the software quality

An organizational attraction model of university entrepreneurship centre for web content

University Entrepreneurship Centres (UEC) portray their organizational identity to potential students through their website in order to attract them to enroll in their entrepreneurship educational programs. Thus, UECs need to identify the influence of each organizational identity factors as their website content in creating the ideal attitudes in students as to attract them to their programs. The objectives of this study are, firstly, to identify the importance of UECs website content that leads to organizational attraction. Secondly, to propose an organizational attraction model for the university entrepreneurship centre web content to reflect on the influence of identified website content factors on the UEC’s organizational attraction. And thirdly, to evaluate the influence of identified website content factors on UEC’s organizational attraction. This research applied a quantitative method approach following a positivistic paradigm. Several models of organizational identity, image and attractiveness were employed and a research model was then developed based on a comprehensive literature review. A questionnaire was designed to enable the survey to be included as part of the data collection method. With 445 returned questionnaires in hand, the collected data were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results showed that the organizational attractiveness of UEC was affected by students’ attitude toward UEC as an organization, which itself was affected by UEC’s website design (WD), UEC’s identity (UECI) Perception, and Students attitude toward website (SATW). The results of this study showed that Industry Interaction (II), Producing Highly Qualified Graduates (PHQG), Team Working (TW), and Risk Taking (RT) are empirically proven to be the effective factors on Students Attitude Toward UEC as an Organization (SATO). Meanwhile, Innovativeness (INNO), Attracting Entrepreneurial Faculty (AEF), and Consultation (CONS) are empirically proven to be the effective factors on SATW which indirectly affect the SATO. Finally, the effectiveness of Proactiveness (PA) on SATW and SATO was not proven to be effective. These findings can be of pioneers in the field of UECs online attractiveness, and they contribute to the Organizational Impression Management. The proposed model in this study can be used by universities’ corporate office managers and web designers to enhance their UEC’s organizational attraction in the World Wide Web

Sustainable supplier selection and order allocation for multinational enterprises considering supply disruption in COVID-19 era

The unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 has left many multinational enterprises facing extremely severe supply disruptions. Besides considering triple-bottom-line requirements, managers now also have to consider supply disruption due to the pandemic more seriously. However, existing research does not take these two key objectives into account simultaneously. To bridge this research gap, based on the characteristics of COVID-19 and similar global emergency events, this paper proposes a model that aims to solve the problem of sustainable supplier selection and order allocation considering supply disruption in the COVID-19 era. It does so by using a multi-stage multi-objective optimization model applied to the different stages of development and spread of the pandemic. Then, a novel nRa-NSGA-II algorithm is proposed to solve the high-dimensional multi-objective optimization model. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed model is illustrated in a well-known multinational producer of shortwave therapeutic instruments

A product design framework for one-of-a-kind production using integrated quality function deployment and operational research techniques

The process of product design as an early stage of new product development provides systematic approaches that can lead to the success of a company’s competitive strategy in the current turbulent market. By launching an efficient product design procedure can result in the reduction of engineering modifications, cost and production time. One-of-a-Kind Product (OKP) is known as a particular manufacturing system of new product design and development with emphasis on the special order concept. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a comprehensive design framework with cross-functional team members that leads to the development of new or improved products. QFD starts with the House of Quality (HOQ) as an organizing matrix to identify the customers’ requirements (CRs) and translate them into the technical attributes (TAs) of the product and followed by determining the target values for the sets of technical attributes. An evaluation approach to determine the relative importance of CRs and TAs should be considered. In previous researches, the traditional methods such as simple scoring method and application of operational research techniques such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were reported to weigh the requirements and attributes. Despite the obvious inner-relationships among the elements, considering the HOQ as a hierarchical system may be inefficient. In addition, the contradictory effects of a TA on two or more CRs, is the problem that has been neglected. Here, a mathematical model was developed for calculating the TAs target values. A case study (dry gas filter, Namdaran Petro-Gas Industries (NPI™)) is presented to exhibit and verify the procedure of OKP product design. Initially, the framework was developed by integrating QFD-operational research (Analytic Network Process (ANP)) as a systematic method for improvement of dry gas filter design. Interview and study of documents were used to identify the CRs. A robust evaluation on customers’ priority and attributes’ importance with respect to inner-relationships among criteria/sub-criteria was performed. Furthermore, the effects of TAs on CRs with regard to their direction (positive/negative) were considered as the fundamental for developing a Multi-Objective Decision Model (MODM) to be used for determining the TAs target values. For this purpose, the fuzzy conversion scaling technique followed by formulating the partial satisfaction separately was applied. Modified TOPSIS was used to select the basic design among the available designs for further modification. Later, the process continues with the second phase, translating the TAs into the key parts. The available options (retailers) to supply the key parts were identified. As the normal procedure of QFD the relative importance’s of key parts and the options were determined. Finally, a zero-one goal programming was presented to select the optimum options for each key part subject to the budget constraint. Overall, the developed QFD-ANP framework provides a systematic approach that has the potential to be used for designing OKP product

Modeli za evaluaciju i izbor zaposlenih zasnovani na metodama višekriterijumskog odlučivanja

У данашње време савремене организације се налазе пред великим изазовом, а све због динамичнијих и захтевнијих услова пословања. Запослени представљају кључни фактор на основу којег организације постижу и задржавају конкурентску предност. Из тог разлога, менаџмент људских ресурса представља важну пословну активност од које зависи успех организације. Из тог разлога, процесу регрутације и селекције кадрова се посвећује посебна пажња. Избор компетентних запослених се најчешће одвија у кратком временском интервалу, док са друге стране организација тежи да запослени остану што дуже у организацији. Током времена предложено је више приступа, алата и техника за избор запослених. Традиционалне методе најчешће за евалуацију кандидата укључују статистичке анализе, тестове личности и сл. У циљу смањења субјективности и интуитивности у процесу селекције кадрова, на располагању су и технике које се заснивају на примени метода вишекритеријумског одлучивања. Сходно томе, докторска дисертација има за циљ да предложи вишекритеријумске оквире тј. моделе за избор кадрова. Модели се заснивају на примени Step‐Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis - SWARA , Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution - TOPSIS и Combined Compromise Solution – CoCoSo метода. SWARA метода је у докторској дисертацији примењена за дефинисање тежина евалуационих критеријума. За коначно рангирање алтернатива односно кандидата примењене су TOPSIS и CoCoSo методе.U današnje vreme savremene organizacije se nalaze pred velikim izazovom, a sve zbog dinamičnijih i zahtevnijih uslova poslovanja. Zaposleni predstavljaju ključni faktor na osnovu kojeg organizacije postižu i zadržavaju konkurentsku prednost. Iz tog razloga, menadžment ljudskih resursa predstavlja važnu poslovnu aktivnost od koje zavisi uspeh organizacije. Iz tog razloga, procesu regrutacije i selekcije kadrova se posvećuje posebna pažnja. Izbor kompetentnih zaposlenih se najčešće odvija u kratkom vremenskom intervalu, dok sa druge strane organizacija teži da zaposleni ostanu što duže u organizaciji. Tokom vremena predloženo je više pristupa, alata i tehnika za izbor zaposlenih. Tradicionalne metode najčešće za evaluaciju kandidata uključuju statističke analize, testove ličnosti i sl. U cilju smanjenja subjektivnosti i intuitivnosti u procesu selekcije kadrova, na raspolaganju su i tehnike koje se zasnivaju na primeni metoda višekriterijumskog odlučivanja. Shodno tome, doktorska disertacija ima za cilj da predloži višekriterijumske okvire tj. modele za izbor kadrova. Modeli se zasnivaju na primeni Step‐Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis - SWARA , Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution - TOPSIS i Combined Compromise Solution – CoCoSo metoda. SWARA metoda je u doktorskoj disertaciji primenjena za definisanje težina evaluacionih kriterijuma. Za konačno rangiranje alternativa odnosno kandidata primenjene su TOPSIS i CoCoSo metode