Productivity and Flexibility Improvement of Straw Mushroom House

This study aims to improve the productivity and flexibility of the mushroom house to increase the production of straw mushrooms. Determining the design of technical specifications and material requirements of the mushroom house is a process that is quite important in determining the success or failure of increasing straw mushroom production. QFD (Quality Function Deployment) is used to obtain the best design based on the needs of the mushroom farmers. The needs of the mushroom farmers are then translated through QFD into technical specifications. MCDM (Multi Criteria Decision Making) is used to determine the material for the frame and blanket of the mushroom house according to the technical specifications of the QFD. CRITIC (Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation) is one of the methods of MCDM that performs an objective weighting of the criteria. A mushroom house was built based on the technical and material specifications obtained from QFD and CRITIC. Tests were carried out by comparing the productivity and flexibility between traditional mushroom houses and designed mushroom houses. The peroductivity of the mushroom house includes cleanliness, stability in temperature and humidity, the rate of growth of straw mushrooms in media. Flexibility includes the ability to assembled and disassembled, easily mobilize from one place to another

Electronic Device Selection in Industrial Products and Machinery Industry: Comparative Analysis with Ocra and Maut Method

The diversity and abundance of product alternatives lead to vagueness on decisions related to procurement, production, and R & D management processes along with other decisions taken within the company and render purchasing, production and R&D decision processes, much more effortful. As choosing appropriate and effective decisions within purchasing, production, R&D, and all other departments are of great importance in today’s competitive business environment, firms are strongly encouraged to concentrate on their decision processes. Within the scope of this study, the purchase decisions of electronic device alternatives are being analysed in industrial products and machinery industry with OCRA method. The importance levels of evaluation criteria for the purchase are obtained out of 100 points. These importance levels are then being used in OCRA method in an attempt to evaluate various electronic device alternatives. In order to scrutinize the results, it can be said that the same data set is compatible with MAUT, which is another multi-criteria decision making method. Information regarding the evaluation criteria as well as alternatives of electronic device has been gathered through focus group study that includes marketing and purchasing managers. The results provide useful information for the sector

Optimization of a Multiple Injection System in a Marine Diesel Engine through a Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making Approach

[Abstract] In this work, a numerical model was developed to analyze the performance and emissions of a marine diesel engine, the Wärtsilä 6L 46. This model was validated using experimental measurements and was employed to analyze several pre-injection parameters such as pre-injection rate, duration, and starting instant. The modification of these parameters may lead to opposite effects on consumption and/or emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrocarbons (HC). According to this, the main goal of the present work is to employ a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to characterize the most appropriate injection pattern. Since determining the criteria weights significantly influences the overall result of a MCDM problem, a subjective weighting method was compared with four objective weighting methods: entropy, CRITIC (CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation), variance, and standard deviation. The results showed the importance of subjectivism over objectivism in MCDM analyses. The CRITIC, variance, and standard deviation methods assigned more importance to NOₓ emissions and provided similar results. Nevertheless, the entropy method assigned more importance to consumption and provided a different injection pattern

A spatial decision support system for the analysis of environmental impacts of integrated crop-livestock production system

Recent shifts toward intensive and large confined livestock production units to enhance economic growth coupled with increased concerns for air, soil, and water quality have necessitated the development of computer-based management decision support systems for selecting environmentally sound production sites and for planning sustainable production systems. This dissertation describes the development and application of an interactive spatial decision support system that integrates a geographic information system, spatial and biophysical modeling, and a knowledge-based system into an interactive tool to facilitate planning and management of environmentally-sound livestock production. The spatial decision support can be used to select suitable watershed land areas for siting livestock production, to select fields for manure application, and to determine the potential impacts of livestock production practices on ground and surface water quality. The site selection component of the spatial decision support system is based on the ARC/INFO geographic information system and incorporates the effects of land use, soil type, topography, proximity to roads and surface water bodies, and other aesthetic and political considerations as well as multicriteria analysis techniques. The groundwater quality modeling component of the decision support system integrates a geographic information system and water quality modeling, using training sets from NLEAP water quality modeling, to estimate nitrate leaching. In order to evaluate nutrient loading on surface water from integrated crop-livestock production a surface water quality model capable of incorporating the spatial dynamics of watershed was needed. The AGNPS distributed-parameter model was used for this purpose. The AGNPS model integrated with ARC/INFO GIS forms a user-friendly modeling interface for surface water quality analysis. The interface automates extraction of the input parameters from GIS data layers and allows the user to interactively generate scenarios of nutrient management practices in crop-livestock production. In order to demonstrate utility of the integrated system, example applications were performed on 7075-ha Lake Icaria watershed in southern Iowa

Applications of AHP, FAHP, BWM, Entropy, and CRITIC Methods in Electrohydraulic Forming Process Parametric Evaluation for Automotive Panels Using the 1100 Aluminum Alloy Sheets

Although multicriteria selection methods are flexible and extensively used in machining, less attention has been paid to their comprehensive test performance in the electrohydraulic forming process. In this study, five new applications of multicriteria selection methods are proposed to analyze available parameters in the electrohydraulic forming process and select parameters best suited for further analysis and improvement of the process. The analyzed parameters are the stand-off distance, electrode gap, voltage, and medium, while the multicriteria methods are the AHP, FAHP, BMW, entropy, and CRITIC. The proposed methods were demonstrated on experimental data from the literature utilizing an impulse magnetizer system (walker type). For each method, the prioritized parametric results were obtained. All the methods assign the first position to the medium as a parameter with consensus on the voltage parameter has the worst (lowest) value of weights in all the methods. The weights of the medium parameter for the best results are 0.5030 (AHP method), 0.5600 (FAHP method), 0.5230 (best-worst method), 0.4090 (entropy method), and 0.5000 (CRITIC method). The worst parameter for all the methods is the voltage of 0.0320 (FAHP method). The results obtained from the proposed applications were compared with one another and found to be effective for multicriteria selection decisions. This article offers new methods to establish the parametric values of the electrohydraulic forming process for machining composites made of AA1100 sheets

Water resource security evaluation and barrier analysis in Henan Province utilizing the DPSIR framework

Water resource health is one of the necessary conditions for society to achieve sustainable development. Due to the predominant focus of most studies on relatively short time spans, with limited attention to long time series and spatial trends, this study, using various regions of Henan Province as a case study, constructs a water resource security assessment framework based on the DPSIR model encompassing Drivers (D), Pressures (P), State (S), Impact (I), and Response (R) dimensions, with a selection of 19 evaluation indicators. Based on this evaluation index system, the CRITIC-TOPSIS evaluation method is formulated by integrating the CRITIC (Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation) and TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) models. This method is employed to assess the degree of water resource security in Henan Province from 2013 to 2022. And the Obstruction Degree Model is introduced to diagnose the water resource security levels in various regions of Henan Province. The assessment results indicate that over the past decade, the overall level of water resource security in various regions of Henan Province has shown an increasing trend. Irrigated area, per capita water resources, water consumption per unit of industrial value added, per acre water consumption for agricultural irrigation, the ratio of river length meeting water quality standards, groundwater supply proportion, and sewage treatment rate are identified as the primary obstacles influencing the water resource security levels in different regions of Henan Province. The research outcomes of this study can serve as theoretical foundations to enhance urban water resource security globally, ultimately facilitating sustainable development

Towards a circular economy: evaluation of waste management performance in European Union countries

Achieving the goals of the circular economy implies taking actions aimed at waste reduction which can be implemented through suitable waste management principles. The idea of the paper is to evaluate and compare the performance of waste management at the level of the European Union(EU). The paper aims to construct a composite index based on selected indicators from the Eurostat database using multi-criteria analysis methods. The CRITIC method was used as a method for determining weight coefficients, while Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) was used as a method for calculating the composite index of waste management performance. The results indicate that the countries of Western and Central Europe record the best results in creating adequate waste management practices (Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Austria). It is also noticeable that the countries that joined the EU much later have the lowest values of the index that measures waste management performance, such as Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Slovakia, Croatia, Malta and Poland, respectively. In the coming period, policymakers must pay more attention to respect for the principles of waste management in the newer member states of the EU, in order to reach convergence in the future

Sustainability in Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: A MCDM Based Performance Evaluation of European Union and Türkiye for Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG 9)

Purpose: The aim of this study is to perform two distinct cross-country evaluations including European Union (EU) countries and Türkiye, focusing on Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG 9): Industry, innovation and infrastructure. The study aims to obtain rankings that display the relative standings of countries and identify areas for potential enhancement. Methodology: An integrated objective criteria weighting, VIKOR, and MAIRCA based Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach has been employed. Findings: Based on the first analysis, high speed internet coverage (HSI) and the share of rail and inland waterways in inland freight transport (SRI) were prominent criteria, and in the MCDM analysis, Sweden displayed the highest performance, while Greece and Croatia showed the lowest performance. In the second analysis, which included Türkiye, tertiary educational attainment (TEA) criteria stood out; while, Sweden maintained its leading position. Türkiye initially had poor performance in the early years but later improved, reaching a mid-level position among 26 countries by 2020. However, a significant decline in performance was observed in the last two years. In addition, during the handled period Türkiye witnessed a decline in both the number of patent applications and the share of buses and trains in inland passenger transport. Thereby, novel policies and incentives could be formulated to overcome these issues. Originality: Two distinct cross-country analyses were conducted in accordance with the SDG 9 by adopting the most recent data and an integrated methodology. Within this context, EU countries were compared both among themselves and with Türkiye, and valuable findings were presented