Developing a decision framework for the strategic sourcing of biomass

The deployment of bioenergy technologies is a key part of UK and European renewable energy policy. A key barrier to the deployment of bioenergy technologies is the management of biomass supply chains including the evaluation of suppliers and the contracting of biomass. In the undeveloped biomass for energy market buyers of biomass are faced with three major challenges during the development of new bioenergy projects. What characteristics will a certain supply of biomass have, how to evaluate biomass suppliers and which suppliers to contract with in order to provide a portfolio of suppliers that best satisfies the needs of the project and its stakeholder group whilst also satisfying crisp and non-crisp technological constraints. The problem description is taken from the situation faced by the industrial partner in this research, Express Energy Ltd. This research tackles these three areas separately then combines them to form a decision framework to assist biomass buyers with the strategic sourcing of biomass. The BioSS framework. The BioSS framework consists of three modes which mirror the development stages of bioenergy projects. BioSS.2 mode for early stage development, BioSS.3 mode for financial close stage and BioSS.Op for the operational phase of the project. BioSS is formed of a fuels library, a supplier evaluation module and an order allocation module, a Monte-Carlo analysis module is also included to evaluate the accuracy of the recommended portfolios. In each mode BioSS can recommend which suppliers should be contracted with and how much material should be purchased from each. The recommended blend should have chemical characteristics within the technological constraints of the conversion technology and also best satisfy the stakeholder group. The fuels library is made up from a wide variety of sources and contains around 100 unique descriptions of potential biomass sources that a developer may encounter. The library takes a wide data collection approach and has the aim of allowing for estimates to be made of biomass characteristics without expensive and time consuming testing. The supplier evaluation part of BioSS uses a QFD-AHP method to give importance weightings to 27 different evaluating criteria. The evaluating criteria have been compiled from interviews with stakeholders and policy and position documents and the weightings have been assigned using a mixture of workshops and expert interview. The weighted importance scores allow potential suppliers to better tailor their business offering and provides a robust framework for decision makers to better understand the requirements of the bioenergy project stakeholder groups. The order allocation part of BioSS uses a chance-constrained programming approach to assign orders of material between potential suppliers based on the chemical characteristics of those suppliers and the preference score of those suppliers. The optimisation program finds the portfolio of orders to allocate to suppliers to give the highest performance portfolio in the eyes of the stakeholder group whilst also complying with technological constraints. The technological constraints can be breached if the decision maker requires by setting the constraint as a chance-constraint. This allows a wider range of biomass sources to be procured and allows a greater overall performance to be realised than considering crisp constraints or using deterministic programming approaches. BioSS is demonstrated against two scenarios faced by UK bioenergy developers. The first is a large scale combustion power project, the second a small scale gasification project. The Bioss is applied in each mode for both scenarios and is shown to adapt the solution to the stakeholder group importance and the different constraints of the different conversion technologies whilst finding a globally optimal portfolio for stakeholder satisfaction

Social sustainable supplier evaluation and selection: a group decision-support approach

Organisational and managerial decisions are influenced by corporate sustainability pressures. Organisations need to consider economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions in their decisions to become sustainable. Supply chain decisions play a distinct and critical role in organisational good and service outputs sustainability. Sustainable supplier selection influences the supply chain sustainability allowing many organisations to build competitive advantage. Within this context, the social sustainability dimension has received relatively minor investigation; with emphasis typically on economic and environmental sustainability. Neglecting social sustainability can have serious repercussions for organisational supply chains. This study proposes a social sustainability attribute decision framework to evaluate and select socially sustainable suppliers. A grey-based multi-criteria decision-support tool composed of the ‘best-worst method’ (BWM) and TODIM (TOmada de Decisão Interativa e Multicritério – in Portuguese ‘Interactive and Multicriteria Decision Making’) is introduced. A grey-BWM approach is used to determine social sustainability attribute weights, and a grey-TODIM method is utilised to rank suppliers. This process is completed in a group decision setting. A case study of an Iranian manufacturing company is used to exemplify the applicability and suitability of the proposed social sustainability decision framework. Managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions are introduced after the application of the model

Supply Chain Risk Management of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in Australia

This research examines the supply chain risk management of Australia’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) supply chain. The study develops a risk management methodology based on quality function deployment and 0-1 multiobjective optimization model. The research reveals 33 LNG supply chain risks and 30 risk management strategies (RMSs) for Australian LNG supply chain. Optimal sets of RMSs are found using the methodology which would be beneficial for the LNG risk managers in a limited resources scenario

Participatory decision-support model in the context of building structural design embedding BIM with QFD

The design and optimisation of building structures is a complex undertaking that requires the effective collaboration of various stakeholders and involves technical and non-technical expertise. The paper investigated an integrated decision-support framework using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in structural design optimisation. The aim of the study was to develop and test a systematic participatory model that utilises Building Information Modelling (BIM)-enabled technologies for data collection and group decision-making theory. The uncertainties associated with the decision-makers’ preferences were computed using Evidential Reasoning (ER) algorithms in the QFD house of quality. An actual decision scenario was used to test the proposed framework and investigate its capabilities in the context of reinforced concrete buildings. The study demonstrated how the proposed QFD model could effectively enhance decision-making by managing the diversity of stakeholders’ preferences via design integration, enhanced communication and shared domain knowledge

Information-theoretic and stochastic methods for managing the quality of service and satisfaction in healthcare systems

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This research investigates and develops a new approach to the management of service quality with the emphasis on patient and staff satisfaction in the healthcare sector. The challenge of measuring the quality of service in healthcare requires us to view the problem from multiple perspectives. At the philosophical level, the true nature of quality is still debated; at the psychological level, an accurate conceptual representation is problematic; whilst at the physical level, an accurate measurement of the concept still remains elusive to practitioners and academics. This research focuses on the problem of quality measurement in the healthcare sector. The contributions of this research are fourfold: Firstly, it argues that from the technological point of view the research to date into quality of service in healthcare has not considered methods of real-time measurement and monitoring. This research identifies the key elements that are necessary for developing a real-time quality monitoring system for the healthcare environment.Secondly, a unique index is proposed for the monitoring and improvement of healthcare performance using information-theoretic entropy formalism. The index is formulated based on five key performance indicators and was tested as a Healthcare Quality Index (HQI) based on three key quality indicators of dignity, confidence and communication in an Accident and Emergency department. Thirdly, using an M/G/1 queuing model and its underlying Little’s Law, the concept of Effective Satisfaction in healthcare has been proposed. The concept is based on a Staff-Patient Satisfaction Relation Model (S-PSRM) developed using a patient satisfaction model and an empirically tested model developed for measuring staff satisfaction with workload (service time). The argument is presented that a synergy between patient satisfaction and staff satisfaction is the key to sustainable improvement in healthcare quality. The final contribution is the proposal of a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) modelling platform as a descriptive model that captures the random and stochastic nature of healthcare service provision process to prove the applicability of the proposed quality measurement models

Multi-Actor Design And Risk Assessment Of Product-Service System (Pss) In Furniture Industry

The competition within furniture industry is getting more intense shown by the high competition and changing trend in the society. In Indonesia, based on the data from the Ministry of Industry, the export of national furniture is rising from the past two years (2016-2017) and expected to increase in the following year. The sales are targeted to hit US $5 billion by 2019. Therefore, a different and innovative strategy should be implemented, so a company can be distinguished in the market with many competitors. One of the strategies is to apply different business models such as Product-Service System (PSS). Through its integration on product and service, PSS can be used to give solution for the company and answer the question about consumer’s need. The proposed business model is use-oriented service which provide furniture renting. However, before adopting this new business model, the company needs to do planning to set the right strategy in developing the furniture business. The needs of manufacturer is obtained from the previous research. While for service providers, there are 10 criterion, which are cost, management, performance, empathy, customization, deliver, company readiness, policy, and company reputation. On the other hand, customer requires 13 criterion which are affordable rental rate, easy to purchase, product information, good service, ease of delivery and return on rented furniture, multifunctional, customization, low maintenance, easy to use, durability, policy, anticipation of unexpected events, and environmentally-friendly. By using Fuzzy-AHP and multi-layer QFD, it is found that providing consultation service, insurance service, and online apps are the most appropriate technical responses to answer the need of all actor. The result is used to create a PSS blueprint. However, new business model can be risky. Therefore, an assessment of risk is done using House of Risk. From HOR1, 8 of 15 risk agents were chosen because of its cumulative of occurrence reach 80%. Then, HOR2 was constructed to determine what preventive actions that can decrease the occurrence of risk agents for all actors

Product Design

Product design is a comprehensive process related to the creation of new products, and the ability to design and develop efficient products are key to success in today’s dynamic global market. Written by experts in the field, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the product design process and its applications in various fields, particularly engineering. Over seven chapters, the authors explore such topics as development of new product design methodologies, implementation of effective methods for integrated products, development of more visualized environments for task-based conceptual design methods, and development of engineering design tools based on 3D photogrammetry, among others

Supply Chain

Traditionally supply chain management has meant factories, assembly lines, warehouses, transportation vehicles, and time sheets. Modern supply chain management is a highly complex, multidimensional problem set with virtually endless number of variables for optimization. An Internet enabled supply chain may have just-in-time delivery, precise inventory visibility, and up-to-the-minute distribution-tracking capabilities. Technology advances have enabled supply chains to become strategic weapons that can help avoid disasters, lower costs, and make money. From internal enterprise processes to external business transactions with suppliers, transporters, channels and end-users marks the wide range of challenges researchers have to handle. The aim of this book is at revealing and illustrating this diversity in terms of scientific and theoretical fundamentals, prevailing concepts as well as current practical applications

Rethinking the risk matrix

So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk