An Integration of Rank Order Centroid, Modified Analytical Hierarchy Process and 0-1 Integer Programming in Solving A Facility Location Problem

Hadhramout province is the major producer of dates in The Republic of Yemen. Despite producing substantial quantity and quality of dates, the business losses are still high. The situation worsens with the widespread of the black market activities. Recently, the Yemeni government has issued an agreement stating the importance of building a date palm packaging factory as a resolution to the problems. Hence, this study aims to identify the best location for a date palm packaging factory among the seven districts which produce most of the date palm supplies in Hadhramout. The selection was based on eleven criteria identified by several representatives from the farmers and the local councils. These criteria were market growth, proximity to the markets, proximity to the raw materials, labor, labor climate, suppliers, community, transportation cost, environmental factors, production cost, and factory set up cost. The level of importance and the respective weight of each criterion were calculated using two different approaches, namely, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Rank Order Centroid (ROC). In applying AHP, a slight modification was made in the pairwise comparison exercises that eliminated the inconsistency problem faced by the standard AHP pairwise comparison procedure. Likewise, in applying ROC, a normalization technique was proposed to tackle the problem of assigning weights to criteria having the same priority level, which was neither clarified nor available in the standard ROC. Both proposed techniques revealed that suppliers were the most important criterion, while community was regarded to be the least important criterion in deciding the final location for the date palm factory. Combining the criteria weights together with several hard and soft constraints that were required to be satisfied by the location, the final location was determined using three different mathematical models, namely, the ROC combined with 0-1 integer programming model, the AHP combined with 0-1 integer programming model, and the mean of ROC and AHP combined with 0-1 integer programming model. The three models produced the same result; Doean was the best location. The result of this study, if implemented, would hopefully help the Yemeni government in their effort to improve the production as well as the management of the date palm tree in Hadhramout

National freight transport planning: towards a Strategic Planning Extranet Decision Support System (SPEDSS)

This thesis provides a `proof-of-concept' prototype and a design architecture for a Object Oriented (00) database towards the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for the national freight transport planning problem. Both governments and industry require a Strategic Planning Extranet Decision Support System (SPEDSS) for their effective management of the national Freight Transport Networks (FTN). This thesis addresses the three key problems for the development of a SPEDSS to facilitate national strategic freight planning: 1) scope and scale of data available and required; 2) scope and scale of existing models; and 3) construction of the software. The research approach taken embodies systems thinking and includes the use of: Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOA/D) for problem encapsulation and database design; artificial neural network (and proposed rule extraction) for knowledge acquisition of the United States FTN data set; and an iterative Object Oriented (00) software design for the development of a `proof-of-concept' prototype. The research findings demonstrate that an 00 approach along with the use of 00 methodologies and technologies coupled with artificial neural networks (ANNs) offers a robust and flexible methodology for the analysis of the FTN problem domain and the design architecture of an Extranet based SPEDSS. The objectives of this research were to: 1) identify and analyse current problems and proposed solutions facing industry and governments in strategic transportation planning; 2) determine the functional requirements of an FTN SPEDSS; 3) perform a feasibility analysis for building a FTN SPEDSS `proof-of-concept' prototype and (00) database design; 4) develop a methodology for a national `internet-enabled' SPEDSS model and database; 5) construct a `proof-of-concept' prototype for a SPEDSS encapsulating identified user requirements; 6) develop a methodology to resolve the issue of the scale of data and data knowledge acquisition which would act as the `intelligence' within a SPDSS; 7) implement the data methodology using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) towards the validation of it; and 8) make recommendations for national freight transportation strategic planning and further research required to fulfil the needs of governments and industry. This thesis includes: an 00 database design for encapsulation of the FTN; an `internet-enabled' Dynamic Modelling Methodology (DMM) for the virtual modelling of the FTNs; a Unified Modelling Language (UML) `proof-of-concept' prototype; and conclusions and recommendations for further collaborative research are identified