Bibliometric analysis of scientific production on methods to aid decision making in the last 40 years

Purpose: Multicriteria methods have gained traction in both academia and industry practices for effective decision-making over the years. This bibliometric study aims to explore and provide an overview of research carried out on multicriteria methods, in its various aspects, over the past forty-four years. Design/Methodology/Approach: The Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases were searched for publications from January 1945 to April 29, 2021, on multicriteria methods in titles, abstracts, and keywords. The bibliographic data were analyzed using the R bibliometrix package. Findings: This bibliometric study asserts that 29,050 authors have produced 20,861 documents on the theme of multicriteria methods in 131 countries in the last forty-four years. Scientific production in this area grows at a rate of 13.88 per year. China is the leading country in publications with 14.14%; India with 10.76%; and Iran with 8.09%. Islamic Azad University leads others with 504 publications, followed by the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University with 456 and the National Institute of Technology with 336. As for journals, Expert Systems With Applications; Sustainability; and Journal of Cleaner Production are the leading journals, which account for more than 4.67% of all indexed literature. Furthermore, Zavadskas E. and Wang J have the highest publications in the multicriteria methods domain regarding the authors. Regarding the most commonly used multicriteria decision-making methods, AHP is the most favored approach among the ten countries with the most publications in this research area, followed by TOPSIS, VIKOR, PROMETHEE, and ANP. Practical implications: The bibliometric literature review method allows the researchers to explore the multicriteria research area more extensively than the traditional literature review method. It enables a large dataset of bibliographic records to be systematically analyzed through statistical measures, yielding informative insights. Originality/value: The usefulness of this bibliometric study is summed in presenting an overview of the topic of the multicriteria methods during the previous forty-four years, allowing other academics to use this research as a starting point for their research

SWOT analysis in the General Organization of Labor, Cooperation and Social Welfare of East Azerbaijan Province with a scientific and technological approach

Since environmental threats threaten the life and survival of organizations from all sides, organizations must recognize their current position. Carefully analyze their strengths and weaknesses, seize environmental opportunities, and prepare for threats. This is possible in the form of strategic planning. Strategic planning is used as a framework for implementing strategic thinking and directing operations to achieve goals. Thus, the organization analyses the capability and environmental conditions and, based on it, determines the possible purposes and methods to achieve it. The Department of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare of East Azerbaijan Province plays a special role in providing services to various stakeholders and its role in economic, social, cultural development and increasing the welfare of society. Identify and evaluate this organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to provide public value; it is one of the essential issues and requirements for achieving organizational goals. In this regard, using SWOT analysis and Bryson strategic planning model, internal and external factors in employment management and entrepreneurship have been identified, using interviews with managers and experts in the mentioned sector, relevant stakeholders, and questionnaire tools. In the next step, strategies related to each area were formulated as strategic issues and prioritized using internal factor matrix, external factor matrix, and QSPM evaluation methods

Understanding location decisions of energy multinational enterprises within the European smart cities’ context: An integrated AHP and extended fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method

Becoming a smart city is one of the top priorities in the urban agenda of many European cities. Among the various strategies in the transition path, local governments seek to bring innovation to their cities by encouraging multinational enterprises to deploy their green energy services and products in their municipalities. Knowing how to attract these enterprises implies that political leaders understand the multi-criteria decision problem that the energy sector enterprises face when deciding whether to expand to one city or another. To this end, the purpose of this study is to design a new manageable and controllable framework oriented to European cities’ public managers, based on the assessment of criteria and sub-criteria governing the strategic location decision made by these enterprises. A decision support framework is developed based on the AHP technique combined with an extended version of the hesitant fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method. The main results indicate the higher relative importance of government policies, such as degree of transparency or bureaucracy level, as compared to market conditions or economic aspects of the city’s host country. These results can be great assets to current European leaders, they show the feasibility of the method and open up the possibility to replicate the proposed framework to other sectors or geographical areas.The authors acknowledge the support from the European Union “Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme” under the grant agreements No 731297. Also, this research has been partially supported by the INVITE Research Project (TIN2016-80049-C2-1-R and TIN2016-80049-C2-2-R (AEI/FEDER, UE)), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Information Technology.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Integrating Industry 4.0 and Total Productive Maintenance for Global Sustainability

The integration of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and industry 4.0 (I4.0) is an emerging model, and the global pressure of various stakeholders raises scepticism of any emerging model towards providing sustainability. Therefore, this research aims to identify and rank the potential significant drivers of an integrated model of I4.0 and TPM to guide manufacturing enterprises towards sustainability. This research follows a four-phase methodology including literature review and expert opinion to select the sustainability indicators and I4.0 integrated TPM key drivers, followed by employing the Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach for weight determination of sustainability indicators. The research then deploys the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to prioritise the I4.0 integrated TPM key drivers based on their effect on various sustainability indicators. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to check the robustness of the TOPSIS. The findings establish the top five most influential key drivers of an I4.0 integrated TPM system, which include Top management support, Formal I4.0 adoption program, Mid-management involvement and support, Solid TPM baseline knowledge, and High engagement of the production team. These top drives can lead manufacturing firms towards sustainability. The digitalisation of shop floor practices, such as TPM could be adapted by shop floor managers and policymakers of manufacturing companies to deliver sustainability-oriented outcomes. In addition, this research may aid decision-makers in the manufacturing sector in identifying the most important drivers of Industry 4.0 and TPM, which will assist them in more effectively implementing an integrated system of Industry 4.0 and TPM to practice sustainability. The scope of TPM applicability is wide, and the current research is limited to manufacturing companies. Therefore, there is a huge scope for developing and testing the integrated system of Industry 4.0 and TPM in other industrial settings, such as the textile, food and aerospace industries. This research makes a first-of-its-kind effort to examine how an I4.0 integrated TPM model affects manufacturing companies' sustainability and how such effects might be maximised

이해관계자 접근을 통한 베트남 중소도시의 스마트시티 개발에 관한 연구

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 환경대학원 협동과정 조경학, 2021. 2. 송영근.베트남은 지난 30년 이상의 혁신을 통해 경제적 및 사회적 측면에서 많은 변화와 성과가 있었다. 그러나 이러한 발전에 따라 급속한 도시화가 나타났으며, 많은 지역에서 계획의 과정과 내용에 있어 큰 혼란을 야기하고 있다. 이와 같은 문제는 도시환경 개선을 위하여 계획하는 거버넌스 및 인프라에 압력을 더하고 있다. 다시 말하면, 도시의 발전은 성장 속도 뿐만 아니라 모든 측면에서의 조화가 요구되며, 도시의 발전은 스마트 솔루션에 의해 이루어져야 한다. 스마트 시티로의 전환은 전세계적인 트렌드일 뿐만 아니라, 베트남의 많은 도시에서도 확산되고 있다. 스마트 시티에 있어 필수적인 논의, 특히 전통적인 도시 관리 정책의 관점에서 스마트 기술에 대한 논의가 많이 있었다. 하지만, 기술 측면에서 초점을 맞춘 개발 방식은 스마트 시티를 둘러싼 다양한 요소의 수준을 고려하지 않았다는 비판을 받았다. 스마트 시티는 기술적인 요소뿐만 아니라 복잡한 주변 환경을 고려하여야하기 때문에, 정부가 스마트 정책을 적용함에 있어 다양한 요소를 고려하지 않으면 시민들에게 양질의 서비스를 효과적으로 제공할 수 없을 것이다. 물리적 시스템과 사람 간 상호 작용을 이끌어내는 공공서비스의 최종사용자로서 이해관계자(Stakeholder) 는 정책결정 과정에 있어 아이디어를 제공하고 성공적인 도시 솔루션을 함께 구축하여야 한다. 스마트 시티 개발 과정에서 이해관계자의 역할 정립은 전세계 모든 도시에서 주요 과제로 확인되었다. 모든 과정에서 이해관계자의 참여는 정책결정자가 효과적인 데이터 수집 및 분석과 스마트 시티 개발 과정에서 올바른 의사 결정을 내리는데 도움을 줄 수 있다. 따라서 본 논문은 스마트 시티 개발에 있어 과학적 연구로서 이해관계자 접근을 통해 베트남 중소 도시의 스마트 시티 개발 준비에 있어 통합적인 시사점을 제공하고자 한다. 논문은 우선 스마트 시티 개발 전략과 관련된 선행 연구에 대한 검토와 요인을 추출하였다. 이 과정에서 AHP분석을 통해 요인의 순위를 평가하였다. 분석 결과, 내부 요인 가운데, 시민참여 (0.4141), 행정 , 인프라 (0.2234) 순으로 나타났으며, 외부 요인으로는 정치적 의지 (0.5093), 이해관계자 (0.3373), 기술의 시대 (0.1535) 순으로 나타났다. 또한, 달랏(Da Lat), 냐짱(Nha Trang)과 박닌(Bac Ninh) 등 베트남 3개의 중소도시에서의 설문조사를 실시하여 선형 구조방정식모형(Structural Equation Modeling)을 통해 스마트 시티 개발 준비에 영향을 미치는 요인을 파악하고자 하였다 (adjusted R2=0.589) . 그 결과, 스마트 시티 개발 준비에 영향을 미치는 3개의 주요 요인으로 기술적, 조직적, 환경적 측면으로 나타났으며, 특히 조직 측면에서의 준비는 스마트 시티 개발 준비에 가장 큰 영향을 미친다는 것을 확인하였다 (β coefficient = 0.415; t-value = 8.960; p = 0.000). 마지막으로 초기 단계부터 성공적인 스마트 시티 개발을 위하여 효과적인 전략 지침과 관리 및 운영 원칙에 대한 프레임워크를 제시하였다.After more than 30 years of renovation in economic and social aspects, Vietnam has brought many outstanding achievements. However, rapid urbanization is the defect of this development, accompanied by burly disturbance in planning that municipalities across the country be facing many problems. All of these challenges have put pressure on governance and infrastructure planning to shift the quality of life in cities. Can notice that urban development not only reflected in the growth rate but also harmony in all aspects, the urban development process accordingly must be handle by smart solutions. Smart city evolution is becoming a trend not only in mega-urban areas but also spread to many medium-sized cities in Vietnam. There is quite a lot of discussion on smart cities at an essential period, in particular, smart technology from the perspective of traditional urban policy. However, the ways of development focused on technology aspects have criticized because of removing different levels of elements surrounding smart cities. When the government does not consider the various factors in the implementation of smart policy, it may not effectively provide quality services to citizens, because smart cities are not only concerned with technical factors, but also the intricate surroundings. As an end-user of public services, carrying out interactions between the physical system and human, stakeholders must also contribute ideas for policy-making processes and co-create successful city solutions. Establishing the role of stakeholders in smart city development journey has identified as the main challenge for all cities around the world. Prompt stakeholder participation in all steps, which can help regulators effectively collect and analyze data thence right decision making in smart city development process. Thus, the purpose of this thesis conducts scientific research on smart city development, providing integrated guidelines about the smart city development readiness for medium-sized cities in Vietnam by the stakeholder approach. The thesis begins with a review of documents related to the strategy for developing smart cities and estimate research factors. In this process, the study examines uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process to conduct ranking of factors. The result shows that a top priority of internal factors is citizen participation (0.4141) then administration (0.3625), infrastructure (0.2234). External factors took the order of political will (0.5093), stakeholders (0.3373), and the technology era (0.1535). The thesis continues to present survey results in three medium-sized cities in Vietnam including Da Lat, Nha Trang, and Bac Ninh. The study based on linear Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) conducted to identify factors that influence smart city development readiness (adjusted R2=0.589) . The result shows that there are three main factors affecting the readiness to develop a smart city including; Technological Readiness, Organizational Readiness, and Environmental Readiness. In particular, Organizational Readiness has the strongest impact on Smart City Development Readiness (β coefficient = 0.415; t-value = 8.960; p = 0.000). Finally, the thesis concludes with comprises the integrated framework of effective strategic guidelines, managerial, and operational principles that characterize successful smart city development from the foundation stage for Vietnam medium-sized cities.Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Overview 1 1.2 Purpose of the Research 6 1.3 Contribution of the Research 7 1.4 Research Outline 8 Chapter 2. Literature Review 11 2.1 Smart City 11 2.1.1 The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Smart City Emergence 11 2.1.2 Smart City Definitions 13 2.1.3 Smart City Paradigms 17 2.2 Vietnam Smart City Development Context 19 2.3 The foundation of smart city development components 21 2.3.1 Internal Factors 21 2.3.1.1 Citizen Participation 21 2.3.1.2 Administration 23 2.3.1.3 Infrastructure 25 2.3.2 External Factors 28 2.3.2.1 Political Will 28 2.3.2.2 Stakeholder 29 2.3.2.3 Technology Era 31 2.4 Stakeholder Approach to Smart City Development 33 2.5 Existing Stakeholder Study and Lesson Learned 35 2.6 Conclusion 39 Chapter 3. Determinant Factors in Smart City Development 41 3.1 Methodology 41 3.1.1 Model approach 41 3.1.2 Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method research 43 3.1.3 Experts Evaluation Synthesis 47 3.1.4 Data Collection 47 3.2 Estimation of Results 50 3.2.1 Synthesis of Priorities 50 3.2.2 The Relative Importance and Priority of Primary Layer 55 3.2.3 The Relative Importance and Priority of Secondary Layer 58 3.3 Conclusion 61 Chapter 4. Study on the Role of Stakeholder Approach for Sustainable Smart City Development 63 4.1 Hypotheses Development 63 4.1.1 Smart City Development Readiness 63 4.1.2 Technological Readiness 64 4.1.3 Organizational Readiness 66 4.1.4 Environmental Readiness 68 4.2 Methodology 71 4.2.1 Model 71 4.2.2 Preliminary Research 73 4.2.3 Primary Research 76 4.2.3.1 Survey Approach 76 4.2.3.2 Survey questionnaire 78 4.2.3.3 Data Collecting 79 4.2.3.4 Distribution of Respondents 80 4.3 Estimation of Results 83 4.3.1 Measurement Model 83 4.3.1.1 Cronbach’s Alpha Test 83 4.3.1.2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis 85 4.3.2 Structural Model 89 4.3.2.1 Measurement structural 89 4.3.2.2 Bootstrapping Test 91 4.3.2.3 Hypothesis Testing 93 4.4 Conclusion 97 Chapter 5. Discussion & Conclusion 99 5.1 Discussion and Implication 99 5.1.1 Discussion 99 5.1.2 Implication 108 5.2 Conclusion 120 5.3 Limitation and Future Work 122 References 123 국문 요약 152 Appendix A: Survey Questionnaire for AHP 154 Appendix B: Survey Questionnaire for smart city development readiness: Stakeholder approach 160 Appendix C: Discriminant Validity & Variance inflation factor 163Docto

Multi-criteria decision-making prototype for the 4th construction revolution implementation readiness using intellectual capital perspective

The fourth industrial revolution, so-called Industry 4.0 has transformed the decision-making process by increasing the use of information and digitisation technologies, which resulted in improving the performance and structuring the management process to the industry. Thus, in recent years, the implementation level of information and digitisation technologies in the construction industry, termed as ‘Construction 4.0 (CR4.0)’, has increased rapidly. However, the construction industry has been unable to translate its acquired knowledge into actionable, transformational and strategic goals towards CR4.0. CR4.0 has changed the nature of competitive resources by reshaping the structure and way construction firms work. Construction firms face various technological, human, and process-related challenges. The starting point for this research was based on exploring the potentials in reskilling and upskilling knowledge through the development of Intellectual Capital (IC) of the construction firms. As a result, based on the Resource-based View theory, CR4.0 implementation process has been approached as a knowledge-based innovation which occurred with the development of three IC capitals: Human Capital (HC), Relationship Capital (RC) and Structure Capital (SC ). Hence, this research aims to develop a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) prototype, used to support decision-making in CR4.0 readiness, named as the 'Construction Firm's Industry 4.0 Readiness MCDM (ConFIRM)’. The first objective is to identify the critical criteria of IC that may affect the CR4.0 implementation readiness. The process involved Systematic Literature review and semi-structured interviews. The second objective is to investigate the significant level of IC affecting CR4.0 implementation readiness through Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The third objective is to derive the weightage of criteria and sub-criteria of ConFIRM through Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP). The fourth objective is to develop a prototype called as ConFIRM that comprising of 3 main criteria, 16 sub-criteria and 92 super sub-criteria according to their significance weightage in achieving CR4.0 implementation readiness. The MCDM results indicated HC (37%) to be the most critical CR4.0 main criteria, followed by SC (34%), and RC (29%) respectively. The HC represented the cumulative tacit knowledge within the organisation, and it would be the main generator of intangibles. For the sub-criteria level, the results indicated that “Management Capital (12%)” has been considered the most critical CR4.0 sub-criteria. The second most critical sub-criteria would be the “Experience Capital (10%)”, followed by “Process Capital (8%)”. On the other hand, the “Sustainable Capital (2%)” was the least critical sub-criteria. Then, the weightages were formulated into automated MCDM prototype, where the scores were calculated using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), indicating the CR4.0 implementation readiness. As for the fourth objective, ConFIRM was adopted in real case studies and evaluated based on the judgement of five experts to determine its applicability and validity in evaluating CR4.0 readiness of contracting firms in Malaysia. In the case studies, the experts recognised the performance and effectiveness of ConFIRM as the novel method for CR4.0 readiness evaluation. ConFIRM would be able to add value to the development of CR4.0 strategies by identifying the corrective/preventive actions needed, based on the readiness assessment, before the start of the implementation process

Decision making methods at initiation phase for housing development

Late delivery and sick housing project problems were attributed to poor decision making. These problems are the string of housing developer that prefers to create their own approach based on their experiences and expertise with the simplest approach by just applying the obtainable standards and rules in decision making. This paper seeks to identify the decision making methods for housing development at the initiation phase in Malaysia. The research involved Delphi method by using questionnaire survey which involved 50 numbers of developers as samples for the primary stage of collect data. However, only 34 developers contributed to the second stage of the information gathering process. At the last stage, only 12 developers were left for the final data collection process. Finding affirms that Malaysian developers prefer to make their investment decisions based on simple interpolation of historical data and using simple statistical or mathematical techniques in producing the required reports. It was suggested that they seemed to skip several important decision- making functions at the primary development stage. These shortcomings were mainly due to time and financial constraints and the lack of statistical or mathematical expertise among the professional and management groups in the developer organisations

Decision making methods at initiation phase for housing development

Late delivery and sick housing project problems were attributed to poor decision making. These problems are the string of housing developer that prefers to create their own approach based on their experiences and expertise with the simplest approach by just applying the obtainable standards and rules in decision making. This paper seeks to identify the decision making methods for housing development at the initiation phase in Malaysia. The research involved Delphi method by using questionnaire survey which involved 50 numbers of developers as samples for the primary stage of collect data. However, only 34 developers contributed to the second stage of the information gathering process. At the last stage, only 12 developers were left for the final data collection process. Finding affirms that Malaysian developers prefer to make their investment decisions based on simple interpolation of historical data and using simple statistical or mathematical techniques in producing the required reports. It was suggested that they seemed to skip several important decision- making functions at the primary development stage. These shortcomings were mainly due to time and financial constraints and the lack of statistical or mathematical expertise among the professional and management groups in the developer organisations

R&D project selection: which criteria should we use?

Many companies around the world lay on R&D their chances to be profitable and still standing in a dynamic market. Tokeep the changes going, many ideas surge and some are transformed into projects. Since the resources are limited, organizations are obliged to select only the most suitable projects to attend their objectives. This is an old practice. However, project portfolio characteristics has changed. The portfolio objectives of today go beyond profit: strategy, environment and society has also become import, along with manyother decision criteria. The computational power was also enhanced, making multidata decision approaches feasible, even forsmall-profitable organizations. On the last half century, many author shave proposed multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods for project portfolio selection (PPS) on Research and Development (R&D). However, only a few gave importance to the criteria used, which would be a central issue on any multicriteria decision. Thus, in order to contribute to R&D PPS field of study, this thesis investigates two propositions: (1) most criteria used in R&D PPS may be represented by a smaller list of criteria, and (2) the criteria used in R&D PPS can be selected in a fuzzy environment, according to their influence and importance. To do so, we explore the 227 criteria used in R&D PPS from 1970 to 2019, summarizing them in a list of 23 criteria with broader scopes and 8 criteria groups. We have also performed a Systematic Literature Review to get to the initial 227 criteria and to lighten the research opportunities in MCDM-based R&D PPS explored by this thesis. We also propose a novel MCDM approach for criteria selection, that integrates Fuzzy-based DEMATEL and Fuzzy-AHP Extend Analysis methods. Experts from a representative electrical-public Brazilian R&D organization have built and validated bothlist and method. Experts from other representative public Brazilian R&D organizations have also contributed in other research steps. All involved organizations manage together R&D portfolios valued around US$ 5 billion each year, which account for 38% of all Brazilian annually expenditures in R&D projects. In a overall manner, the results provide guidance on the topic and facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation concerning the criteria selectionprocessinMCDM-basedR&D PPS