New Progress of Grey System Theory in The New Millennium

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000- 2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory. Design/methodology/approach –The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “Kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of GM(1,1), such as Even Grey Model(EGM), Original Difference Grey Model(ODGM), Even Difference Grey Model(EDGM), Discrete Grey Model(DGM) and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well. Findings –The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper. Practical implications – A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science, and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate. Originality/value –The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section. Keywords Grey systems theory, Operations of grey numbers, Buffer operators, Grey forecasting models, Grey incidence analysis models, Grey cluster evaluation models, Grey decision models, Combined grey models, Grey contro

Digitizing grey portions of e-governance

Purpose: The purpose of this research paper is to assess e-governance efficacy in various sectors of India. The paper develops on Grey System Theory (GST) methodology and enlightens grey portions of e-governance in select sectors. Research study identifies few grey criteria which affect implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) applications to support sustainable e-governance. Such criteria are related to information security breaches, information technology (IT) policy implementation, investments and strategic advantages for the various sector developments. Design/methodology/approach: Considering “information” as a sensitive element to security for administration and part of dark portion to Indian economy, GST-based COmplex PRroportional ASsessment (COPRAS-G) method is adopted to assess the e-governance efficacy. The method provides flexible multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to assess e-governance in prioritizing the sector alternatives of future strategic development. Priority order of select sectors is estimated, and COPRAS-G method is used in the research study to support decision-making on e-governance. Study compares ten major gross domestic product-dependent sectors based on few grey criteria. These criteria are chosen based on authors’ perspective on this study and feedback received from government officials of district levels under the Digital India-training programme. To address the subjectivity that lies in e-governance grey areas of sector, criteria are also weighted using fuzzy scale. Later methodology-based results are presented to draw a strategic road map for strategic development of the country. Findings: On applying COPRAS-G method to predict pessimistic, optimistic and realistic scenarios of e-governance implementation across the ten sectors, high priory order in realistic scenario of results shows that implementation of ICT applications for e-governance should be in the sectors such as environment, climate change and in the railways. Industrial sector is also ranked as the preferred one over the other sectors on the basis of e-governance efficacy assessment. Research limitations/implications: Here COPRAS-G method is used as MCDM techniques. However, few other MCDM techniques such as GRA, DRSA, VIKOR, SMAA, SWARA and SAW can be also explored to outrank various Indian sectors to deal with subjectivity in decision-making. Practical implications: Implementation of ICT applications to support e-governance varies from sector to sector. ICT-based governance involves high degree of complexity in driving the operations for development of respective sectors. Therefore, government and policymakers need more flexibility to overcome present barriers of sector development. Such research can support decision-making where GST-based COPRAS-G method is able to capture and address the breaches of information security. Moreover, management concern for sector development has been presented on the basis of pessimistic, optimistic and realistic scenarios more precisely. Social implications: The results can provide guidance to the academicians, policymakers and public sectors highlighting various possible measures to handle the security breaches in multi-facet intention of sustainable development. The outcomes from MCDM framework can also help in drawing a rough trajectory of strategy, i.e. development of ICTs applications and e-governance process. Originality/value: This paper can supplement and act as the support for decision-making in conflicting situations on different flexible scenarios. Moreover, such work can synergize conflicting ideas of decision makers, academics and various other stakeholders of the Indian IT sector

Simulation in manufacturing and business: A review

Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.This paper reports the results of a review of simulation applications published within peer-reviewed literature between 1997 and 2006 to provide an up-to-date picture of the role of simulation techniques within manufacturing and business. The review is characterised by three factors: wide coverage, broad scope of the simulation techniques, and a focus on real-world applications. A structured methodology was followed to narrow down the search from around 20,000 papers to 281. Results include interesting trends and patterns. For instance, although discrete event simulation is the most popular technique, it has lower stakeholder engagement than other techniques, such as system dynamics or gaming. This is highly correlated with modelling lead time and purpose. Considering application areas, modelling is mostly used in scheduling. Finally, this review shows an increasing interest in hybrid modelling as an approach to cope with complex enterprise-wide systems

Grey-box model identification via evolutionary computing

This paper presents an evolutionary grey-box model identification methodology that makes the best use of a priori knowledge on a clear-box model with a global structural representation of the physical system under study, whilst incorporating accurate blackbox models for immeasurable and local nonlinearities of a practical system. The evolutionary technique is applied to building dominant structural identification with local parametric tuning without the need of a differentiable performance index in the presence of noisy data. It is shown that the evolutionary technique provides an excellent fitting performance and is capable of accommodating multiple objectives such as to examine the relationships between model complexity and fitting accuracy during the model building process. Validation results show that the proposed method offers robust, uncluttered and accurate models for two practical systems. It is expected that this type of grey-box models will accommodate many practical engineering systems for a better modelling accuracy

Helping Business Schools Engage with Real Problems: The Contribution of Critical Realism and Systems Thinking

The world faces major problems, not least climate change and the financial crisis, and business schools have been criticised for their failure to help address these issues and, in the case of the financial meltdown, for being causally implicated in it. In this paper we begin by describing the extent of what has been called the rigour/relevance debate. We then diagnose the nature of the problem in terms of historical, structural and contextual mechanisms that initiated and now sustain an inability of business schools to engage with real-world issues. We then propose a combination of measures, which mutually reinforce each other, that are necessary to break into this vicious circle – critical realism as an underpinning philosophy that supports and embodies the next points; holism and transdisciplinarity; multimethodology (mixed-methods research); and a critical and ethical-committed stance. OR and management science have much to contribute in terms of both powerful analytical methods and problem structuring methods