An analytic framework to assess organizational resilience

Background: Resilience Engineering is a paradigm for safety management that focuses on coping with complexity to achieve success, even considering several conflicting goals. Modern socio-technical systems have to be resilient to comply with the variability of everyday activities, the tight-coupled and underspecified nature of work and the nonlinear interactions among agents. At organizational level, resilience can be described as a combination of four cornerstones: monitoring, responding, learning and anticipating. Methods: Starting from these four categories, this paper aims at defining a semi-quantitative analytic framework to measure organizational resilience in complex socio-technical systems, combining the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results: This paper presents an approach for defining resilience abilities of an organization, creating a structured domain-dependent framework to define a resilience profile at different levels of abstraction, to identify weaknesses and strengths of the system and thus potential actions to increase system’s adaptive capacity. An illustrative example in an anaesthesia department clarifies the outcomes of the approach. Conclusions: The outcome of the RAG, i.e. a weighted set of probing questions, can be used in different domains, as a support tool in a wider Safety-II oriented managerial action to bring safety management into the core business of the organization

Public initiatives of settlement transformation. A theoretical-methodological approach to selecting tools of multi-criteria decision analysis

In Europe, the operating context in which initiatives of settlement transformation are currently initiated is characterized by a complex, elaborate combination of technical, regulatory and governance-related factors. A similar set of considerations makes it necessary to address the complex decision-making problems to be resolved through multidisciplinary, comparative approaches designed to rationalize the process and treat the elements to be considered in systematic fashion with respect to the range of alternatives available as solutions. Within a context defined in this manner, decision-making processes must often be used to obtain multidisciplinary and multidimensional analyses to support the choices made by the decision-makers. Such analyses are carried out using multi-criteria tools designed to arrive at syntheses of the numerous forms of input data needed to describe decision-making problems of similar complexity, so that one or more outcomes of the synthesis make possible informed, well thought-out, strategic decisions. The technical literature on the topic proposes numerous tools of multi-criteria analysis for application in different decision-making contexts. Still, no specific contributions have been drawn up to date on the approach to take in selecting the tool best suited to providing adequate responses to the queries of evaluation that arise most frequently in the various fields of application, and especially in the settlement sector. The objective of this paper is to propose, by formulating a taxonomy of the endogenous and exogenous variables of tools of multi-criteria analysis, a methodology capable of selecting the tool best suited to the queries of evaluation which arise regarding the chief categories of decision-making problems, and particularly in the settlement sector

Majority multiplicative ordered weighting geometric operators and their use in the aggregation of multiplicative preference relations

In this paper, we introduced the majority multiplicative ordered weighted geometric (MM-OWG) operator and its properties. This is a general type of the aggregate dependent weights which we have applied in geometric environment. The MM-OWG operator is based on the OWG operators and on the majority operators. We provide the MM-OWG operators to aggregate in a multiplicative environment, i.e. when it’s necessary to aggregate information given on a ratio scale. Therefore, it allows us to incorporate the concept of majority in problems where the information is provided using a ratio scale. Its properties are studied and an application for multicriteria decision making problems with multiplicative preference relations is presented

An evaluation methodology for ergonomic design of electronic consumer products based on fuzzy axiomatic design

This article is posted with permission of OCP Science imprint. Copyright @ 2008 Old City Publishing Group.The development life cycle of software and electronic products has been shortened by the growth of rapid prototyping techniques. The evaluation of electronic consumer products should consider hardware and software as well as the ergonomic usability, emotional appeal and aesthetic integrity of the design. This research follows a systematic approach to develop an evaluation methodology for electronic mobile products on ergonomic design. The proposed methodology is based on fuzzy multi attribute decision making and fuzzy axiomatic design realized in three steps; determination of ergonomic attributes for electronic consumer products, determination of a representative set of alternatives, and selection of the best alternative in terms of ergonomic design by utilizing fuzzy axiomatic design. A case study is also provided to support the proposed methodology

AN ANALYSIS OF PORT COMPETITIVENESS BETWEEN SHANGHAI AND NINGBO USING AHP

This thesis is about choosing a better port of call between Shanghai and Ningbo port for general and bulk carriers through a comparison of different respects of port conditions between the two ports, so as to help ship owners to obtain the highest benefits. At the first sector, relevant literature theories and background of the two ports will be introduced. Then a comparison between the two ports will be performed as mentioned above, Still, a questionnaire will also be needed after comparing. The comparison is based on theory and questionnaire is according to the real reactions in the market. Whether they are not compatible or not, in the last sector, an analysis with conclusion will be given.CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE 1 1.1.1 Background 1 1.1.2 Objective 3 1.2 RESEARCH SCOPE 4 1.3 METHODOLOGY AND STRUCTURE 5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7 2.1 CONCEPTUAL DEFINITION OF PORT COMPETITIVENESS 7 2.2 PREVIOUS RESEARCH 13 CHAPTER 3 COMPARISON BETWEEN SHANGHAI AND NINGBO-ZHOUSHAN PORT 17 3.1 COMPARISON ON PORT CONDITION 17 3.1.1 Port Cost 18 3.1.2 Port Equipments 22 3.1.3 Port Service 25 3.1.4 Cargo Resource 26 3.2 PRESENT ACHIEVEMENT ON CARGO THROUGHPUT 31 3.3 PORT’S CHARACTERISTICS 36 3.3.1 Ningbo-zhoushan Port 36 3.3.2 Shanghai Port 38 CHAPTER 4 AHP METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS RESULT 40 4.1 ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS 40 4.1.1 AHP Conception 40 4.1.2 AHP Procedures 41 4.1.3 AHP Methodology 42 4.2 SELECTION OF EVALUATION FACTORS 49 4.2.1 Model Establishment 49 4.2.2 Factors Specification 53 4.3 RESULT OF AHP ANALYSIS 59 4.3.1 Hierarchic Structure Model 59 4.3.2 Result of AHP Analysis 60 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 70 REFERENCE 7

Linking objective and subjective modeling in engineering design through arc-elastic dominance

Engineering design in mechanics is a complex activity taking into account both objective modeling processes derived from physical analysis and designers’ subjective reasoning. This paper introduces arc-elastic dominance as a suitable concept for ranking design solutions according to a combination of objective and subjective models. Objective models lead to the aggregation of information derived from physics, economics or eco-environmental analysis into a performance indicator. Subjective models result in a confidence indicator for the solutions’ feasibility. Arc-elastic dominant design solutions achieve an optimal compromise between gain in performance and degradation in confidence. Due to the definition of arc-elasticity, this compromise value is expressive and easy for designers to interpret despite the difference in the nature of the objective and subjective models. From the investigation of arc-elasticity mathematical properties, a filtering algorithm of Pareto-efficient solutions is proposed and illustrated through a design knowledge modeling framework. This framework notably takes into account Harrington’s desirability functions and Derringer’s aggregation method. It is carried out through the re-design of a geothermal air conditioning system