The Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process in Supplier Selection for Specialty Paper Making Company, A case study in Anhui Welbon Gaosen Paper Co.,Ltd

Majority of enterprises choose to implement JIT procurement model to face the marketing fierce competition in recent decades. Single sourcing supplier is the main characteristic in JIT procurement, thence, selecting a suitable supplier become increasingly important. The purpose of the research is to select the most suitable supplier for the case company. More specifical, to identify supplier selection criteria for the case company, then exploiting a flexible analytic model which is AHP to help the case company choose a suitable supplier for implementing JIT Procurement, finally suggestions are given for case company in supplier relationship management, which based on implementing JIT Procurement. The study begins with literature review of purchasing behavior, supplier related theory and AHP method. Afterwards, qualitative research method of interview and quantitative research method of questionnaires were utilized to identify evaluation criteria and collect pair-wise comparison data for judgment matrixes. Finally, eigenvectors and eigenvalues of judgment matrixes were calculated for ranking priorities and all vectors were passed by consistency verification. Based on the result from previous research, supplier with the total highest score becomes the most suitable alternative. In addition, suggestions of supplier relationship management are given for the sake of success further implementation of JIT procurement in the case company.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

The Influence of Age, Work Experience, Education Level, and Score on a Standardized Pre-employment Competency Exam on the Outcome of a Pre-employment Polygraph Exam

This study examined the influence of age, work experience, education level, and score on a standardized pre-employment competency exam on the outcome of a pre-employment polygraph exam. Due to the strict selection requirements and competitive nature of sensitive government and public safety positions, organizations compete in the costly endeavor to hire qualified applicants efficiently and effectively. As these organizations fail to meet the required hiring levels, their responsibilities in public and national security cannot be carried out. This study was conducted in an effort to reduce the time and financial resources an organization must appropriate on applicants that cannot successfully navigate the stringent pre-employment screening process. The data were obtained from the human resources department of an organization that concentrates on national security and public safety. These data were de-identified, anonymous archival data derived from a random sample of three hundred (n = 300) applicants during the period between 2015 and 2016. This study utilized binary logistic regression, a discriminant analysis, and a multiple linear regression to analyze the data. The quantitative analysis utilized in this study accounted for the variables of age, work experience, education level, and score on a standardized pre-employment competency exam. The results of these analyses indicated that certain characteristics did influence the likelihood of whether an applicant would continue in the hiring process after the pre-employment polygraph examination. Work experience, education level, and score on a standardized pre-employment competency exam were all found to be significant

Software Reuse Issues

NASA Langley Research Center sponsored a Workshop on NASA Research in Software Reuse on November 17-18, 1988 in Melbourne, Florida, hosted by Software Productivity Solutions, Inc. Participants came from four NASA centers and headquarters, eight NASA contractor companies, and three research institutes. Presentations were made on software reuse research at the four NASA centers; on Eli, the reusable software synthesis system designed and currently under development by SPS; on Space Station Freedom plans for reuse; and on other reuse research projects. This publication summarizes the presentations made and the issues discussed during the workshop

Cyber Security of Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures are vital assets for public safety, economic welfare, and the national security of countries. The vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures have increased with the widespread use of information technologies. As Critical National Infrastructures are becoming more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, their protection becomes a significant issue for organizations as well as nations. The risks to continued operations, from failing to upgrade aging infrastructure or not meeting mandated regulatory regimes, are considered highly significant, given the demonstrable impact of such circumstances. Due to the rapid increase of sophisticated cyber threats targeting critical infrastructures with significant destructive effects, the cybersecurity of critical infrastructures has become an agenda item for academics, practitioners, and policy makers. A holistic view which covers technical, policy, human, and behavioural aspects is essential to handle cyber security of critical infrastructures effectively. Moreover, the ability to attribute crimes to criminals is a vital element of avoiding impunity in cyberspace. In this book, both research and practical aspects of cyber security considerations in critical infrastructures are presented. Aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of cyber security, authors from academia, government, and industry have contributed 13 chapters. The issues that are discussed and analysed include cybersecurity training, maturity assessment frameworks, malware analysis techniques, ransomware attacks, security solutions for industrial control systems, and privacy preservation methods

Continual improvement: A bibliography with indexes, 1992-1993

This bibliography lists 606 references to reports and journal articles entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database during 1992 to 1993. Topics cover the philosophy and history of Continual Improvement (CI), basic approaches and strategies for implementation, and lessons learned from public and private sector models. Entries are arranged according to the following categories: Leadership for Quality, Information and Analysis, Strategic Planning for CI, Human Resources Utilization, Management of Process Quality, Supplier Quality, Assessing Results, Customer Focus and Satisfaction, TQM Tools and Philosophies, and Applications. Indexes include subject, personal author, corporate source, contract number, report number, and accession number

The construction and application of brand value evaluation model for China's pharmaceutical industry

In today's information age, strong brands can prolong the life cycle of products and enhance the competitiveness and overall value of pharmaceutical enterprises. Therefore, this study hopes to build a set of brand value evaluation system suitable for Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and dig deep into the connotation of brand value of Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Through a brief analysis of the advantages and limitations of the current mainstream brand value assessment methods at home and abroad, this study selects the relatively authoritative Interbrand model to optimize and improve. The improvement of Interbrand model mainly involves the following three aspects: First, for the determination of the brand function index, the analytic hierarchy process is used instead of the expert scoring method to determine the excess return that the brand brings to the enterprise. The second is to introduce consumer strength and socio-cultural strength when calculating brand strength. Thirdly, the weight of each factor of brand strength is adjusted, and the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to calculate the evaluation index. Finally, Y Company is taken as an example to apply the adjusted Interbrand model, and the rationality of the results of this study is expounded. This study modifies the Interbrand model as the basic model, and preliminarily constructs the brand value evaluation system of Chinese pharmaceutical industry, hoping to enrich the research of brand value of Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises with a certain reference significance.Atualmente, na era da informação, marcas fortes podem prolongar o ciclo de vida dos seus produtos e melhorar a competitividade e valor global das empresas na indústria farmacêutica. Neste sentido, este estudo espera contribuir para a construção de um sistema de avaliação de valor da marca ajustado à industria farmacêutica na China, procurando aprofundar, igualmente, a noção de valor de marca para esta indústria. Através de uma análise das vantagens e desvantagens dos principais métodos de avaliação de marca, nacional e internacionalmente, este estudo selecionou o modelo Interbrand para o optimizar e melhorar neste contexto. A tentativa de melhoria do Modelo Interbrand envolve 3 aspetos: primeiro, para a determinação do índice de função de marca, o processo de hierarquia analítica é usado em vez do método de pontuação de especialistas para determinar o retorno que a marca traz à empresa. O segundo procura apresentar a força do consumidor e a força sociocultural ao calcular a força da marca. Finalmente, o peso de cada fator de força da marca é ajustado, e o método de avaliação abrangente "fuzzy" é usado para calcular o índice de avaliação. Finalmente, o Grupo Y é usado como exemplo para aplicar o Modelo Interbrand ajustado, e a racionalidade dos resultados deste estudo é apresentada Este estudo modifica o modelo Interbrand como modelo básico e procura atualizá-lo para construir um sistema de avaliação do valor da marca para a indústria farmacêutica na China esperando enriquecer a investigação nesta área

Selection of Projects for Project Portfolio Using Fuzzy TOPSIS and Machine Learning

Project portfolio management (PPM) is extremely important nowadays due to the increasing severe competitions, accelerated product developments, project complexity, uncertainty, and challenges from global competitors. Therefore, businesses involved in many (dozens or even hundreds) projects need to formulate tactics and strategies to secure firms’ competencies and, most importantly, increase their productivities. Under this globalization context, PPM is to opti-mize the value provided to the customers while minimizing risks and the resources committed to the projects, while critical success factors (CSFs) is applied to anticipate the project’s risk and financial value by early assessment thus to help from the organizational level to predict the per-formance. Despite its importance, the literature on PPM and CSFs at a project level is rather limited, which demands a more profound knowledge about the assessment, ranking, and prior-itization of projects in the early stage. This study seeks to address the following two research questions: Do CSFs vary according to the project category, and how a supportive method can be established to help portfolio managers to select the project for portfolio. As a result, this re-search focuses on the multi-project context in order to fill the above-mentioned research gaps. As the contributions of this study, this study intends to (1) verify the hypothesis that different project category has different CSFs, and (2) contribute to explore how machine learning technol-ogy can be utilized for project selection. Projektisalkun hallinta (PPM) on nykyään erittäin tärkeää lisääntyvien kovien kilpailujen, nopeutuneen tuotekehityksen, projektien monimutkaisuuden, epävarmuuden ja globaalien kilpailijoiden haasteiden vuoksi. Siksi moniin (kymmeniin tai jopa satoihin) hankkeisiin osallistuvien yritysten on laadittava taktiikat ja strategiat, joilla varmistetaan yritysten osaaminen ja mikä tärkeintä, lisää tuottavuuttaan. Tässä globalisaatiokehyksessä PPM: n on optimoitava asiakkaille tarjottu arvo minimoiden riskit ja hankkeisiin sitoutuvat resurssit, kun taas kriittisiä menestystekijöitä (CSF) käytetään ennakoimaan projektin riski ja taloudellinen arvo varhaisella arvioinnilla, jotta apua organisaatiotasolta suorituskyvyn ennustamiseksi. Tärkeydestään huolimatta kirjallisuus PPM: stä ja CSF: stä projektitasolla on melko rajallinen, mikä vaatii syvällisempää tietoa hankkeiden arvioinnista, luokittelusta ja ennakoinnista varhaisessa vaiheessa. Tässä tutkimuksessa pyritään käsittelemään kahta seuraavaa tutkimuskysymystä: vaihtelevatko CSF: t projektikategorian mukaan ja kuinka voidaan luoda tukeva menetelmä salkunhoitajien auttamiseksi valitsemaan projekti salkkuun. Tämän seurauksena tämä uudelleenhaku keskittyy moniprojektiyhteyteen edellä mainittujen tutkimuksen aukkojen täyttämiseksi. Tämän tutkimuksen myötä tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on (1) tarkistaa hypoteesi, että eri projektikategorioilla on erilaiset CSF: t, ja (2) myötävaikuttaa siihen, kuinka koneoppimisen tekniikkaa voidaan hyödyntää projektin valinnassa

Security Enhanced Applications for Information Systems

Every day, more users access services and electronically transmit information which is usually disseminated over insecure networks and processed by websites and databases, which lack proper security protection mechanisms and tools. This may have an impact on both the users’ trust as well as the reputation of the system’s stakeholders. Designing and implementing security enhanced systems is of vital importance. Therefore, this book aims to present a number of innovative security enhanced applications. It is titled “Security Enhanced Applications for Information Systems” and includes 11 chapters. This book is a quality guide for teaching purposes as well as for young researchers since it presents leading innovative contributions on security enhanced applications on various Information Systems. It involves cases based on the standalone, network and Cloud environments

Cybersecurity and the Digital Health: An Investigation on the State of the Art and the Position of the Actors

Cybercrime is increasingly exposing the health domain to growing risk. The push towards a strong connection of citizens to health services, through digitalization, has undisputed advantages. Digital health allows remote care, the use of medical devices with a high mechatronic and IT content with strong automation, and a large interconnection of hospital networks with an increasingly effective exchange of data. However, all this requires a great cybersecurity commitment—a commitment that must start with scholars in research and then reach the stakeholders. New devices and technological solutions are increasingly breaking into healthcare, and are able to change the processes of interaction in the health domain. This requires cybersecurity to become a vital part of patient safety through changes in human behaviour, technology, and processes, as part of a complete solution. All professionals involved in cybersecurity in the health domain were invited to contribute with their experiences. This book contains contributions from various experts and different fields. Aspects of cybersecurity in healthcare relating to technological advance and emerging risks were addressed. The new boundaries of this field and the impact of COVID-19 on some sectors, such as mhealth, have also been addressed. We dedicate the book to all those with different roles involved in cybersecurity in the health domain