A Novel Approach to Incubator Evaluations: The PROMETHEE Outranking Procedures

Considerable public resources are devoted to the establishment and operation of business incubators (BIs), which are seen as catalysts for the promotion of entrepreneurship, innovation activities and regional development. Despite the vast amount of research that has focused on the outcomes or effectiveness of incubator initiatives and how to measure incubator performance, there is still little understanding of how to determine incubators that are more effective than others. Based on data from 410 graduate firms, this paper applies the multi-criteria outranking technique PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation) and compares the long-term effectiveness of five technology-oriented BIs in Germany. This is the first time that outranking procedures are used in incubator evaluations. In particular, we investigate whether PROMETHEE is a well-suited methodological approach for the evaluation and comparisons in the specific context of business incubation.business incubators, evaluation, performance measures, PROMETHEE, Outranking

ELECTRE I Method Using Hesitant Linguistic Term Sets: An Application to Supplier Selection

Decision making is a common process in human activities. Every person or organization needs to make decisions besides dealing with uncertainty and vagueness associated with human cognition. The theory of fuzzy logic provides a mathematical base to model the uncertainities. Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS) creates an appropriate method to deal with uncertainty in decision making. Managerial decision making generally implies that decision making process conducts multiple and conflicting criteria. Multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a widely applied decision making method. Outranking methods are one type of MCDA methods which facilitate the decision making process through comparing binary relations in order to rank the alternatives. Elimination et Choix Traduisant la Réalité (ELECTRE), means elimination and choice that translates reality, is an outranking method. In this paper, an extended version of ELECTRE I method using HFLTS is proposed. Finally, a real case problem is provided to illustrate the HFLTS-ELECTRE I method

Sustainability as a Multi-criteria Concept

Sustainability is a fairly old concept, born in the 18th century in the field of forestry, within a mono-functionality perspective. The concept has considerably evolved in the last few years towards a multi-functionality context, with applications reported in practically all areas of economic interest. On the other hand, modern sustainability is a complex problem, for two reasons: a) The multiplicity of functions of a very different nature involved in the process and b) The manner in which different segments of the society or stakeholders perceive the relative importance of these functions. For the above reasons, a realistic approach for dealing with the sustainability issue requires taking into consideration multiple criteria of different nature (economic, environmental and social), and in many cases within a participatory decision making framework. This book presents a collection of papers, dealing with different theoretical and applied issues of sustainability, with the help of a modern multi-criteria decision-making theory, with a single as well as several stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Hopefully, this material will encourage academics and practitioners to alter their research in this hot and vital topic. After all, the sustainable management of the environment and its embedded resources is one of the most important, if not the major challenge of the 21st century

Synthesis of main criteria, methods and issues of multicriteria supplier selection

O objetivo do presente artigo é identificar na literatura quais são os principais critérios considerados no processo de decisão, os principais métodos individuais e combinados e os subproblemas da seleção de fornecedores no contexto multicritério. Cabe ressaltar que as tarefas de avaliar e identificar os melhores fornecedores para um novo produto ou serviço são essenciais ao gerenciamento da cadeia de suprimentos (GCS). Para executá-las apropriadamente, considerando-se a natureza multicritério da seleção de fornecedores, torna-se necessária a inclusão de uma abordagem de agregação dos critérios, cuja escolha depende basicamente dos objetivos da decisão, tipos de critérios a serem utilizados e racionalidade do decisor. Para atingir o objetivo proposto, optou-se por utilizar o procedimento da revisão sistemática da literatura que segue o protocolo proposto por Cronin, Ryan e Coughlan (2008), abrangendo artigos publicados nas bases ISI Web of Knowledge e Scopus, no período de 2001 a 2012. Além de sintetizar o conhecimento acerca do tema, o artigo ressalta os principais critérios, métodos e subproblemas da seleção de fornecedores, com isso, contribui ao identificar os aspectos que devem ser desenvolvidos em estudos futuros e ao apresentar aos gestores abordagens existentes para a tomada de decisões relativa à seleção de fornecedores de forma sistematizada.The purpose of this paper is to identify the main criteria considered in supplier selection, the main methods used and sub-problems in a multicriteria context. The tasks of identifying the best suppliers of new products or services or even for evaluating the performance of an existing supplier is essential to supply chain management (SCM). In order to perform these tasks properly, and considering the multicriteria nature of supplier selection, it is necessary to include an approach using aggregation of criteria, primarily chosen depending on the objectives of the decision, types of criteria to be used and the rationality of the decision maker. In order to achieve this objective this research used a systematic literature review of articles published in ISI Web of Knowledge and Scopus for the period 2001-2012 following the protocol proposed by Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan (2008). In addition to synthesizing knowledge about the subject, the article highlights the key criteria, methods and sub-problems of selection of suppliers, contributing by identifying the aspects that should be developed in future studies. It also provides managers with existing approaches to making decisions about supplier selection in a systematic way

Integration of Analytic Network Process and PROMETHEE in Supplier Performance Evaluation

Supplier performance evaluation is one of the important factors in the supply chain because it is one of the company's strategies for increasing customer satisfaction and also maintaining the company's services in meeting consumer demand. This study proposes the integration of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) and the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) to evaluate supplier performance. The integration of the two methods is proposed to obtain more complex assessment results because the combination of the two methods considers various criteria derived from ANP and various preferences from PROMETHEE, so both methods are very good to use instead of using just ANP or PROMETHEE or other methods. ANP exhibit more complex relationships between criteria and levels in the decision hierarchy, while PROMETHEE provides decision-makers with flexible and straightforward outranking to analyze multi-criteria problems. In this study, ANP is used to weight the criteria, and PROMETHEE is used to rank suppliers in evaluating supplier performance. Integrating these two methods provides more objective and accurate results in multi-criteria decision-making. The proposed method is validated by solving an industrial case of supplier evaluation problem using the real data from the skewer industry. Finally, some useful implications for managerial decision-making are discussed

A comparative study of multiple-criteria decision-making methods under stochastic inputs

This paper presents an application and extension of multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to account for stochastic input variables. More in particular, a comparative study is carried out among well-known and widely-applied methods in MCDM, when applied to the reference problem of the selection of wind turbine support structures for a given deployment location. Along with data from industrial experts, six deterministic MCDM methods are studied, so as to determine the best alternative among the available options, assessed against selected criteria with a view toward assigning confidence levels to each option. Following an overview of the literature around MCDM problems, the best practice implementation of each method is presented aiming to assist stakeholders and decision-makers to support decisions in real-world applications, where many and often conflicting criteria are present within uncertain environments. The outcomes of this research highlight that more sophisticated methods, such as technique for the order of preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) and Preference Ranking Organization method for enrichment evaluation (PROMETHEE), better predict the optimum design alternative

MCDA for sustainability assessment – insights to Helmholtz Association activities

The "MCDA for sustainability assessment – insights to Helmholtz Association activities" Working Paper aims to compile and reflect previous and on-going work within the Helmholtz Association related to MCDA, in particular, to present use cases and key methodological aspects. It has a focus on but is not limited to energy technologies and systems and is mainly based on the presentations held at the online workshop “Multi criteria decision analysis for sustainability assessment of energy technologies and systems”. The workshop was organized within the activities of the Helmholtz program ESD Topic 1 "Energy System Transformation" and took place on November 22nd, 2021