Improving the quality of the industrial enterprise management based on the network-centric approach

The article examines the network-centric approach to the industrial enterprise management to improve the ef ciency and effectiveness in the implementation of production plans and maximize responsiveness to customers. A network-centric management means the decentralized enterprise group management. A group means a set of enterprise divisions, which should solve by joint efforts a certain case that occurs in the production process. The network-centric management involves more delegation of authority to the lower elements of the enterprise’s organizational structure. The industrial enterprise is considered as a large complex system (production system) functioning and controlled amidst various types of uncertainty: information support uncertainty and goal uncertainty or multicriteria uncertainty. The information support uncertainty occurs because the complex system functioning always takes place in the context of incomplete and fuzzy information. Goal uncertainty or multicriteria uncertainty caused by a great number of goalsestablished for the production system. The network-centric management task de nition by the production system is formulated. The authors offer a mathematical model for optimal planning of consumers’ orders production with the participation of the main enterprise divisions. The methods of formalization of various types of uncertainty in production planning tasks are considered on the basis of the application of the fuzzy sets theory. An enterprise command center is offered as an effective tool for making management decisions by divisions. The article demonstrates that decentralized group management methods can improve the ef ciency and effectiveness of the implementation of production plans through the self-organization mechanisms of enterprise divisions.The work has been prepared with the financial support from the Russian Ministry of Education and Science (Contract No. 02.G25.31.0068 of 23.05.2013 as part of the measure to implement Decision of the Russian Government No. 218)

Multicriteria decision making for enhanced perception-based multimedia communication

This paper proposes an approach that integrates technical concerns with user perceptual considerations for intelligent decision making in the construction of tailor-made multimedia communication protocols. Thus, the proposed approach, based on multicriteria decision making (MDM), incorporates not only classical networking considerations, but, indeed, user preferences as well. Furthermore, in keeping with the task-dependent nature consistently identified in multimedia scenarios, the suggested communication protocols also take into account the type of multimedia application that they are transporting. Lastly, this approach also opens the possibility for such protocols to dynamically adapt based on a changing operating environment and user's preferences

INTEGRATED DESIGN OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY OPTIONS - A MULTICRITERIA APPROACH

Energy planning has come a long way during the 20th century from an intuitive approach to a full-scale discipline, incorporating technological and economic dimensions. The latter include both the micro- and the macro- level, whereas the technological framework covers energy, technology, thermodynamics and thermo-economic approaches. It is only during the last two decades that the environmental aspects of energy conversion has started to assume the gravity that it should have been assigned perhaps from the start, with the deterioration of the environment, e.g. acid rain, urban pollution, global warming, etc. and the depletion of resources becoming issues of outmost importance. The emergence of the renewable energy technologies as a reliable substitute of conventional fossil fuels gave promises that were only partially fulfilled as they never assumed the role that society had entrusted on them in the beginning. The alternative energy options, both on the technological and the resource level, revealed the complex nature of energy planning, where energy production and conversion should be addressed in tandem with energy demand and consumption and the particular preferences of the individuals. In both cases the spatial elements should be carefully analyzed and taken into consideration. Today’s energy planning asks for a complex approach which must includes the technological, economic, environmental and social design, accounting for the multitude of facets that interweave in the analysis and successful implementation of energy policies and projects. The aforementioned four dimensions must in turn be decomposed in a number of attributes in order for a quantitative and qualitative estimation to be realized. For the identification of an appropriate solution, a multi-criteria analysis seems to be the logical framework since it allows for a multitude of elements to be incorporated, and at the same time it can include a variety of stakeholders, with conflicting perhaps interests. In this paper we present the new approach for energy planning with the technological, economic, environmental and social design dimensions integrated in a new platform together with the necessary decomposition analysis. The whole new framework is presented via theoretical and practical examples and will hopefully pave the way towards a new under transition, energy future.

Participation in multicriteria decision support - the case of conflicting water allocation in the Spree River basin

This discussion paper presents the Integrated Methodological Approach for participatory multi-criteria decision support under uncertainty (IMA), which emerged from the debates about participation, multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and benefit-cost analysis (BCA). It provides a framework for participatory and science-based evaluation processes with combined use of BCA and MCA to support large-scale public decisions. While IMA does not claim to realize an all-inclusive participation scheme, it offers the advantage to improve the quality of decision making through advances in competence and fairness. Its practical application with emphasis on its participatory elements is demonstrated by the case study on the water allocation conflict of the German Spree River, which involves the German capital of Berlin, an important wetland, and the needs to remediate a post-mining landscape. --Participation,Multi-criteria analysis,Cost-benefit analysis,River basin management,Integrated Assesment

Open source environment to define constraints in route planning for GIS-T

Route planning for transportation systems is strongly related to shortest path algorithms, an optimization problem extensively studied in the literature. To find the shortest path in a network one usually assigns weights to each branch to represent the difficulty of taking such branch. The weights construct a linear preference function ordering the variety of alternatives from the most to the least attractive.Postprint (published version