A review of application of multi-criteria decision making methods in construction

Construction is an area of study wherein making decisions adequately can mean the difference between success and failure. Moreover, most of the activities belonging to this sector involve taking into account a large number of conflicting aspects, which hinders their management as a whole. Multi-criteria decision making analysis arose to model complex problems like these. This paper reviews the application of 22 different methods belonging to this discipline in various areas of the construction industry clustered in 11 categories. The most significant methods are briefly discussed, pointing out their principal strengths and limitations. Furthermore, the data gathered while performing the paper are statistically analysed to identify different trends concerning the use of these techniques. The review shows their usefulness in characterizing very different decision making environments, highlighting the reliability acquired by the most pragmatic and widespread methods and the emergent tendency to use some of them in combination

Sustainability Aspects of Real Estate Development: Lithuanian Case Study of Sports and Entertainment Arenas

The principles of sustainability have become particularly important in the real estate and construction sector over the past decade. Despite extended efforts to evaluate the sustainability aspects of the real estate development, very few attempts have been exposed in the scientific literature pursuing integrating the investors and real estate developers’ responsibility for the local community, regional economy and environmental problems within their financial expectations. The paper presents methodology enabling evaluating the balance of real estate development sustainability and financial viability issues during the feasibility study process. The Model for Real Estate Investment Evaluation Based on Sustainable Development Aspects proposed by the authors was applied to the case study of Lithuanian sports and entertainment arenas. By using multi-criteria decision analysis sustainability assessment of multi-functional arenas was carried out which disclosed that positive sustainability effects lays down on the owner’s and operator’s monetary liabilities

A Decision Tool for Supplier Selection That Takes into Account Power and Performance

Companies select their suppliers to provide required performance while being successful partners. An important aspect of collaboration is the power relationship between the company and its suppliers. Although the significance of power in supplier selection is acknowledged, published work rarely includes assessment of power. An empirical study on selecting suppliers for new product developments in a major European diesel engine manufacturing company, supported by three smaller studies with electronic engineering companies, frames overall questions regarding the importance of incorporating power into supplier selection and how this might be achieved. This research proposes an approach that assesses both performance and power and integrates the assessment results by modelling the relative effects of power and performance. It positions the suppliers into six scenarios (ideal, satisfying, tolerable, unfavourable, risky and tough) which depict to what extent a supplier is ‘suitable’ to work with. A reverse analysis reviews the relationship when several suppliers appear suitable. An assessment method is developed incorporating both subjective and objective data for qualitative and quantitative criteria. It combines two decision making methods, AHP and TOPSIS, with triangular fuzzy numbers. Multiple judgements from several decision makers are synthesised. This method is adapted for performance assessment of single, group and cross-group suppliers. Weights are calculated for the criteria, and combined with calculations of supplier performance against each criterion to provide an overall assessment and supplier profile. Power is quantified against a set of power determinants and power relations (supplier dominance, buyer dominance and balanced) are determined. The effects of supplier perceptions (objective, optimistic and pessimistic) are estimated in the calculation. The proposed approach involves complex calculations and a prototype software tool is developed with graphical interfaces. The tool includes performance criteria and power determinants collected from literature and allows users to define new ones. Application to an agriculture case enables the sustainable performance of suppliers (farmers) to be evaluated and compared

Return on strategic effectiveness – the need for synchronising growth and development strategies in the hotel industry using revenue management

The purpose of this paper is to identify the essential determinants, and highlight the importance, of synchronising the growth and development strategies of hotel companies. The paper aims to analyse preconditions to successful and stable business performance and customer loyalty. The paper is based on the hypothesis that strategic and organisational effectiveness helps to create preconditions to stable business in the future, which is reflected in satisfactory growth, financial strength and solvency, and results in creating added value. The five-year financial data of three hotel companies with similar business orientation from Istria County (Croatia) were used to test the model for synchronising growth and development strategies in the hotel industry and the fuzzy logic-based growthdevelopment synchronisation coefficient. The model was tested on multi-annual results (the period 2010–2014), and conclusions and recommendations were made for a future work

OPTIMAL MAINTENANCE PROGRAM OF A WASTE-TO-ENERGY PLANT : Case Study: wasteWOIMA®

Waste-to-energy (WtE) plant is a complex system which requires different maintenances to be reliable and available in its full functionalities. Maintenance has a crucial impact on the performance, availability and reliability of the WTE plant. The inadequacies of WTE plant lifetime maintenance may increase the production costs, and more it negatively affects the competitiveness, makes the downtime longer and the Mean-Time-Failure is bigger. The thesis focuses on the maintenance of WtE plant and it reviews the existing literature about Waste-to-Energy maintenance program and then find the best combination that better suits a Waste-to-Energy plant. This thesis has into two parts: the first part identifies the critical factors that enable high availability of Waste-to-Energy plant and the second addresses the identification of the right criteria for spare part selection. Both parts are aimed at enhancing the availability of Waste-to-Energy plant. A survey was sent to Waste-to-Energy professionals to collect data and compare that data to the findings in literature. DEMATEL method is chosen over the other methods for the pragmatic methodology used to construct and analyze the structural model involving causal relationship between multiple factors. It also integrates different expert knowledge that helps to investigate internal relationship and significance degrees of all the chosen factors. One advantage is that it can present a derived relationship through a cause-effect diagram. Critical factors through a visual structural model can be found, as well as the interdependent relationship amount factors are identified and evaluated while using DEMTEL. Key findings of the study revealed that human, economic, equipment and tools, management and environment factors have important impact of the effectiveness of the maintenance and the availability of the WtE plant, whatever the maintenance strategies from preventive to corrective maintenance through the condition maintenance. Quality, Lead time, Price and severity of spare part failure are keys criteria to consider while selecting spare part for WtE plant. The main limitation is that, the sample was a bit small since only few responds to the survey. Limitation of the thesis is related to the amount of the data collected. The findings cannot be generalized as it is affected by the limitation. The survey encounters probably the lack of cooperation from respondents as the study was not directly requested and done from their companies. It would be interesting to do further research of the topic by using data from different plants operated by the case company, to make the research more objective. This will help the case company knowing real issues their plants face. It could be interesting to do further research by focusing for instance on different locations and population because different climatic and environment factors may influence the failure rate of the plants items; dust, humidity, cultural factors

Sustainable Industrial Engineering along Product-Service Life Cycle/Supply Chain

Sustainable industrial engineering addresses the sustainability issue from economic, environmental, and social points of view. Its application fields are the whole value chain and lifecycle of products/services, from the development to the end-of-life stages. This book aims to address many of the challenges faced by industrial organizations and supply chains to become more sustainable through reinventing their processes and practices, by continuously incorporating sustainability guidelines and practices in their decisions, such as circular economy, collaboration with suppliers and customers, using information technologies and systems, tracking their products’ life-cycle, using optimization methods to reduce resource use, and to apply new management paradigms to help mitigate many of the wastes that exist across organizations and supply chains. This book will be of interest to the fast-growing body of academics studying and researching sustainability, as well as to industry managers involved in sustainability management

Multi-Objective and Multi-Attribute Optimisation for Sustainable Development Decision Aiding

Optimization is considered as a decision-making process for getting the most out of available resources for the best attainable results. Many real-world problems are multi-objective or multi-attribute problems that naturally involve several competing objectives that need to be optimized simultaneously, while respecting some constraints or involving selection among feasible discrete alternatives. In this Reprint of the Special Issue, 19 research papers co-authored by 88 researchers from 14 different countries explore aspects of multi-objective or multi-attribute modeling and optimization in crisp or uncertain environments by suggesting multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) and multi-objective decision-making (MODM) approaches. The papers elaborate upon the approaches of state-of-the-art case studies in selected areas of applications related to sustainable development decision aiding in engineering and management, including construction, transportation, infrastructure development, production, and organization management

A Hybrid Fuzzy Analytic Network Process Approach to the New Product Development Selection Problem

New product development selection is a complex decision-making process. To uphold their competence in competitive business environments, enterprises are required to continuously introduce novel products into markets. This paper presents a fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) for solving the product development selection problem. The fuzzy set theory is adopted to represent ambiguities and vagueness involved in each expert's judgment. In the proposed model, the fuzzy Kano method and fuzzy DEMATEL are employed to filter criteria and establish interactions among the criteria, whereas the SAM is applied to aggregate experts' opinions. Unlike the commonly used top-down relation-structuring approach, the proposed FANP first identifies the interdependence among the criteria and then the identified relationships are mapped to the clusters. This approach is more realistic, since the inner and outer relationships between criteria are simultaneously considered to establish the relationships among clusters. The proposed model is illustrated through a real life example, with a comparative analysis using modified TOPSIS and gray relation analysis in the synthesizing phase. The concluded results were approved by the case company. The proposed methodology not only is useful in the case study, but also can be generally applied in other similar decision situations

Preferences in Case-Based Reasoning

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is a well-established problem solving paradigm that has been used in a wide range of real-world applications. Despite its great practical success, work on the theoretical foundations of CBR is still under way, and a coherent and universally applicable methodological framework is yet missing. The absence of such a framework inspired the motivation for the work developed in this thesis. Drawing on recent research on preference handling in Artificial Intelligence and related fields, the goal of this work is to develop a well theoretically-founded framework on the basis of formal concepts and methods for knowledge representation and reasoning with preferences