Social sustainable supplier evaluation and selection: a group decision-support approach

Organisational and managerial decisions are influenced by corporate sustainability pressures. Organisations need to consider economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions in their decisions to become sustainable. Supply chain decisions play a distinct and critical role in organisational good and service outputs sustainability. Sustainable supplier selection influences the supply chain sustainability allowing many organisations to build competitive advantage. Within this context, the social sustainability dimension has received relatively minor investigation; with emphasis typically on economic and environmental sustainability. Neglecting social sustainability can have serious repercussions for organisational supply chains. This study proposes a social sustainability attribute decision framework to evaluate and select socially sustainable suppliers. A grey-based multi-criteria decision-support tool composed of the ‘best-worst method’ (BWM) and TODIM (TOmada de Decisão Interativa e Multicritério – in Portuguese ‘Interactive and Multicriteria Decision Making’) is introduced. A grey-BWM approach is used to determine social sustainability attribute weights, and a grey-TODIM method is utilised to rank suppliers. This process is completed in a group decision setting. A case study of an Iranian manufacturing company is used to exemplify the applicability and suitability of the proposed social sustainability decision framework. Managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions are introduced after the application of the model

INVESTIGATION OF INDUSTRY 5.0 HURDLES AND THEIR MITIGATION TACTICS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES BY TODIM ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRIC AGGREGATION OPERATORS IN SINGLE VALUE NEUTROSOPHIC ENVIRONMENT

Industry 5.0 acceptance is accelerating, but research is still in its infancy, and existing research covers a small subset of context-specific obstacles. This study aims to enumerate all potential obstacles, quantitatively rank them, and assess interdependencies at the organizational level for Industry 5.0 adoption. To achieve this, we thoroughly review the literature, identify obstacles, and investigate causal relationships using a multi-criteria decision-making approach called single value Neutrosophic TODIM. Single-valued Neutrosophic sets (SVNS) ensembles are employed in a real-world setting to deal with uncertainty and indeterminacy. The suggested strategy enables the experts to conduct group decision-making by focusing on ranking the smaller collection of criterion values and the comparison with the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method (DEMATEL). According to the findings, the most significant hurdles are expenses and the funding system, capacity scalability, upskilling, and reskilling of human labor. As a result, a comfortable atmosphere is produced for decision-making, enabling the experts to handle an acceptable amount of data while still making choices

A Decision Support System for Assessing Oil Spill Vulnerability in Texas Coastal Regions

Oil spill disasters may have devastating impacts for coastal communities and the ecosystem (Baade et al., 2007). For instance, the coastal regions of the United States, especially the Gulf region, have been devastated by oil spill events of varying sizes, resulting in significant ecological and economic losses (Baade et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2010). In this study, a human-centered multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework is proposed and then present an example assessment of oil spill vulnerability utilizing the framework to support oil spill risk-informed decision-making in Texas coastal areas and the Western Planning Area (WPA) in the Gulf of Mexico. This work aims to assess oil spill vulnerability by defining three major conceptualizations of vulnerability: socioeconomic vulnerability, environment vulnerability, and vulnerability of spill impact risk through the Blowout and Spill Occurrence Model (BLOSOM) simulation. Furthermore, a decision support system is developed with an MCDM framework by combining spatiotemporal simulation results from BLOSOM and the vulnerability indexes. The proposed framework is applied to identify areas prone to oil spill disasters with the combination of spatial-temporal analysis and a customized multi-criteria evaluation. Areas with higher vulnerability scores in the case study are considered more vulnerable to oil spill impacts and should be considered with high priority in emergency response. Results indicated that communities in Galveston, Freeport, and Corpus Christi areas, are under great threat from oil spill disasters under conditions similar to those in the simulation. Moreover, the proposed framework emphasizes human-centered design and collaborative decision-making where different decision-makers can select the data that are important for their decision goals and assign weights for the evaluation criteria to generate an overall vulnerability score from vulnerability indexing to improve the performance of collaborative decision-making and eventually facilitate oil spill response and management

Bibliometric analysis of scientific production on methods to aid decision making in the last 40 years

Purpose: Multicriteria methods have gained traction in both academia and industry practices for effective decision-making over the years. This bibliometric study aims to explore and provide an overview of research carried out on multicriteria methods, in its various aspects, over the past forty-four years. Design/Methodology/Approach: The Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases were searched for publications from January 1945 to April 29, 2021, on multicriteria methods in titles, abstracts, and keywords. The bibliographic data were analyzed using the R bibliometrix package. Findings: This bibliometric study asserts that 29,050 authors have produced 20,861 documents on the theme of multicriteria methods in 131 countries in the last forty-four years. Scientific production in this area grows at a rate of 13.88 per year. China is the leading country in publications with 14.14%; India with 10.76%; and Iran with 8.09%. Islamic Azad University leads others with 504 publications, followed by the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University with 456 and the National Institute of Technology with 336. As for journals, Expert Systems With Applications; Sustainability; and Journal of Cleaner Production are the leading journals, which account for more than 4.67% of all indexed literature. Furthermore, Zavadskas E. and Wang J have the highest publications in the multicriteria methods domain regarding the authors. Regarding the most commonly used multicriteria decision-making methods, AHP is the most favored approach among the ten countries with the most publications in this research area, followed by TOPSIS, VIKOR, PROMETHEE, and ANP. Practical implications: The bibliometric literature review method allows the researchers to explore the multicriteria research area more extensively than the traditional literature review method. It enables a large dataset of bibliographic records to be systematically analyzed through statistical measures, yielding informative insights. Originality/value: The usefulness of this bibliometric study is summed in presenting an overview of the topic of the multicriteria methods during the previous forty-four years, allowing other academics to use this research as a starting point for their research

Multicriteria decision analisys based on utility theory : an application to product selection

Orientador: Cristiano TorezzanDissertação (mestrado profissional) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matemática Estatística e Computação CientíficaResumo: Este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre métodos de apoio à decisão multicriterial, com interesse especial em métodos baseados na teoria de valor. O trabalho foi motivado por uma aplicação real que tem por objetivo a priorização de produtos naturais, na área de suplementos e nutri-cosméticos. Para ordenar as alternativas e obter as respectivas priorizações, foram utilizados os métodos da Teoria de Utilidade Multiatributo (MAUT), do Processo de Análise Hierárquica (AHP) e da Tomada de Decisão Interativa Multicritérios (TODIM). Tais métodos foram implementados em Matlab e diversos testes foram realizados com dados reais, incluindo uma simulação de Monte Carlo para variação aleatória dos pesos dos critérios. A aplicação final possui cinco alternativas e sete critérios e, de maneira geral, a ordenação obtida pelos métodos utilizados foi bastante similar. Mesmo assim, a comparação de resultados obtidos por diferentes métodos possibilita ao decisor, além de obter a ordenação das alternativas de acordo com os múltiplos critérios, também aumentar seu conhecimento do problema e, com isso, melhorar a qualidade de suas decisõesAbstract: This master thesis presents a study on multi-criteria decision methods, with special interest on methods based in utility theory. This study was motived by a real application, in which it is desired to obtain a prioritization ordering of products to be commercialized in nutria-cosmetics area by considering a multi-criteria approach. The Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) and the Interactive and Multicriteria Decision Making (TODIM) was applied as decision aid tools. These methods were implemented in MatLab and several computational experiments were performed based on both, synthetic and real data, including a Monte Carlo simulation to investigated the consequences of variation of the weights. The real case studied has five alternatives and seven criteria and the methods used have obtained very similar resulting in terms of prioritization. Besides the ordering, the systematic use of multi-criteria decision approach can also contribute to a better understanding of the problem, its multiple facets, and thus helping to obtain better decisionsMestradoMatematica Aplicada e ComputacionalMestre em Matemática Aplicada e Computaciona

Disaster management from a POM perspective : mapping a new domain

We have reviewed disaster management research papers published in major operations management, management science, operations research, supply chain management and transportation/ logistics journals. In reviewing these papers our objective is to assess and present the macro level “architectural blue print” of disaster management research with the hope that it will attract new researchers and motivate established researchers to contribute to this important field. The secondary objective is to bring this disaster research to the attention of disaster administrators so that disasters are managed more efficiently and more effectively. We have mapped the disaster management research on the following five attributes of a disaster: (1) Disaster Management Function (decision making process, prevention and mitigation, evacuation, humanitarian logistics, casualty management, and recovery and restoration), (2) Time of Disaster (before, during and after), (3) Type of Disaster (accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides, terrorism and wildfires etc.), (4) Data Type (Field and Archival data, Real data and Hypothetical data), and (5) Data Analysis Technique (bidding models, decision analysis, expert systems, fuzzy system analysis, game theory, heuristics, mathematical programming, network flow models, queuing theory, simulation and statistical analysis). We have done cross tabulations of data among these five parameters to gain greater insights in disaster research. Recommendations for future research are provided

Proposta metodológica para a avaliação de pedidos de crédito social

O Crédito Social potencia o desenvolvimento económico e social dos países. Todavia, atualmente, não existem muitos estudos que abordem esta temática, nomeadamente no que respeita à avaliação do risco de Crédito Social. Neste sentido, esta avaliação é frequentemente influenciada por fatores dispares que, em muitas circunstâncias, são mal compreendidos ou tratados de forma pouco clara e realista. Sustentando-se nos princípios da avaliação multicritério de apoio à tomada de decisão, bem como no uso integrado de técnicas de cartografia cognitiva com a metodologia TODIM – Tomada de Decisão Interativa Multicritério –, o presente estudo apresenta como principal objetivo a construção de um sistema idiossincrático de apoio à identificação de múltiplos critérios e ao cálculo dos respetivos ponderadores (i.e. tradeoffs), no âmbito da avaliação do risco de Crédito Social. Para o efeito, é seguida uma abordagem sociotécnica, materializada na realização de sessões presenciais com um grupo de especialistas em análise de crédito. Os resultados alcançados revelam que a combinação metodológica proposta permite acrescentar valor, fruto do contacto privilegiado com know-how especializado, aos processos de avaliação de pedidos de Crédito Social. As implicações práticas do estudo são também objeto de discussãoSocial Credit enhances countries’ economic and social development. Currently, however, there are not many studies that address this issue, more specifically that focus on the assessment of Social Credit risk. This assessment is often influenced by different factors and, in many circumstances, is poorly understood or examined in an unrealistic way. Based on the principles of the multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA), as well as on the integrated use of cognitive mapping and the TODIM methodology – Multicriteria Interactive Decision Making –, this study sought to develop an idiosyncratic decision support system for the identification of the underlying criteria, and calculation of the respective weights (i.e. trade-offs), in the risk assessment of Social Credit applications. As such, a sociotechnical approach is followed, grounded on face-to-face work sessions with an expert panel in credit risk analysis. The results show that the methodological combination presented in this study provides value to the evaluation processes of Social Credit applications, as a result of the privileged contact established with specialized knowhow. The practical implications of the study are also subject of discussio

Development of emergency response systems by intelligent and integrated approaches for marine oil spill accidents

Oil products play a pervasive role in modern society as one of the dominant energy fuel sources. Marine activities related to oil extraction and transportation play a vital role in resource supply. However, marine oil spills occur due to such human activities or harsh environmental factors. The emergency accidents of spills cause negative impacts on the marine environment, human health, and economic loss. The responses to marine oil spills, especially large-scale spills, are relatively challenging and inefficient due to changing environmental conditions, limited response resources, various unknown or uncertain factors and complex resource allocation processes. The development of previous research mainly focused on single process simulation, prediction, or optimization (e.g., oil trajectory, weathering, or cleanup optimization). There is still a lack of research on comprehensive and integrated emergency responses considering multiple types of simulations, types of resource allocations, stages of accident occurrence to response, and criteria for system optimizations. Optimization algorithms are an important part of system optimization and decision-making. Their performance directly affacts the quality of emergency response systems and operations. Thus, how to improve efficiency of emergency response systems becomes urgent and essential for marine oil spill management. The power and potential of integrating intelligent-based modeling of dynamic processes and system optimization have been recognized to better support oil spill responders with more efficient response decisions and planning tools. Meanwhile, response decision-making combined with human factor analysis can help quantitatively evaluate the impacts of multiple causal factors on the overall processes and operational performance after an accident. To address the challenges and gaps, this dissertation research focused on the development and improvement of new emergency response systems and their applications for marine oil spill response in the following aspects: 1) Realization of coupling dynamic simulation and system optimization for marine oil spill responses - The developed Simulation-Based Multi-Agent Particle Swarm Optimization (SA-PSO) modeling investigated the capacity of agent-based modeling on dynamic simulation of spill fate and response, particle swarm optimization on response allocation with minimal time and multi-agent system on information sharing. 2) Investigation of multi-type resource allocation under a complex simulation condition and improvement of optimization performance - The improved emergency response system was achieved by dynamic resource transportation, oil weathering and response simulations and resource allocation optimization. The enhanced particle swarm optimization (ME-PSO) algorithm performed outstanding convergence performance and low computation cost characteristics integrating multi-agent theory (MA) and evolutionary population dynamics (EPD). 3) Analysis and evaluation of influencing factors of multiple stages of spill accidents based on human factors/errors and multi-criteria decision making - The developed human factors analysis and classification system for marine oil spill accidents (HFACS-OS) framework qualitatively evaluated the influence of various factors and errors associated with the multiple operational stages considered for oil spill preparedness and response (e.g., oil spill occurrence, spill monitoring, decision making/contingency planning, and spill response). The framework was further coupled with quantitative data analysis by Fuzzy-based Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Idea Solution (Fuzzy-TOPSIS) to enhance decision-making during response operations under multiple criteria. 4) Development of a multi-criteria emergency response system with the enhanced optimization algorithm, multi-mode resource transportation and allocation and a more complex and realistic simulation modelling - The developed multi-criteria emergency response system (MC-ERS) system integrated dynamic process simulations and weighted multi-criteria system optimization. Total response time, response cost and environmental impacts were regarded as multiple optimization goals. An improved weighted sum optimization function was developed to unify the scaling and proportion of different goals. A comparative PSO was also developed with various algorithm-improving methods and the best-performing inertia weight function. The proposed emergency response approaches in studies were examined by oil spill case studies related to the North Atlantic Ocean and Canada circumstances to analyze the modelling performance and evaluate their practicality and applicability. The developed optimization algorithms were tested by benchmarked functions, other optimization algorithms, and an oil spill case. The developed emergency response systems and the contained simulation and optimization algorithms showed the strong capability for decision-making and emergency responses by recommending optimal resource management or evaluations of essential factors. This research was expected to provide time-efficient, and cost-saving emergency response management approaches for handling and managing marine oil spills. The research also improved our knowledge of the significance of human factors/errors to oil spill accidents and response operations and provided improved support tools for decision making. The dissertation research helped fill some important gaps in emergency response research and management practice, especially in marine oil spill response, through an innovative integration of dynamic simulation, resource optimization, human factor analysis, and artificial intelligence methods. The research outcomes can also provide methodological support and valuable references for other fields that require timely and effective decisions, system optimizations, process controls, planning and designs under complicated conditions, uncertainties, and interactions