A decision support method for selecting design and manufacturing alternatives

One of the most important decisions which should be made at the early stage of the design process is to select one design alternative. Not only should the decision be made by tradeoffs between different conflicting criteria of the single stakeholder but also to aggregate different outcomes obtained by multiple stakeholders. This thesis represents a decision support tool for selecting design alternatives, in which a single choice has to be made between a number of alternatives in the presence of single or multiple stakeholders, multiple conflicting criteria, and resource limitation, based on two routes: using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) alone and the combination of AHP with Zero-One Goal Programming (ZOGP). Using AHP-ZOGP allows the concept-concept and concept-specification approaches to be considered simultaneously in order to improve the process of concept design selections. Different outcomes obtained by using AHP alone, can be aggregated by two heuristic methods based on distance function, to generate an index for final single selection. The first method uses the final weights obtained by AHP, while the second method uses its detailed weights. AHP weights are then used to construct the ZOGP's objective function and constraints' parameters of intangible criteria for each individual stakeholder. Another ZOGP model can be constructed to aggregate the different outcomes, obtained by individual ZOGP's models, based on combining their objective functions. The advantages of using aggregated ZOGP models in comparison with heuristic methods are, not only ZOGP aggregated model is able to minimise the undesirable distances between sub-criteria and Product Design Specification (PDS), but also it can take into account the resource limitations explicitly. The case studies, which involved vehicle manufacturing technology selection, choosing a peristaltic pump, selection of a swivel joint design, and the justification of advanced manufacturing systems, possessed the characteristics of the type of problems this tool is intended to support. The case studies showed how it is possible to consider many criteria from different stakeholders to yield a single outcome that covers the requirements of those stakeholders

An Integrated Methodology for Strategic Selection Problems

Strategic selection problem is a multi-criteria problem which includes conflicting tangible and intangible criteria. In order to select the most appropriate strategic alternative it is necessary to make tradeoffs between these criteria as well as taking into account the resource limitations which may exist. Available methods neglect the distance concept which exists between the alternatives weights with regard to a single criterion and its target value. In this paper in addition to applying the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a stand-alone methodology an integration of the AHP and Zero One Goal Programming (ZOGP) is proposed. In this integration each single criterion viewed as a constraint in a ZOGP model which enable the model to take into account not only the distances but also to consider the real resource limitation for tangible criteria. In order to justify the methodology, it is applied to selection of Advanced Manufacturing Systems (AMS

Determination of sensitive Points in Gas pressure station with fault tree analysis (FTA)

Experiments have shown the most important factor in leakage of gas pressure stations are taps. Gas leakage in industrial environment has hazardous effects.so, there is important to consider the same factors in these environments. To recognize these factors, it is necessary to represent the importance of avoiding these events by risk evaluation methods. Fault tree analysis is a method which can recognize the fault points in a system and it is able to obtain the probability of these events. To analyze the problem, fault tree of each region in the gas station is drawn. Then the data of these regions (including the probability of failure parts) are entered to FTA software. The outputs of software can be used to analyze the system. The outputs show that the most part of leakage caused by refnenet gas region which turbines are activated. Finally, some procedures are suggested for preventive of leakage in gas stations

Evaluation and Selection of International Supplier, Underscoring Risk Factors

This paper evaluates the decision making process for import complete manufactured pieces versus import of partial pieces to assemble in Iran, taking into account the risk factors for a manufacturing company. Since this sort of decision making confront with several risks, it is necessary to establish a process for finding the risks associated with this kind of problems in order to decrease the effects of these risks in the process. Since the problem is classified as a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem, Uncertain Analytical Hierarchy Process (UAHP) was used to find the most attractive alternative. Because the alternatives were identified from the first point, a bottom-up procedure was used to organize the hierarchy. In initial stage, the attributes which distinct from the alternatives were obtained by literature review and experts' interviews. Then the attributes were grouped to upper level to establish the criteria. Three criteria were found from this stage. The criteria were product, partners, and environment which they encompassed 12 attributes. Forming the hierarchy and doing the uncertain pairwised comparisons, which considers a range of numbers instead of one single number for declaring the preference between two factors, a Linear Programming (LP) model with two types of objective functions were formed for each individual alternative. Each single LP model can express the maximum and minimum value of each individual alternative. The research's results indicate the most appropriate alternative is to import the final product from India. The last preferred one was to import the parts of the final product from India. This study can be a suitable framework in supply chain management and purchasing decisions and risk evaluations because the major parts of manufacturing activities is always to decide about the selection of most preferred strategies for companies

Ranking of Iran's southern tourism coasts by AHP method

The difference between the Iran’s southern tourism coasts attraction and tourism facilities from one side and varieties of interests of tourists who wants to travel to these coastal lines from another hand increases the anxieties and confusions of tourists in choosing the most favorable tourism coast selection processes. Therefore, the recent project goals with offering travel pattern to south coastal lines collects data from 71 experienced people and 403 tourists chosen by judgmentally selection ,then has compared and ranked the six southern tourism coasts in Iran)Chabahar, Bandar-e Abbas, Kish, Qeshm, Bushehr and Ahvaz( according to attractions and tourism facilities by AHP method and EC software. In achieved pattern, the rank of each coast is determined in different criteria and Kish was known as the best tourism coast, and Chabahar, Qeshm, Bandar-e Abbas, Bushehr and Ahvaz are ranked respectively. At the end, the results were described to tourists, travel agencies and coastal city manager

An Artificial Bee Colony algorithm approach for locating optimal switch location in cellular mobile communication network

In this research, we use Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm to solve cell to switch assignment problem (CTSAP) that is NP-hard. In CTSAP, there are cells and switches in which cells locations are predetermined. The objective of problem is optimal assigning of cells to switches with minimum cost. Here, we have two kinds of costs, handoff and cabling costs. Call handling capacity for every switches are given and equal. The model of our work is single homed that is each cell must connect to only one switch. The mathematical model is binary and nonlinear. The program is coded by MATLAB 7.8.0 (R2009a). After estimating parameters values of model, approving performance accuracy of code and adjusting control parameters, the efficiency of algorithm by determining experimental problems compared to Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) that is one of the best for solving this problem. Results show satisfactory performance of ABC algorith

Provide a Mathematical Model for Financing Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises (SMEs) in the Supply Chain

Given the importance of financing small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in order to provide working capital and their profitability, this study has presented a mathematical model for financing these companies by factoring in the supply chain. Factoring is one of the most important ways to finance the business world, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, considering the relationship between the enterprise and the bank, suppliers and buyers based on the integration of financial and physical flows in the supply chain, this research has financed the enterprise in the above-mentioned method. In order to analyze the validity of financing methods, goals, parameters and important variables in modeling, the perspective of experts based on the index of content validity ratio has been used. The goals of modeling are to maximize profits and achieve the desired liquidity in time periods, and in order to solve the model, goal programming has been used and in order to cover uncertainty conditions, interval programming has been used. Finally, the model was solved using GAMS software and CPLEX solver, and the results, in addition to proposing appropriate financial and physical flows in the supply chain, have proposed an appropriate factoring financing program to small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises to provide the necessary liquidity in each period and increase profitability

Electronic Business Development Strategies in the Context of Facilitating and Improving Business Environment

E-business as one of the enablers of the economy and a subset of information technology has grown substantially in the past decade. Today’s global markets is changing and transforming from industrial market to a science and technology one. In other words, today's business environment has reshaped from physical to electronic and has transformed traditional and offline markets. Successful investors have accepted transformation of traditional business to e-business so that policies of commercial enterprises in adoption and deployment of e-business are effective and efficient in order to enter international markets and attract new customers. The importance of e-business environment and high degree of its acceptance by people and businesses, have led to feel the importance of planning and development of e-business strategies and frameworks. This study, presents the results of a project administered by Ministry of Information and Communications Technology of Iran, named “Electronic business development strategies in the context of facilitating and improving the business environment “.The purpose of this project is to extract and codify the business development strategies in the field of communications and technology, which has been designed and implemented in four phases.The fourth and final phase of this project, presents a new model based on e-readiness frameworks and was confirmed by using Smart PLS software. Finally, the e-business development strategies have extracted and classified based on confirmed model and SWOT analysis

Credit Status Assessment of Bank Loan Applicants Using CBR Method

Credit risk assessment is one of the key issues for banks and financial institutions and various models have been developed for this. This study uses Case Based reasoning (CBR) Model and considers a database of bank credit customers to assess the credit risk of bank applicants. For this, 9 criteria were selected based on the experts' opinion and were weighted using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP). Return check, housing situation and income level are the most important criteria for credit risk assessment of the bank applicants. Then, using the TOPSIS Technique, we could evaluates the similarity of the new item with actual past cases or evaluate the new applicant with the ideal option, and uses a case-based reasoning model to predict the likelihood of default or non-default applicants. Survey research was applied for this study and the research community was the records of previous bank applicants between 1390-94 years. This research is an applied and descriptive and descriptive study. The results show that the accuracy of the CBR model is higher than other validation and ranking methods of bank customers. The use of the CBR model in order to authenticate customers has obtained results far better than the performance of the credit sector experts, which led to the judgment of default or non-default of customers, indicating the high performance of the model used in comparison to the model used by bank and validation experts. CBR leads to the design an expert, specialized and intelligent system which addition to storing data in a database, stores models and templates for use