A new systematic approach for warehouse management system evaluation

Upravljanje skladištem je jedan od najvažnijih čimbenika u operacijama lanca opskrbe i upravljanja proizvodnjom. Kao podrška vođenju skladišta, potreban je sustav upravljanja skladištem. Mnoga su skladišta koristila različite metode za provođenje tog teškog i dugotrajnog procesa evaluacije. Cilj ovoga rada je stvoriti model za podršku donesenim odlukama o ocjeni sustava upravljanja skladištem. Kupnja odgovarajućeg sustava za upravljanje skladištem u lancu opskrbe nije laka odluka i povezana je s nejasnoćama i nesigurnošću, odnosno velikim brojem složenih čimbenika u višestrukim kriterijima ocjenjivanja. Za učinkovitu ocjenu sustava upravljanja skladištem usvojen je pristup zasnovan na brojnim nejasnim kriterijima (Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making). Kao praktičan vodič za druge kompanije dat je prikaz realnog stanja s primjenom.Warehouse management is one of the most important legs in supply chain operations and production management. To support that warehouse execution, a warehouse management system is required. Many warehouses have used various methods to handle this difficult and time consuming evaluation process. The purpose of this paper is to provide a decision support model to make a careful evaluation of warehouse management system. Purchasing an appropriate warehouse management system in a supply value chain is not an easy decision making and is related to fuzziness and uncertainty, which should be considered as a large number of complex factors in multiple evaluation criteria. A Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making approach is adopted to effectively evaluate warehouse management systems. To provide a practical guidance for other companies a real life framework is presented with an application

An Extended GRA Method Integrated with Fuzzy AHP to Construct a Multidimensional Index for Ranking Overall Energy Sustainability Performances

In an age of rapid technological advancement, the increasing need for energy and its related services to satisfy economic and social development has become a critical concern of national governments worldwide. This has triggered researchers to work on metrics for tracking and tracing energy sustainability in order to provide monitoring mechanisms for policy makers. In this regard, multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods are becoming more popular to deal with the multidimensional and complex nature of sustainability. We have proposed an extended and revised version of the grey relational analysis (GRA) method, which is integrated with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), to develop a new composite index for comparing the overall energy sustainability performances of 35 OECD member countries. Our case study revealed the performances of selected countries by providing their strengths and weaknesses based on determined criteria as well as the level of change in performances with different criteria weights. The proposed GRA model can be used in different applications of sustainability due to its flexible nature, which provides benefits from goal-oriented extensions in order to adequately capture different aspects of sustainability

Investigation of Human Papillomavirus Prevalence in Women in Eskisehir, Turkey by Pap Smear, Hybrid Capture 2 Test and Consensus Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction and Typing with Pyrosequencing Method

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infections have a broad range of clinical spectrum from subclinical or asymptomatic infection to anogenital carcinoma. The detection of HPV-DNA and determination of the risk groups in cervical cancer (CC) screening is very important because CC is considered to be a preventable illness which is the third most common cancer type of women in the world. The aims of this study were to investigate the presence of HPV-DNA in women by two different molecular methods and to compare their results together with the results of cytology, in Eskisehir, Central Anatolia, Turkey. A total of 1081 women aged between 30-65 years, who applied to Eskisehir Early Diagnosis, Screening and Training of Cancer Center (KETEM) for screening were included in the study. Three separate cervical samples were collected simultaneously from the participants for cytologic examination and molecular studies. In the first step of the study, all cervical samples were investigated for the presence of HPV-DNA by Hybrid Capture 2 (HC2; Qiagen, Germany) method. In the second part of the study, consensus real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) (Takara Bio Inc., Japan) was performed in 152 samples which included HC2 positive and randomly selected negative samples, and then the HPV genotypes were detected by using a commercial kit based on pyrosequencing method (Diatech Pharmacogenetics S.R.L, Italy). In the first part of the study, HC2 test was found positive in 3% (32/1081) of the women, while in 4.4% (47/1081) Pap smear was positive alone or with HC2 test. Five (0.5%) samples yielded positive results with both of the methods, and four of them were positive for high risk HPV types. Cytology results were negative in 19 out of 23 (23/1081, 2.1%) samples that were reported as high risk HPV by HC2 test. On the other hand, 42 (42/1081, 3.9%) samples that were positive by cytology yielded negative results by HC2 test. In the second part of the study, 32 (21.1%) of 152 selected samples were positive by HC2 test, 40 (26.3%) were positive by Pap smear, and 53 (34.9%) were positive by consensus RT-PCR. All of the 32 samples that were positive by HC2 were also positive by RT-PCR, however 21 samples that were positive by RT-PCR were negative by HC2 test. Among 40 samples that were positive (abnormal) by Pap smear, HPV-DNA was positive in nine (22.5%) by RT-PCR and in five (12.5%) by HC2 test, but HPV-DNA was not detected in 31 (77.5%) samples by both of the tests. Genotyping of the strains could be performed in 44 samples, and the most common type detected was HPV type 16 (n=15, 34.1%), followed by type 90 (n=11, 25%) and type 18 (n=4, 9.1%). In our study, the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of Pap smear method were estimated as 16.1%, 96%, 10.6% and 97.5%, respectively, based on the HC2 results which was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In addition, a significant degree of concordance was detected between HC2 and concensus RT-PCR methods (Cohen's kappa: 0.665). In conclusion, regarding the insufficient number of cytopathologists in our country and according to the recommendations of American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP) and FDA, it was once again demonstrated that, the implementation of molecular diagnostic methods in addition to the Pap smear for effective screening of CC are needed