Sustainability assessment of nations and related decision making using fuzzy logic

This paper refines and extends in fundamental ways an existing model for the numerical assessment of sustainability called sustainability assessment by fuzzy evaluation (SAFE). SAFE, in its basic form, uses fuzzy logic to combine a large suite of basic indicators and then computes numerical values of sustainability for a number of composite indicators such as air, land, economy, health, etc. At a higher hierarchy it computes the sustainability of an ecological and a human component, and finally, it computes overall sustainability of a country or region. As state-of-the-art in fuzzy analysis has advanced, we are prompted to modify SAFE accordingly. The refined model uses the so-called Takagi-Sugeno-Kang inference scheme (TSK) which together with a few technical requirements guarantees monotonicity, i.e., an improvement of a basic indicator leads to an improvement of sustainability. Another refinement concerns the data inputs. To include the effects of past environmental pressures and development policies on the present state of sustainability, we use exponential smoothing to take account of the past with exponentially decaying weights. Finally, the model is now applied to all countries of the world for which data could be obtained and their corresponding sustainabilities are computed. Also, through sensitivity analysis, the most important indicators that affect sustainability are identified

Applicability of ERP for Production Network Planning: A Case Study

Part 2: Knowledge Discovery and SharingInternational audienceA production network enables a company to develop capabilities to respond to diversity in national or regional demand, while at the same time integrate and coordinate their activities. Many companies have implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to overcome problems associated with coordination and planning in an organization, in recent years. In addition, advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems have emerged to address the planning insufficiencies of ERP systems. However, due to complexity and competence dependency of these systems, advantages of them are overlooked by large organizations, and therefore ERP systems are still in use for planning. ERP systems are used in production networks for coordination of various plans and decisions across network partners. This paper aims to assess the fit and alignment between ERP functions and production network requirement for supporting production planning processes. Using a case study approach, the paper illustrates and discusses the applicability of ERP systems for planning in production networks. The case study showed that ERP systems have limited ability in coordinating order allocation in the network, detailed short term production planning and inter network distributions. It is concluded that use of ERP systems for network planning may in fact limit the network’s ability to reap the full benefits associated with planning across several facilities in a network