Introducing alternatives ranking with elected nominee (ARWEN) method: a case study of supplier selection

Supply chain management (SCM) has gradually evolved beyond the straightforward logic of benefits and economic viewpoints. Supplier selection and performance evaluation are the crucial strategic components of any SCM system with a substantial economic impact and risk reduction. Several conflicting factors make supplier selection a challenging multi-criteria decision-making problem. This paper introduces a method called alternative ranking with the elected nominee (ARWEN) to select suppliers in Iran’s dairy product chain store. The primary principle of ARWEN is to choose the best alternative based on the lowest change rate rather than the elected nominee. Four extensions of the ARWEN method are proposed depending upon the nature and level of information available to the decision-makers. A fifth extended version termed E-ARWEN is also recommended to consider the negative form of the elected nominee. Two novel statistical tools, the ranking performance index and the Zakeri-Konstantas distance product correlation coefficient, are also put forth to validate the ARWEN extensions’ outcomes. The results and verification of this new method are carried out through two supplier selection case examples. Comprehensive comparisons were carried out to explore the new methods’ behaviors, indicating ARWEN III and E-ARWEN have similar behavior to VIKOR, SAW, and EDAS in generating rankings

MUTRISS: A new method for material selection problems using MUltiple-TRIangles scenarios

open access articleThis paper proposes a new Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method called MUltiple-TRIangles ScenarioS (MUTRISS) with two scenarios respecting different levels of access to complete information for material selection problems. MUTRISS calculates the areas occupied by alternatives in n-dimensional space, employing analytic geometry and converting each alternative into n-edges forms. The paper applies MUTRISS to three material selection case studies, with Ti-6Al-4V, Material 4, and AISI 4140 Steel- UNS G41400 emerging as the best materials for the three examples with the highest overall scores of 0.036, 4.540 and 0.427 respectively. The results are compared with various MCDM methods through four statistical measures, including relative closeness ratio, robustness analysis, compromise ranking coefficient, and similarity degree. The measures focus on different aspects of MCDM methods in solving problems and their results. The paper concludes that MUTRISS offers a more robust and reliable approach for material selection problems compared to other MCDM methods, with the first scenario of MUTRISS being more reliable than the second scenario. The paper also emphasizes the importance of validating results in material selection problems due to the potential irreversible consequences of selecting the wrong material

Changing Trend of Breast Cancer in Ardabil Province, Iran by Age Group, Grading, and Gender during 2003-2016

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most prevalent cancer in women and the second most common cancer in the world. Two million new cases were reported in 2018. The aim of this study was to investigate the changing trend of BC in the people of Ardabil during 2003-2016. Method: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, we analyzed BC incidence rates using population-based cancer registries stratified by city, age group, gender, and disease grading. We analyzed the collected data by statistical methods in SPSS version 21. Results: The mean age of patients was 48.4±13.1. Of all patients, 98.5% were female, and most were aged 40-60 (56%). The most of BC cases was registered in year 2011 with the most incidence rate about 10.41 per 100000 and the most of cases with 71.5% was registered in Ardabil city. The incidence rate of BC reached from 4.13 per 100000 in 2003 to 6.93 in 2016. The annual percentage change during the study years was 4.1%. Conclusion: Results showed that the incidence rate of BC during study years had an increasing trend in Ardabil’s people and reached from 4.13 per 100000 in year 2003 to 6.93 per 100000 in year 6.93 with Annual percentage change about 4.1%. The trend of BC incidence increased during 2003-2011 and then, decreased during 2011-2016

The Grey Ten-Element Analysis Method: A Novel Strategic Analysis Tool

In this paper, a new strategic analysis method is introduced, called the ten-element analysis (TEA) method to determine the firm’s strategic position in the market. The new method is grounded on the computation of the reflections of the external factors on the firm’s internal factors through the changes of the values of the internal factors throughout the time when a lack of complete information regarding the environmental factors exists. The TEA method takes ten effective key elements of the firm into account and investigates their changes through a maximum of nine periods and a minimum of two periods. To conduct the model, the paper is mainly focused on four main rubrics, including the detection of the reflection of the firm’s environmental factors on the internal factors, deriving the strategic position of the firm from the reflections, the capability of the existing strategic models in determining the strategic position from the reflections in presence of uncertainty and incomplete information of the external factors. The method is applied to a dairy company in order to find its strategic position in the market. The results showed that the output of the TEA method and SWOT analysis is similar which makes the new method reliable to employ. The TEA method is developed under the grey environment to harness the uncertainty where a new grey comparison method is introduced to compare the grey numbers

The orbital systems ::theory paradigm

In this paper, a new theory is introduced called orbital systems theory to handle the uncertainty of the natural phenomena, the complicated real-world problems, and the human's decision-making process which naturally creates the inconstancy and uncertainty in each process it involves. The philosophy of the new theory is established based on this hypothesis that every component of the universe is a box that carries the information and each one is constructed by the particular information concepts that move along specific orbits. The orbital system is an integral part of the new theory. As a restricted numeric system, its core is the concept of reality. An orbital system is developed based on five numerical spectra surrounded by four parallel dimensions of reality and certain reality. With considering “time” as an element, each dimension adds entropy to the system, and increases/decreases the level of uncertainty

Solving Decision-Making Problems Using a Measure for Information Values Connected to the Equilibrium Points (IVEP) MCDM Method and Zakeri–Konstantas Performance Correlation Coefficient

In this paper, a new multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) method, called a measure for information values connected to the equilibrium points (IVEP) method, and a new statistical measure for measuring the similarities of performances of MCDM algorithm outputs in a comparison process, called the Zakeri–Konstantas performance correlation coefficient, are introduced. The IVEP method uses Shannon’s entropy as the primary tool to measure the information embedded in the decision matrix in order to evaluate the decision’s options/alternatives for complex decision-making problems with a large number of criteria and alternatives. The second concept that drives the IVEP method is the equilibrium points, which signify the points in a vector space where scores for the decision’s options/alternatives are equilibrated. Instead of using linear functions to compute similarities between the data sets generated by the MCDM algorithms by the calculation of the distance using different methods, the Zakeri–Konstantas performance correlation coefficient focuses on the evaluation of the ranking performance of MCDM methods in an analytic comparison process in order to determine the degree of the similarities. The IVEP method is applied to a real-world decision-making problem—a material selection problem. A comparison analysis was performed on the results obtained from the IVEP, TOPSIS, WPM, COPRAS, and ARAS MCDM methods by the Zakeri–Konstantas performance correlation coefficient and the Hamming distance. The results of both measures revealed that the IVEP algorithm’s outputs have the highest similarity to TOPSIS outputs, among others. Nevertheless, the degree of the similarities is distinct due to the different approaches of the measures used

A grey approach for the computation of interactions between two groups of irrelevant variables of decision matrices

In this chapter, we aim to find a mathematical solution to compute the impact between two irrelevant decision matrices in a complex decision-making problem using multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. The existing MCDM methods merely provide solutions for the one-stage decision-making procedure and do not take other effective variables outside of the decision matrix into account, while in real-world processes, the decisions always impact by the variables where they appear to be irrelevant. To demonstrate our proposed approach, it is applied to a case of supplier selection and firm’s strategies in which the interaction of selected strategies has been investigated on the selection of the best supplier. In order to handle the uncertainty that emerge during the process, this four-section approach is implemented as a grey framework and deals with grey Entropy, grey-TOPSIS, and the grey strategies interaction model. With comparison of rankings in computation with impact of selected strategies and without them, results indicated essentially the difference between these two cases

The competitive game table

In this paper, a new strategic game is proposed, called the competitive game table (CGT) to simulate the realworld battles and to predict the results by considering the interactions and interchanging data during the battles. CGT is a symmetric game that is developed to embrace the battles between two players. The game is grounded on twelve rules which conducts the game to predict the strategic posture of players in four scenarios including the aggressive, competitive, conservative, and defensive postures. The main objective of this study is to propose a comprehensive paradigm for modeling and predicting players’ behavior during and after battles. In addition, this paper is focused on modeling the market’s competitions by CGT to unearth the competitors’ behavioral patterns in a marketplace in order to determine the most efficient strategies

The grey ten-element analysis method ::a novel strategic analysis tool

In this paper, a new strategic analysis method is introduced, called the ten-element analysis (TEA) method to determine the firm’s strategic position in the market. The new method is grounded on the computation of the reflections of the external factors on the firm’s internal factors through the changes of the values of the internal factors throughout the time when a lack of complete information regarding the environmental factors exists. The TEA method takes ten effective key elements of the firm into account and investigates their changes through a maximum of nine periods and a minimum of two periods. To conduct the model, the paper is mainly focused on four main rubrics, including the detection of the reflection of the firm’s environmental factors on the internal factors, deriving the strategic position of the firm from the reflections, the capability of the existing strategic models in determining the strategic position from the reflections in presence of uncertainty and incomplete information of the external factors. The method is applied to a dairy company in order to find its strategic position in the market. The results showed that the output of the TEA method and SWOT analysis is similar which makes the new method reliable to employ. The TEA method is developed under the grey environment to harness the uncertainty where a new grey comparison method is introduced to compare the grey numbers