A fuzzy-based decision support system for ranking the delivery methods of mega projects

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moza Tahnoon Al Nahyan ◽  
Yaser E. Hawas ◽  
Mohsin Raza ◽  
Hamad Aljassmi ◽  
Munjed A. Maraqa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Ordinal Scale ◽  
Project Delivery ◽  
Rule Base ◽  
Delivery Method ◽  
Delivery Methods ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Project Delivery Methods

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a framework to devise a system for ranking of traditional project delivery methods, regarding their suitability, against the varying levels of mega project attributes. Design/methodology/approach The proposed system employs input and output interfaces and a granular (fuzzy rule base) component for estimating the subjective levels of risks, opportunities, and constraints and then mapping them to a decision matrix. A questionnaire has been designed (using the SurveyGizmo® platform) to collect the perceptions of the various project stakeholders and use them. A total of 127 stakeholders completed the survey form in full. Findings The survey data were used to calibrate the fuzzy logic model of the granular component. The envisioned system computes, for each possible delivery method, an index that reflects the suitability (of the corresponding delivery method) on an ordinal scale. Originality/value The devised decision support system is likely to lessen the dependency of “accurate decision” on “the experience of the decision-makers.” It will also enable ranking the various project delivery methods based on the various project and stakeholder attributes that are likely to affect the project risks, opportunities and constraints.

A novel PFMEA-Doubly TOPSIS approach-based decision support system for risk analysis in milk process industry

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Indraneel Das ◽  
Dilbagh Panchal ◽  
Mohit Tyagi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Process Industry ◽  
Rule Base ◽  
Fuzzy Decision ◽  
Effect Analysis ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Topsis Approach ◽  
Fuzzy Decision Support System

PurposeThis paper aims to presents a novel integrated fuzzy decision support system for analyzing the issues related to failure of a milk process plant unit.Design/methodology/approachProcess failure mode effect analysis (PFMEA) approach was implemented to list failure causes under each subsystem/component and fuzzy ratings for three risk criteria, i.e. probability of failure occurrence (O_f), severity (S) and non-detection (O_d) are collected against the listed failure causes through experts feedback. A new doubly technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (DTOPSIS) approach was implemented within fuzzy PFMEA tool for ranking of listed failure causes. The proposed decision support system overcomes the restrictions of classical PFMEA and IF-THEN rule base PFMEA approaches in an effective way.FindingsFailure causes such as electrical winding failure (RM4), high pressure in plate region (C1), communication problem in supervisory control and data acquisition control (MS3), insulation problem (ST2), lever breakage (B2), gasket problem (D3), formation of holes (PHE5), cavitations (FP7), deposition of milk particle inside the pipeline because of improper cleaning (MHP2) were acknowledged as the most critical one with the application of proposed decision support system.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis results are based on subjective judgments of the experts and therefore correctness of risk ranking results are totally dependent upon the quality of input data/information available from these experts. However, the analyst has taken proper care for considering the vagueness of the raw data by incorporating fuzzy set theory within the proposed decision support system.Practical implicationsThe proposed fuzzy decision support system has been presented with its application on milk pasteurization plant of a milk process industry. The analysis based ranking results have been supplied to maintenance manager of the plant and a consent was shown by him with these results. Once the top management of the plant took decision for the implementation of these results, the detailed robustness of the proposed decision support system could be evaluated further.Social implicationsThe analysis result would be highly useful for minimizing sudden breakdowns and operational cost of the plant which directly contributes to plant's profitability. With the decrease in the chances of sudden breakdowns there would be high safety for the people working on/off the plant's site. Further, with increase in availability of the considered plant the societal daily demand related to dairy products could be easily fulfilled at reasonable prices.Originality/valueThe performance and proficiency of the proposed decision support system has been evaluated by comparing the ranking results with classical TOPSIS and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) approaches based results.

scholarly journals An Evolutionary Belief Rule-Based Clinical Decision Support System to Predict COVID-19 Severity under Uncertainty

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 5810
Author(s):  
Faisal Ahmed ◽  
Mohammad Shahadat Hossain ◽  
Raihan Ul Islam ◽  
Karl Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Clinical Decision Support ◽  
Support System ◽  
Clinical Decision Support System ◽  
Clinical Decision ◽  
Experimental Result ◽  
Rule Base ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Belief Rule Base

Accurate and rapid identification of the severe and non-severe COVID-19 patients is necessary for reducing the risk of overloading the hospitals, effective hospital resource utilization, and minimizing the mortality rate in the pandemic. A conjunctive belief rule-based clinical decision support system is proposed in this paper to identify critical and non-critical COVID-19 patients in hospitals using only three blood test markers. The experts’ knowledge of COVID-19 is encoded in the form of belief rules in the proposed method. To fine-tune the initial belief rules provided by COVID-19 experts using the real patient’s data, a modified differential evolution algorithm that can solve the constraint optimization problem of the belief rule base is also proposed in this paper. Several experiments are performed using 485 COVID-19 patients’ data to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system. Experimental result shows that, after optimization, the conjunctive belief rule-based system achieved the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 0.954, 0.923, and 0.959, respectively, while for disjunctive belief rule base, they are 0.927, 0.769, and 0.948. Moreover, with a 98.85% AUC value, our proposed method shows superior performance than the four traditional machine learning algorithms: LR, SVM, DT, and ANN. All these results validate the effectiveness of our proposed method. The proposed system will help the hospital authorities to identify severe and non-severe COVID-19 patients and adopt optimal treatment plans in pandemic situations.

A decision support system for retail assortment planning

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 808-825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Hübner
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Solution Structure ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Substitution Effects ◽  
Assortment Planning ◽  
Shelf Space ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Solution Approach

Purpose Because increasing product variety in retail conflicts with limited shelf space, managing assortment and shelf quantities is a core decision in this sector. A retailer needs to define the assortment size and then assign shelf space to meet consumer demand. However, the current literature lacks not only information on the comprehensive structure of the decision problem, but also a decision support system that can be directly applied to practice in a straightforward manner. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The findings were developed and evaluated by means of explorative interviews with grocery retail experts. An optimization model is proposed to solve the problem of assortment planning with limited shelf space for data sets of a size relevant in real retail practice. Findings The author identifies the underlying planning problems based on a qualitative survey of retailers and relates the problems to each other. This paper develops a pragmatic approach to the capacitated assortment problem with stochastic demand and substitution effects. The numerical examples reveal that substitution demand has a significant impact on total profit and solution structure. Practical implications The author shows that the model and solution approach are scalable to problem sizes relevant in practice. Furthermore, the planning architecture structures the related planning questions and forms a foundation for further research on decision support systems. Originality/value The planning framework structures the associated decision problems in assortment planning. An efficient solution approach for assortment planning is proposed.

Network-aware credit scoring system for telecom subscribers using machine learning and network analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongming Gao ◽  
Hongwei Liu ◽  
Haiying Ma ◽  
Cunjun Ye ◽  
Mingjun Zhan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Scoring System ◽  
Credit Scoring ◽  
Prediction Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Connected Subgroup ◽  
Source Data ◽  
Credit Scores

PurposeA good decision support system for credit scoring enables telecom operators to measure the subscribers' creditworthiness in a fine-grained manner. This paper aims to propose a robust credit scoring system by leveraging latent information embedded in the telecom subscriber relation network based on multi-source data sources, including telecom inner data, online app usage, and offline consumption footprint.Design/methodology/approachRooting from network science, the relation network model and singular value decomposition are integrated to infer different subscriber subgroups. Employing the results of network inference, the paper proposed a network-aware credit scoring system to predict the continuous credit scores by implementing several state-of-art techniques, i.e. multivariate linear regression, random forest regression, support vector regression, multilayer perceptron, and a deep learning algorithm. The authors use a data set consisting of 926 users of a Chinese major telecom operator within one month of 2018 to verify the proposed approach.FindingsThe distribution of telecom subscriber relation network follows a power-law function instead of the Gaussian function previously thought. This network-aware inference divides the subscriber population into a connected subgroup and a discrete subgroup. Besides, the findings demonstrate that the network-aware decision support system achieves better and more accurate prediction performance. In particular, the results show that our approach considering stochastic equivalence reveals that the forecasting error of the connected-subgroup model is significantly reduced by 7.89–25.64% as compared to the benchmark. Deep learning performs the best which might indicate that a non-linear relationship exists between telecom subscribers' credit scores and their multi-channel behaviours.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the existing literature on business intelligence analytics and continuous credit scoring by incorporating latent information of the relation network and external information from multi-source data (e.g. online app usage and offline consumption footprint). Also, the authors have proposed a power-law distribution-based network-aware decision support system to reinforce the prediction performance of individual telecom subscribers' credit scoring for the telecom marketing domain.

scholarly journals A decision support system to assure high-performance maintenance service

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Aiello ◽  
Julio Benítez ◽  
Silvia Carpitella ◽  
Antonella Certa ◽  
Mario Enea ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Preventive Maintenance ◽  
Programming Model ◽  
Laboratory Method ◽  
Maintenance Management ◽  
Maintenance Policy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Blockchain Technology

PurposeThis study aims to propose a decision support system (DSS) for maintenance management of a service system, namely, a street cleaning service vehicle. Referring to the information flow management, the blockchain technology is integrated in the proposed DSS to assure data transparency and security.Design/methodology/approachThe DSS is designed to efficiently handle the data acquired by the network of sensors installed on selected system components and to support the maintenance management. The DSS supports the decision makers to select a subset of indicators (KPIs) by means of the DEcision-MAaking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method and to monitor the efficiency of performed preventive maintenance actions by using the mathematical model.FindingsThe proposed maintenance model allows real-time decisions on interventions on each component based on the number of alerts given by sensors and taking into account the annual cost budget constraint.Research limitations/implicationsThe present paper aims to highlight the implications of the blockchain technology in the maintenance field, in particular to manage maintenance actions’ data related to service systems.Practical implicationsThe proposed approach represents a support in planning, executing and monitoring interventions by assuring the security of the managed data through a blockchain database. The implications regard the monitoring of the efficiency of preventive maintenance actions on the analysed components.Originality/valueA combined approach based on a multi-criteria decision method and a novel mathematical programming model is herein proposed to provide a DSS supporting the management of predictive maintenance policy.

Virtual reality-based decision support model for interior design and decoration of an office building

2019 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Kai Juan ◽  
Hao-Yun Chi ◽  
Hsing-Hung Chen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
Support System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Office Building ◽  
Design Decision ◽  
Content Type

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a virtual reality (VR)-based and user-oriented decision support system for interior design and decoration. The four-phase decision-making process of the system is verified through a case study of an office building. Design/methodology/approach Different “spatial layouts” are presented by VR for users to decide their preference (Phase 1). According to the selected spatial layout, a “spatial scene” is constructed by VR and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to determine the spatial scene preference (Phase 2). Based on the binary integer programming method, the system provides the optimal preliminary solution under a limited decoration budget (Phase 3). Finally, the consistency between the overall color scheme and pattern is fine-tuned by VR in order to obtain the final solution (Phase 4). Findings The questionnaire survey results show that decision makers generally affirm the operation and application of VR, and especially recognize the advantages in the improvement of VR-based interior design feasibility, communication efficiency and design decision-making speed. The optimization of the costs and benefits enables decision makers to effectively evaluate the impact of design decisions on subsequent project implementation during the preliminary design process. Originality/value The VR-based decision support system for interior design retains the original immersive experience of VR, and offers a systematic multiple criteria decision- making and operations research optimization method, thus, providing more complete decision-making assistance. Compared with traditional design communication, it can significantly reduce cognitive differences and improve decision-making quality and speed.

scholarly journals An integrated decision support system for ERP implementation in small and medium sized enterprises

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Xie ◽  
Colin James Allen ◽  
Mahmood Ali
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Nonlinear Programming ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Programming Model ◽  
Resource Allocations ◽  
Erp Implementation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Nonlinear Programming Model

Purpose – Implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a challenging task for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated decision support system (DSS) for ERP implementation (DSS_ERP) to facilitate resource allocations and risk analysis. Design/methodology/approach – Analytical regression models are developed using data collected through a survey conducted on 400 SMEs that have implemented ERP systems, and are validated by a simulation model. The validated analytical regression models are used to construct a nonlinear programming model that generates solutions for resource allocations, such as time and budget. Findings – ERP implementation cost increases along the time horizon, while performance level increases up to a point and remains unchanged. To maximise or achieve a certain level of performance within a budget limitation, CSFs are prioritised as: project management (highest), top management, information technology, users and vendor support (lowest). SMEs are recommended to concentrate effort and resources on CSFs that have a greater impact on achieving their desired goals while optimising utilisation of resources. Research limitations/implications – DSS_ERP proves to be beneficial to SMEs in identifying required resources and allocating resources, but could be further tested in case studies for its practical use and benefits. Practical implications – DSS_ERP serves as a useful tool for SMEs to predict required resources and allocate them prior to ERP implementation, which maximises the probability of achieving predetermined targets. It also enables SMEs to analyse risk caused by changes to resources during ERP implementation, and helps them to be better prepared for the risks. Originality/value – The research contributes to the scarce research on ERP implementation using scientific methods. A novel nonlinear programming model is constructed for ERP implementation under time and budget limitations, facilitating resource allocations in an ERP implementation, which has not been reported in any previous research. The research offers a theoretical basis for empirical studies of resource allocations in ERP implementation.

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