Multicriteria Decision Support Model for Selection of Fiberglass Suppliers

This chapter presents a real case of a decision problem in supplier selection of one of the main raw materials of a wind blades industry. The study considered all currently qualified suppliers according to considerably rigorous standards and specifications and one in qualification process. It is a complex choice, given the strategic importance of the product and the multiplicity of criteria to be considered, both quantitative and qualitative. The strong competitiveness requires a special attention which concerns the supplier selection; not only the price matters; in fact, a day of stoppage due to failure in a delivery, for example, corresponds to high losses that would have justified the purchase from a supplier with a higher price but with no delivery failures. In order to contribute to the problem resolution, the methodologies PROMETHEE and AHP were applied, whose results allow the authors to stablish a ranking of the considered suppliers. The results will support the company on the selection of fiberglass suppliers and in some cases clarify where they can find the main trade-offs.

Ontology-Driven Multicriteria Decision Support for Victim Evacuation

In light of the complexity of unfolding disasters, the diversity of rapidly evolving events, the enormous amount of generated information, and the huge pool of casualties, emergency responders (ERs) may be overwhelmed and in consequence poor decisions may be made. In fact, the possibility of transporting the wounded victims to one of several hospitals and the dynamic changes in healthcare resource availability make the decision process more complex. To tackle this problem, we propose a multicriteria decision support service, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, that aims to avoid overcrowding and outpacing the capacity of a hospital to effectively provide the best care to victims by finding out the most appropriate hospital that meets the victims’ needs. The proposed approach searches for the most appropriate healthcare institution that can effectively deal with the victims’ needs by considering the availability of the needed resources in the hospital, the victim’s wait time to receive the healthcare, and the transfer time that represents the hospital proximity to the disaster site. The evaluation and validation results showed that the assignment of hospitals was done successfully considering the needs of each victim and without overwhelming any single hospital.

Land Suitability Assessment for Olive Mill Wastewater Disposal by Integrating Multicriteria Decision Support Tools

Many on-site waste disposal systems fail regularly due to problems concerning suitable location and management. A potential environmental threat is inevitably propagated through on-site, off-site, downstream, soil surface and ground water pollution. Soil is a key component of land suitability for waste disposal. This paper presents a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – based integrated multicriteria decision support system for evaluating the land suitability for olive mill wastewater (OMWW) disposal in the Mediterranean region. Two-scaled classification schemes are developed, the global scheme for Central and South Greece (scale: 1:30.000) and the local scheme for the study area in Xiromero, Aetolia-Acarnania Prefecture, Western Greece, scale 1:10.000. Constrains and factors are included into the spatial decision-making framework, where geostatistical and fuzzy set theory techniques, as well as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) are appropriately integrated. Physical, chemical, and socioeconomic variables adapted to the Mediterranean soil conditions are incorporated as driving forces for the land suitability assessment and the produced maps reveal valuable results for final end-users, such as municipal authorities, agriculturalists, farmers and other national and local stakeholders.

A Tool for the Evaluation of Energy-Environmental Retrofit Interventions on Opaque Walls Using ETICS

Buildings in Europe are the largest consumers of energy, since they are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of pollutant gas emissions. The energy efficiency, the consequential economic savings and the reduction of environmental impacts must necessarily consider the design of improvements that affect the opaque vertical envelope of a building. The vertical envelope generally constitutes the largest dispersing surface. In this paper, a comparative evaluation of different ETICS (External Thermal Insulation Composite System) solutions through the application of a multicriteria decision support method is proposed. The criteria at the basis of the procedure relate to the energy, environmental, indoor comfort, and economic aspects. Through the application to the case study, consisting of two types of vertical walls with reference to three different climate zones, the ETICS alternative that achieves the best compromise between the various evaluation criteria is highlighted and the solidity of the method itself is tested. The potential of the methodology in the analysis of the alternatives in adherence to individual subcriteria and the possibility of implementation with additional indicators as the needs change are also highlighted. The social impact is undoubtedly one of the expected effects of the application of the method, since a better performance of the building envelope leads to an increase in comfort and liveability of indoor spaces. Moreover, all studies aimed at increasing the performance of the building or parts of it, consequently, lead to greater accessibility by the most vulnerable members of society, in line with the principles of sustainability and inclusiveness of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

A Review on Multicriteria Decision Support System and Industrial Internet of Things for Source Code Transformation

The large scale increase of communication and number of devices in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has rapidly enabled practitioners to make decisions based on multicriteria. Multicriteria decision support systems (MCDSSs) play an important role in decision-making for a particular situation based on several criteria. Making of decision based on multicriteria is the main issues for research community and practitioners of the IIoT. Several decision support systems (DSSs) are offered for making decisions which have the potentiality to support the activities of the decision-making process. The suggested study shows a review on the existing decision support systems for the IIoT for source code transformation which will enable research community and practitioners of the industry to use the existing methods, tools, approaches, and techniques and to provide novel solutions for the smooth industry of Internet of Things.

A new multicriteria decision support tool based on Fuzzy SWARA and TOPSIS

The problem of selecting 3PL (Third Party Logistics) suppliers is a major issue in the management of the supply chain and the improvement of the production management of a manufacturing company. A 3PL supplier can be defined as a company that provides contract logistics services to a manufacturer, supplier or main user of a product or service. It is called a third party because the logistics provider does not own the products but participates in the supply chain between the manufacturer and the user of a given product. In actual cases, several decision-makers intervene in the selection of 3PL suppliers and each one has his own points of view and wishes to take into account criteria which are not generally the same for all the decision-makers. Furthermore, the criteria have different weights. In this study, we propose a method to solve this problem. It consists of a combination of the fuzzy Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method with the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The objective is to optimize the decision-making process and have another, more dynamic model and satisfy the needs of the decision-maker. Fuzzy SWARA is one of the new methods being used for ranking evaluation criteria based on decision makers’ expected degree of importance to determine the weights of evaluation criteria (Selçuk, 2019). This method can be used to facilitate estimation of decision makers’ preferences regarding the meaning of attributes in the weight determination process. TOPSIS is a multi-criteria method for identifying solutions from a finite set of alternatives (Behzadian et al., 2012). To the best of our knowledge, this combination has not been developed in the literature, especially in the third-party logistic problems. The proposed model will be implemented to solve a 3PL problem of a company selling steel products. Keywords: multicriteria decision support, 3PL suppliers, Fuzzy SWARA, TOPSIS