Decision-making Trail And Evaluation Laboratory Research Articles

Using a comprehensive DEMATEL-ISM-MICMAC and importance–performance analysis to study sustainable service quality features

PurposeTo gain and differentiate competitive advantage, the sustainable service quality is a determining factor that railway companies can use. The purpose of this study is to identify both the importance and performance of rail transportation service quality factors in a case study as well as determine the most influential quality features.Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive approach namely importance–performance analysis (IPA) technique and decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Matriced’ Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement (MICMAC) techniques was utilized.FindingsThe relative position of each attribute is specified on the IPA matrix proposing four strategies of concentrate here, keep up the good work, low priority and possible overkill. This study reveals that attributes of “the company cares about having a good society” are the most influential factor, and “having good business relations with shareholders” is the most permeable factor. Actually, consumers pay attention to how companies act toward society and maintain communication with shareholders. Through ISM technique and by summing the row and column of the consistency matrix, the attributes were partitioned into four levels. Also, MICMAC analysis identified the four clusters of linkage, independent, autonomous and dependent status of the attributes in terms of the driving power and dependence power.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the nature of single case study methodology, caution should be taken into consideration regarding the generazability of the obtained results.Originality/valueThe hybrid DEMATEL-ISM technique is used to analyze service quality factors in Iran’s transportation industry, which can be utilized in other industries as well as other countries.

Selection of plastic solid waste treatment technology based on cumulative prospect theory and fuzzy DEMATEL.

Under the global implementation of a low-carbon economy, the treatment of municipal plastic solid waste (PSW) has become an important task to be solved urgently. In the actual decision-making process of PSW treatment, the evaluation information is usually fuzzy, and the decision-makers (DMs) are bounded rational. For selecting the most appropriate PSW treatment technology, we propose a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method based on cumulative prospect theory and fuzzy decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL). Firstly, we construct the criteria system of PSW treatment that consists of 9 sub-criteria from the perspectives of environment, economy, society, and technology. Then, considering the interdependences and interactions between these evaluation criteria and allowing multiple stakeholders to participate in decision-making, we propose a fuzzy DEMATEL method to deal with the fuzziness of evaluation in the decision-making process and determine the weights of the evaluation criteria. Subsequently, taking into account the different opinions of different stakeholders and psychological factors such as risk preference and loss aversion of stakeholders, we aggregate the evaluation information of different stakeholders and develop the PSW treatment alternatives to rank the orders by using the proposed multi-actor cumulative prospect theory (CPT) method. We study seven alternative processes for PSW treatment by the developed model, including landfill, recycling, pyrolysis, incineration, and the combination of landfilling and recycling, landfill and incineration, and recycling and pyrolysis. According to the ranking results, we find the combination of recycling and incineration is the best treatment alternative. We take the seven PSW treatment technologies in Shanghai as the case study to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method. Through the sensitivity analysis and comparison analysis with fuzzy similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) method and an acronym in Portuguese of the interactive and multi-criteria decision-making (TODIM) method, we illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. This research provides significant references for the PSW treatment technology selection problems under uncertain environments and extends the methods in the decision-making field.

Analysis of barriers affecting the adoption of community solar from consumer's perspective: A hybrid ISM-DEMATEL approach

Community solar has the capability to broaden solar accessibility and convalesce financial feasibility in comparison to conventional and commercial solar options and holds the potential to be part of the energy mix. Community solar avails ingress and affordability to solar power for those who may not be able to exploit it either due to financial or location constraints. Parallelly, it solves the issues related to electrification, fossil fuel crisis and greenhouse gas emission, contributes to sustainable development goals (SDG 7 and SDG 11), and realization of net-zero goals, however, the presence of barriers makes the adoption or scaling of community solar difficult. This research work intends to identify twelve crucial barriers for the adoption of community solar on the basis of the literature review and the perception of experts in the energy system. In this paper, we adopted hybrid Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) - Decision Ma king Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach for comprehension of the causal and hierarchical relationships among barriers for community solar adoption. The result suggested that lack of consumer awareness, lack of regulations and policies addressing community solar and lack of business model are the most influential barriers as depicted in ISM-DEMATEL based methodology. With the presented novel method, policy-makers, utilities and communities can liaise, coordinate and practice the system-wide advantages of community energy projects. It can also aid the public sector in comprehending the barriers and requirements of people.

APPLICATION OF INTERVAL TYPE-2 FUZZY SETS DEMATEL METHODS IN MARITIME TRANSPORTATION: THE CASE OF SHIP COLLISION

Accident analyse in marine industry is one of the critical issues for safety practitioners to prevent loss of life. Although considerable efforts were undertaken to prevent marine accident, numerous researches revealed that marine accidents are still on-going. In order to minimize accidents in the marine transportation, this paper presents a proactive decision- making tool which is integrating Decision-Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method with interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs). As the DEMATEL enables to analyse cause and effect relationship in decision-making, the IT2FSs overcome ambiguity and vagueness of linguistic assessment of decision-makers through the DEMATEL. Thus, significant accident causal factors and their effects can be analysed on the basis of cause-effect diagram. The application of proposed approach is demonstrated with a real ship collision case. Beside its theoretical contribution, the proposed approach provides practical benefits to ship owners and operators to perceive cause and effect relationship and to avoid marine accident.

Causation of Metro Operation Accidents in China: Calculation of Network Node Importance Based on DEMATEL and ISM

Continuous metro-operation accidents lead to serious economic loss and a negative social impact. The accident causation analysis is of great significance for accident prevention and metro operation safety promotion. Network node importance (NNI) evaluation has been widely used as a tool for ranking the nodes in complex networks; however, traditional indicators such as degree centrality (DC) are insufficient for examining accident networks. This study proposed an improved method by integrating decision making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) into traditional NNI evaluation, where the key nodes are determined by both the nature of the accident network topology and the contribution of the nodes to accident development. Drawing on this method, 32 accident causal factors were identified and prioritized on the ground of 248 accident cases. It was found that 14 important factors related to staff (e.g., “driver noncompliance”), environment (e.g., “extrinsic nature disturbance”), passenger (e.g., “passenger sudden illness”), and machine (e.g., “track failures”) should be given priority in safety management due to their significant tendency of causing metro accidents. Theoretical and managerial implications were discussed to provide useful insights into the understanding of the causation of metro accidents and form a basis for metro managers to develop targeted safety countermeasures related to metro operation. The proposed hybrid method is proven effective in investigating accident networks involving sequential and casual relationships and revealing factors with high possibility to increase accidents.

Managing public–private partnerships: a transmission pattern of underlying dynamics determining project performance

PurposeThe performance of public–private partnerships (PPPs) can be determined by a variety of factors, i.e. influencing factors (IFs). This study is undertaken for a purpose of identifying how such factors determine the project's performance (i.e. factor transmission patterns), particularly from the key stakeholders' perspectives.Design/methodology/approachA hybrid approach, which comprises a Social Network Analysis, ISM (i.e. Interpretive Structural Modeling) and an improved DEMATEL (i.e. Decision-Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory), was developed to analyze the causal relationships between the identified IFs as well as the transmission patterns of their impacts on PPPs. Data were collected from interviews and questionnaire surveys.FindingsThe transmission patterns of the identified IFs cascade from project environment and features and stakeholders' relationship to the project company capabilities and project process. It is identified that the public authority has a higher level than that of the private entity in PPPs.Research limitations/implicationsIt lacks longitudinal studies to investigate the dynamics of PPP stakeholder relationships and social networks. Future research needs to explore the transmission patterns of sub-factors affecting PPP performance and extend the applicability of the developed hybrid approach.Practical implicationsThis research provides practitioners with a robust tool that is useful for and insights into enhancing the management of lifecycle performance. It ensures the public authorities and private entities embarking on PPPs will make an informed decision about the monitoring of the life cycle performance.Originality/valueThis study contributes to knowledge of managerial mechanisms that can be adopted to manage factors determining the performance of PPPs. It enables an understanding of stakeholders' roles in driving the life cycle performance of PPPs.

An integrated green management model to improve environmental performance of textile industry towards sustainability

As manufacturing of textile causes serious environmental damage in different ways, identification of the critical environmentally conscious manufacturing indicators (CECMI) is essential to formulate environmental strategies. However, lack of proper models to identify the CECMIs for the textile industries make this research area to explore further. A novel integrated model combining environmental process mapping (EPM), decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and analytic network process (ANP) has been developed in this work and examined in the context of an Indian textile industry. While DEMATEL explains the cause and effect relationship, ANP calculates the weights of the indicators. Indicators such as waste generation, volatile organic compound (VOC) emission and energy consumption are found to be critical for the textile industry. Technical solutions are proposed here to solve the environmental problems related to the CECMIs. Implementation of the technical solutions results in reduction of 12% wastes, 10–11% carbon dioxide emission, 9–10% nitrogen oxide and 5% energy consumption while ensuring better occupational health (annual decrease of respiratory and allergic problems by 8% and 3% respectively). The work is thus expected to help develop sustainable environmental policy for the textile industries.

Study on location decision framework of electric vehicle battery swapping station: Using a hybrid MCDM method

Battery swapping station (BSS) is a new mode of supplying power for electric vehicle (EV). As the pre-stage of BSS construction, location decision problem plays an important role in its whole life cycle, which directly affects the economic profits. However, most of the existing researches are about its operation and management problem. Therefore, this paper proposes a site selection framework for the BSS based on MCDM (Multi-criteria decision making) method. Firstly, three new criteria are considered and the criteria system is established on the basis of existing research. Then, considering the information inadequacies in the decision-making process, triangular fuzzy numbers are adopted to deal with uncertainties. Afterwards, in view of the strong dependence among criteria, the fuzzy DEMATEL (Decision Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory) method is applied to determine the weights of criteria. And then, the FOWA (Fuzzy ordered Weighted Averaging) operator is adopted to aggregate the evaluation values on alternatives of experts and the fuzzy MULTIMOORA (Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis plus the Full Multiplicative Form) approach is used to rank the alternatives. Finally, a case in Beijing, China with sensitivity analysis and comparison results also illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach. This paper provides a critical tool for investors to select the most appropriate alternative.

Assessment of Waste Management in Healthcare Industry by using DEMATEL Technique

Healthcare waste management is the major task for the industry especially in rising nations like India. It is problematic to identify and control the wastes has turn out to be one of the serious concerns. For the assessment of waste management, case study is conducted in one of the top healthcare industry in India. The objective of the paper is to identify and assess the most influential wastes in the healthcare industry. In this paper, ten wastes are recognized from relevant literature and used to recognize the most influential wastes in the healthcare industry by using Decision Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique. This technique evaluates the importance of wastes and also displays its causal relations. The finding of the paper reveals that wastes from genotoxic chemical (W8) is the most influential waste in the healthcare industry and needs to be control it.

Decoding the Relationship of Service Operations Enablers in Healthcare Industry

The present study aims to decode the relationship among service operations enablers in healthcare industry. We identified the enablers with the help of literature and expert opinion through Delphi approach. Then, we conducted the semi-structured interview to finalize the scores of enablers in pairwise comparison matrix. We deployed the decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) in four steps to decode the degree of relationship and degree of effect and found that patient satisfaction does not directly depend on the professionalism of the staff. Location of the healthcare facility has the highest degree of relationship with other enablers, whereas the personal care abilities have a high impact on the service operations effectiveness. It is also noted that competency of pharmacist and doctor profile do not have a significant impact on service operations and thus on patient satisfaction and safety. The degree of relationship also has been presented in the form of a causal diagram toward the end of result. At the end of the study, the limitations and scope for future research are presented.

Assessment of Potential Land Suitability for Tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) in Sri Lanka Using a GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Approach

The potential land suitability assessment for tea is a crucial step in determining the environmental limits of sustainable tea production. The aim of this study was to assess land suitability to determine suitable agricultural land for tea crops in Sri Lanka. Climatic, topographical and soil factors assumed to influence land use were assembled and the weights of their respective contributions to land suitability for tea were assessed using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and the Decision-Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) model. Subsequently, all the factors were integrated to generate the potential land suitability map. The results showed that the largest part of the land in Sri Lanka was occupied by low suitability class (42.1%) and 28.5% registered an unsuitable land cover. Furthermore, 12.4% was moderately suitable, 13.9% was highly suitable and 2.5% was very highly suitable for tea cultivation. The highest proportion of “very highly suitable” areas were recorded in the Nuwara Eliya District, which accounted for 29.50% of the highest category. The model validation results showed that 92.46% of the combined “highly suitable” and “very highly suitable” modelled classes are actual current tea-growing areas, showing the overall robustness of this model and the weightings applied. This result is significant in that it provides effective approaches to enhance land-use efficiency and better management of tea production.

Analyzing environment sustainability enablers using fuzzy DEMATEL for an Indian steel manufacturing company

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the Environmental Sustainability Enablers (ESEs) for an Indian steel manufacturing company to select the appropriate set of ESEs for implementing and enhancing environmental sustainability.Design/methodology/approachA methodology using fuzzy Decision-Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is proposed to analyze ESEs capturing multiple experts’ qualitative judgments on their mutual impacts. It is applied to an Indian steel manufacturing company to understand the salient features of the concept.FindingsThe relevant 18 ESEs were classified into cause and effect group and also interactions (i.e. influencing and influenced) of each ESE with other ESEs were evaluated. It was observed that the five ESEs (i.e. competitors’ environmental sustainability strategy, environmental compliance certification, government regulations and incentives, influence of external factors and air pollution controlling system) are the most prominent in the cause group.Research limitations/implicationsThe results obtained are specific to an Indian steel manufacturing company and it cannot be generalized for steel manufacturing sector. However, the current paper can show direction to carry out such work in other manufacturing companies.Practical implicationsThe proposed methodology will be helpful for allocating efforts and resources to enhance the impact of ESEs for successful achievement of environmental sustainability.Originality/valueNo such paper has been reported in the literature with an objective to develop structural framework for Indian steel manufacturing company to improve environmental sustainability.

Distributed energy system for sustainability transition: A comprehensive assessment under uncertainties based on interval multi-criteria decision making method by coupling interval DEMATEL and interval VIKOR

Distributed energy system (DES) has been recognized as a promising solution for energy security improvement and emissions mitigation all over the world. However, there are usually various DES configurations with different performances, and it is usually difficult for the decision-makers to select the most sustainable DES solution among multiple choices. This study aims to develop a comprehensive a framework for sustainability prioritization of distributed energy systems under data uncertainties. An interval multi-criteria decision making method which can address data uncertainties was developed by combining the interval Decision Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and the interval VIKOR method. Four distributed energy systems including gas turbine system, fuel cell system, photovoltaic system, and internal combustion engine system were studied by the proposed method, and photovoltaic system has been recognized as the most sustainable scenario, following by fuel cell system, gas turbine system, and internal combustion engine system in the descending order. In order to investigate the effects of the weights on the final sustainability ranking of the four distributed energy systems, sensitivity analysis was carried out, and the results reveal that the weights of the criteria have significant impacts on the sustainability rankings of these four distributed energy systems.

How to foster Sustainable Continuous Improvement: A cause-effect relations map of Lean soft practices

Lean Management (LM) represents a complex socio-technical system where both technical and social practices should be consistently implemented and integrated in order to foster a Continuous Improvement (CI) culture. Despite initial gains in operational performances due to the implementation of the most common and well-established Lean techniques, the great majority of the companies approaching Lean Manufacturing fail in achieving sustainable outcomes in the long term, and most of them eventually come back to their traditional way of doing business. Recognized the pivotal role of soft practices, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role played by the human factor in fostering the establishment of a Sustainable Continuous Improvement (SCI) environment.Starting from surveying the literature, a comprehensive framework including all the relevant soft practices related to LM has been developed. Then, authors proposed, for the first time, Decision-Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) analysis applied to soft practices of SCI, that provides an innovative understanding of the relevant soft practices which foster SCI by showing cause-effect association among them.The proposed methodology reveals precious insights for scholars and practitioners who intend to approach and apply SCI. The impact relations map shows that some soft practices are initiators and some others enablers of the SCI and allows to identify the most relevant Critical Success Factors (CSF) and interrelationships amongst them. Results show that the key for a SCI is represented by a full engagement of the workforce, which must be triggered and supported by Top Management with the use of some leverages such as an effective communication, training and use of Kaizen events.

Challenges Evaluation for Adoption of SCP Practices in Footwear Industry of Bangladesh: A DEMATEL Approach

The footwear industry needs a sustainable business environment due to its remarkable contributions to the economic growth of a country. Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) practices in the footwear industry can act as a pivotal driving factor for sustainable development in footwear sector of Bangladesh. The implementation of SCP practices is not an easy task for the footwear industry since there are numerous challenges in the existing supply chain. Meanwhile, the literature reveals that the lack of studies on relevant industry motivates to carry out this research. Therefore, this research focuses on the state-of-the-art literature by identifying and finding interactions among challenges to SCP practices in the footwear supply chain. Five experts from five reputed and export-oriented footwear industries were assigned to find out the challenges regarding the SCP implementation and the most important 10 challenges were identified based on experts’ feedback. To assess the cause–effect relationship among challenges, a decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique, a powerful decision-making tool which can find the interactions among factors, was employed. In this study, results showed that five challenges were identified as causal group challenges and remaining five identified as effect group challenges. The causal challenges are lack of top management commitment, absence of market information of green products, inadequate training facility on SCP, motivational gap among consumers, and lack of rules and regulations on SCP practices. Those challenges have net positive influence on effect group challenges such as poor compliance practices, lack of latest technological facility, lack of acceptance on green products, lack of reverse logistics facility, and poor linkage and coordination among lead firms. These results will assist decision-makers to make strategic policy regarding implementing SCP in the footwear supply chain. This study is the first one which deals with the importance of SCP practices in the context of footwear industry, and it is also important for the sustainable development of footwear sector of Bangladesh.

An analysis of barriers affecting the implementation of e-waste management practices in India: A novel ISM-DEMATEL approach

Today, e-waste management practices are gaining momentum because of the global environmental regulations, but the presence of barriers makes the implementation of e-waste management difficult. Moreover, e-waste contains valuable metals as a well as hazardous substance that has more deceptive impacts on the ecosystem. This study aims to identify ten barriers based on the literature and the perceptions of experts involved in e-waste management issues. In this paper, we employed an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Decision Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) for understanding the hierarchal and contextual relationship structure among the barriers of e-waste management. The study shows that no autonomous barriers are present in the course of study. The result suggests that the lack of public awareness about e-waste recycling and the lack of policies addressing e-waste issues are the root cause barriers as depicted by the novel ISM-DEMATEL based methodology. This present novel model helps the policy and decision maker’s to find out the mutual relationship and interlinking among the barriers.

An interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method approach for the analysis of barriers of waste recycling in India

ABSTRACTIncreasing amount of wastes is posing great difficulties for all countries across the world. The problem of waste management is more severe in developing countries such as India where the rates of economic growth and urbanization are increasing at a fast pace. The governments in these countries are often constrained by limited technical and financial capabilities, which prevent them from effectively addressing these problems. There is a limited participation from the private players too in terms of setting up of waste recycling units. The present study aims at identifying various barriers that challenge the establishment of these units, specific to India. Further, it attempts to identify the most influential barriers by utilizing multicriterion decision-making tools of interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL). The findings of the study suggest that the lack of funds, input material, and subsidy are the most influential barriers that are needed to be addressed for the development of waste recycling infrastructure in India.Implications: This work has been carried out to address the problem of proper waste management in India. To deal with this problem, the method of waste recycling has been felt appropriate by the government of various countries, including India. Therefore, the barriers that play vital role in waste recycling for private players have been identified and their importance has been established with the help of ISM and DEMATEL methods. Doing so will assist the government to take appropriate steps for the betterment of waste recycling infrastructure in India and enhance waste management.

Developing a sustainable service innovation framework for the hospitality industry

PurposeThis study aims to determine essential attributes of sustainable service innovation (SSI) in the Taiwan hospitality industry.Design/methodology/approachBy combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies while considering perspectives on sustainable management and service innovation, the present study extends the related literature on SSI and presents a new framework. The decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) analytical approaches are used to identify relations between dimensions and their causality attributes.FindingsThe findings of the DEMATEL result indicate that innovation diffusion has direct and indirect effects on dimensions of sustainable innovation and on organizational factors. Furthermore, sustainable innovation emerged as the most important attribute while the analytic network process analysis was used.Practical implicationsThe critical dimensions identified in this study may serve as guidelines that hospitality practitioners or hotel managers may use when engaging in SSI.Social implicationsSustainability management is ranked the most important criterion of sustainable practice, which indicates that considerations of sustainability are necessary when hospitality managers wish to carry out a sustainability project in an organization. Furthermore, organizational capabilities were ranked the most important criteria among all organizational factors. This finding implies that the first step involves establishing a shared vision.Originality/valueThe current study integrates and applies Rogers’ (2003) diffusion of innovations theory (DIT) to identify how to facilitate sustainability through service innovation. In so doing, this study can add to our knowledge in the hotel industry by using the DIT.

Waste-to-energy, municipal solid waste treatment, and best available technology: Comprehensive evaluation by an interval-valued fuzzy multi-criteria decision making method

The treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW) has become an urgently important task of many countries. This objective of this study is to present a novel group multi-attribute decision analysis method for prioritizing the MSW treatment alternatives based on the interval-valued fuzzy set theory. This study allows multiple stakeholders to participate in the process of decision-making and they are also allowed to use linguistic variables to rate the alternatives and determine the weights of the evaluation criteria. The interval-valued fuzzy group decision making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method was developed to determine the weights of the evaluation criteria by considering the independent relationships among these criteria. The multi-actor interval-valued fuzzy grey relational analysis was developed to rank the waste-to-energy scenarios. Four alternative processes for MSW treatment including landfill, anaerobic digestion, incineration, and gasification were studied by the developed model, and the results reveal that the developed model can successfully help the stakeholders to determine the priority sequence of the alternative MSW treatment scenarios.

A cause and effect relationship model for location of temporary shelters in disaster operations management

The aim of the location of temporary shelter directly is to focus on helping the sufferers and injured people on disaster areas during and after a disaster. Facility location (location of temporary shelters) decisions play a critical role and affect directly performance of relief operations in disaster operations management (DOM). In this paper, a proactive decision-making tool by integrating decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method with interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) is proposed to locate of temporary location in DOM. While DEMATEL method enables to analyse cause and effect relationship in decision-making process, the IT2FSs overcome ambiguity and vagueness of linguistic assessment of decision-makers through the DEMATEL. 14 different criteria for location of temporary shelters are considered by 9 disaster operation managers for evaluating the cause and effect factors. Beside the theoretical contribution of the proposed method, it provides practical benefits to disaster operation managers to perceive cause and effect relationship on location of temporary shelters.