Multi-criteria Perspective Research Articles

Fuzzy criteria programming approach for optimising the TBL performance of closed loop supply chain network design problem

Immense concern for sustainability and increasing stakeholders’ involvement has sparked tremendous interest towards designing optimal supply chain networks with significant economic, environmental, and social influence. Central to the idea, this study aims to design a closed loop supply chain (CLSC) network for an Indian laptop manufacturer. The network configuration, which involves a manufacturer, suppliers, third party logistics providers (forward and reverse), retailers, customers and a non-government organisation (NGO), is modelled as a mixed integer linear programming problem with fuzzy goals of minimising environmental impact and maximising net profit and social impact, subject to fuzzy demand and capacity constraints. Profit is generated from the sale of primary and secondary laptops, earned tax credits, and revenue sharing with reverse logistics providers. The environmental implications are investigated by measuring the carbon emitted due to activities of manufacturing, assembling, dismantling, fabrication, and transportation. The social dimension is quantified in terms of the number of jobs created, training hours, community service hours, and donations to NGO. The novelty of the model rests on its quantification of the three triple bottom line (TBL) indicators and on its use of AHP–TOPSIS for modelling the multi-criteria perspectives of the stakeholders. Numerical weights for the triple lines of sustainability are utilized. Further, a fuzzy multi-objective programming approach that integrates fuzzy set theory with goal programming techniques is utilised to yield properly efficient solutions to the multi-objective problem and to provide a trade-off set for conflicting objectives. The significance of the CLSC model is empirically established as a decision support tool for improving the TBL performance of a particular Indian laptop manufacturer. Practical and theoretical implications are derived from the result analysis, and a generalised quantitative closed-loop model can be effectively adapted by other electronic manufacturers to increase their competitiveness, profitability, and to improve their TBL.

Analysis of the techno-economic implications generated by the selection of manufacturing codes of pressure vessels for high demanding applications

The selection of the manufacturing code in components for high demanding applications is crucial. A new methodology is developed to solve the problem of manufacturing codes selection. This methodology allows to obtain an integrated approach that considers a technical evaluation that consists of quantifying the stringency of technological requirements together with an economic study. By the implementation of the new methodology, an alternative that combines the benefits of both standards from a multi-criteria perspective based on functional and economic criteria has been proposed. This proposal represents a saving of 5.8% with respect to the use of KTA standards, without diminishing of technical stringency.

Combining Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with role-playing games for stakeholder engagement in complex transport decisions

Abstract This paper presents a procedure for the structuring of a transport decision-making problem and evaluation of the solutions proposed from a multi-stakeholder multi-criteria perspective. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used as multicriteria decision technique, while a role-playing game is used to reproduce a participatory process where University students act as key stakeholders. The case study regards the building of a new metro station in Catania (Italy), which will be the nearest station to a big University district. A dedicated transit system linking the metro station and the district is under study and four different alternatives have been proposed. Students were initially informed about the objectives of key stakeholders in order to be able to play the different roles. A hierarchy of the problem was built with them and AHP was used to elicit their preferences and evaluate priorities for each stakeholder group. A comparison between a mathematical aggregation of individual priorities and a consensus vote was performed to verify the differences between the two different methods and their compliance with the stated stakeholder preferences. AHP-based participatory procedure proved to be suitable to tackle the complexity of transport decisions.

Building Envelope Over-Cladding: Impact on Energy Balance and Microclimate

A considerable part of recent EU policies is currently addressed at developing effective measures to support the transition towards a low carbon society according to the principles and goals of Roadmap to 2050. In this general framework the links between the development of low-emission strategies and climate-resilient approaches to buildings play a key role. As most part of the existing building stock was built before the 1980s, retrofit and renovation actions are widely investigated. Despite progress in this field, relatively little attention has been given to the connections between the achievable energy savings and the energy investment needed to pursue the renovation process and to how technological choices can impact on the energy balance according to a multi-criteria perspective. The paper will explore how different technologies and design solutions to building envelopes cladding contribute to the reduction of the heat gains in urban environments and how appropriate adaptive strategies can further mitigate against accelerated greenhouse emissions. It will discuss the relationship between individual building performance and consequent effect on external environment. The effects of technological and material choices are evaluated for some design scenarios and conditions in order to develop an indicative impact mode.

Venture Capitalists’ Investment Decision Criteria for New Ventures: A Review

Venture Capitalists (VCs) play the most crucial role to identify high potential and innovative firms. However, VCs adopt different criteria to evaluate the incipient ventures before funding. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the comprehensive literature of the VCs investment evaluation criteria. This study provides a critical review of the conceptual and empirical approaches focusing on how VCs make their investment decision and what are the key influential factors at the times of investment. The critical examination highlights that not all the VCs able to follow the same investment decision process for evaluating new ventures. Some VCs give more importance to entrepreneur's characteristics, while others are more intrigued with financial and marketing perspectives. Thus, findings reveal that VCs follow multi-criteria perspective of the decision-making. This study discusses the various issues and suggestions for future research. The results of the study are useful for both venture capitalists in their decision-making process and entrepreneurs in their venture capital applications to maximize their success rate.

Leaving oil underground in Ecuador: The Yasuní-ITT initiative from a multi-criteria perspective

The Ecuadorian proposal to keep 846 million barrels of crude oil in the Yasuní National Park underground—for the purposes of avoiding CO2 emissions and to protect both the biological diversity and the indigenous peoples in isolation who inhabit this area of the Amazon—is evaluated from a “multi-criteria” analysis. The main purpose of the paper is to compare this policy option with other alternatives across different values. An analytical framework is used that recognises the inherent complexity of a problem of this nature, in which the financial values are indeed relevant for policy, but other values are also relevant: the economic (in a broad sense), social, environmental, cultural and political. The results confirm that from a financial standpoint, extracting the oil is preferable, but by incorporating the non-monetary values into the multi-criteria decision process, one can plausibly defend the Yasuní-ITT Initiative as the most desirable policy option. Indeed, the social and environmental benefits (or “criteria”) signalling an economic transition towards a model based on renewable sources of energy, along with the protection of critical environmental and social capital, make up for the financial gap.

Stochastic goal programming in forest planning

Developing a forest management plan in a multicriteria perspective is traditionally accomplished utilizing simulation and optimization tools as a means to predict and optimize a variety of criteria under consideration. Goal programming is a useful tool to balance conflicting aspects of the competing criteria. When information regarding an aspect of uncertainty is available, stochastic programming should be utilized to efficiently integrate this additional information. Research has been conducted into determining the accuracy of forest inventory methods; however, the measurement error is typically ignored when generating forest management plans. Through integrating the uncertainty in a systematic fashion, the forest management plan can be improved by describing the potential uncertainty in the plan and by managing the influences of this uncertainty. This paper develops three stochastic goal programming formulations and highlights the usefulness of the approach on a small forest holding.

Comparative Multi-Criteria Assessment of Climate Policies and Sustainable Development Strategies in Cameroon: Towards a GIS Decision-Support Tool for the Design of an Optimal REDD+ Strategy

Cameroon is committed to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+). To achieve this goal, the government has introduced a series of policy reforms and formulated a number of key strategic planning documents to advance the REDD+ readiness process in Cameroon. This paper assesses the extent to which major cross-sectoral policies support or impede the development and implementation of an optimal REDD+ strategy in Cameroon from a comparative multi-criteria perspective. Study results reveal that a majority of the policy instruments reviewed appeared to be less prescriptive in terms of any tangible REDD+ strategy, as they do not have provisions for tangible measures to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. Given the lack of adequate flexibility, prompt review and responsiveness of these cross-sectoral policies to adapt themselves to new realities and respond to a changing environment, this paper introduces a GIS-REDD+ decision support system (GIS-REDD+DSS) that is necessary to support the adaptive element of an adaptive REDD+ strategy in Cameroon. The GIS-REDD+DSS, an electronic REDD+agri intermediary hub, serves the following purpose: (1) host a database of locally-relevant climate information, improved input technologies, best practices as well as land use and forest cover geo-spatial maps; (2) host a virtual economic tool that performs economic valuations (costs and benefits) and financial analysis of REDD+agri projects to aid investment decision-making; and (3) host an electronic marketplace to mediate any-to-any transactions among REDD+agri project developers, service providers, input suppliers, private and institutional investors and buyers (wholesalers and retailers), thereby creating value in two ways: aggregation and matching. This decision support tool, we argue, is a fundamental prerequisite for “policy and REDD+ safeguard integration” innovation that allows new scientific findings to be integrated into REDD+ strategies in a short period of time.

A Multicriteria Clustering Approach Based on Similarity Indices and Clustering Ensemble Techniques

This paper deals with the problem of multicriteria clusters construction. The aim is to propose a multicriteria clustering procedure aiming at discovering data structures from a multicriteria perspective by defining a dissimilarity measure which takes into account the multicriteria nature of the problem. Comparing two objects in the multicriteria context is based on the preference information that expresses whether these objects are indifferent, incomparable or one is preferred to the other. The proposed approach uses this preference information with an agreement–disagreement similarity index to compute a dissimilarity measure. The approach generates, according to the preference relations, a set of clusterings. Each clustering expresses a way of grouping objects according to the preference relation used. A good quality final clustering is obtained by combining the clusterings generated previously using a clustering ensemble technique.

The challenge of selecting and evaluating third-party reverse logistics providers in a multicriteria perspective: a Brazilian case

Following recent legislations and public policies on solid waste and product take-back, companies in Brazil are now impelled to incorporate reverse logistics practices in their business processes. The Brazilian National Policy of Solid Waste – NPSW, approved in 2010, obligates companies to implement reverse logistics. Considering this, many companies in Brazil have studied the possibility to outsource these activities by engaging third-party reverse logistics providers – 3PRLP. Considering these demands, it is important to define which systematic approaches can be used to select the most suitable 3PRLP. The objective of this article is to identify the main criteria, the systematic methods that can be used in order to select the most appropriate 3PRLP and also propose a framework based in multicriteria decision aid approach to select 3PRLP. Thus, a Systematic Literature Review was carried out and a conceptual framework for decision making in this context using Multicriteria Decision Aid – MCDA modeling was proposed. Therefore, this paper presents two contributions: i) a SLR covering the past decade based on the MCDA experiences in 3PRLP selection, highlighting the main criteria and systematic approaches used; ii) based on this SLR, a proposal for a conceptual methodological framework to help decision makers and researchers in performing a MCDA in the area of 3PRLP selection.

Goal programming in forest management: customising models for the decision-maker's preferences

Within a multi-criteria perspective goal programming (GP) is the most widely used approach for addressing forest management problems of a continuous nature. A key element of a GP model is the achievement function. Each type of achievement function is supported by a very precise structure of decision-makers' preferences. However, in many of the GP applications reported in the forest management literature, the achievement function of the GP model is chosen without justifying the reasons for its election. However, the right election of a GP achievement function is a crucial matter if we want the GP model to capture the essential features of the forest management reality analysed. In coherence with these ideas, this article aims: (1) to provide a precise preferential interpretation of the different GP achievement functions and (2) to provide some insight and guidelines about how to choose the most suitable GP achievement function for a precise forest resource management problem. Hopefully the ideas presented in this article will help to forest management analysts in the design of GP models that reflect with enough accuracy the preferences of the decision-maker.

Balancing equity and efficiency of goal programming for use in forest management planning

Developing forest management plans from a multicriteria perspective requires the decision maker to state preferences regarding the criteria and their importance. This article demonstrates the feasibility of merging the weighted goal programming formulation and the minimax goal programming formulation as a means to provide the decision maker the opportunity to decide which goals are to be treated in a weighted goal programming (the efficient solution) manner or in a minimax goal programming (the equitable solution) manner. The combination of these two goal planning variants is done through partitioning the criteria into sets to be treated by the different variants. The two methods proposed in this paper assign different criteria to a set where the balance of the achievements is desired or to a different set where the maximum aggregated achievement is desired. The first method is designed to create alternative plans, based only on the assignment of criteria to different partitions. The second method requires that the decision maker has a clear understanding of how he/she wishes to deal with each criterion. The functionality of these methods of goal planning is shown with an example derived from a forest management planning situation.

Multi criteria sustainability assessment of biogas production in Kenya

Energy poverty is a global threat to sustainable development and improved livelihoods hence the availability of clean, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy is a central issue to Kenya’s national development objectives. Biogas technology in Kenya has been earmarked as one of the main drivers towards the elimination of energy poverty in majority of rural households and to this end different biogas digester models are actively promoted. Consequently, assessing the sustainability of the biogas systems in Kenya is one of the topical issues driving the discussion on biogas development. Hence developing an assessment technique capable of reliably screening the different alternatives and highlighting the sustainability hot spots is of critical essence in decision making for all biogas stake holders in the country. This paper comparatively analyses the common biogas production systems in Kenya by linking the biogas energy with infrastructures of production. A multi criteria perspective is employed for the analysis focusing on technical, economic and environmental sustainability dimensions. The evaluation in the work follows the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology based on the ISO 14040 and 14044 environmental management principles. It is observed that the tubular and the fixed dome digesters with respective cumulative multi criteria sustainability scores of 70% and 57% are the most sustainable with respect to animal manure as the predominant feedstock. The multi criteria sustainability assessment approach as presented in this study can constitute a vital tool for interventions in the biogas energy sector. The biogas multi-criteria sustainability assessment approach as presented in this work might be a very vital tool for biogas policy formulation in Kenya and a wide range of developing countries.

On the classification of spare parts with a multi-criteria perspective

The objective of this work is to discuss on the classification of spare parts for manufacturing equipment. Not only is the attention put on the existing scientific literature about the subject, but also an on field analysis is presented within the paper. The focus is on the classification methods and on the adoption of a multi-criteria perspective which can best be referred to in order to get a proper criticality analysis of the spare parts. Remarks are also provided for what concern the implementation of spare parts classification with a multi-criteria perspective in a real industrial environment.

The Deal Structuring Stage of the Venture Capitalist Decision‐Making Process: Exploring Confidence and Control*

This exploratory study examines the deal structuring stage of the venture capitalist decision‐making process. Here, the primary issues of concern are investor confidence and potential control of a venture in relation to the level of financing the investor provides and the structure with which the funding is delivered. Confidence comes in support of the entrepreneur, the venture itself, or a combination of the two, prior to capital transfer, but after the initial “invest or not invest” decision has already occurred. Findings support a multicriteria perspective of the pre‐investment decision‐making process and a distinct difference between entrepreneur confidence and venture confidence in the deal structuring stage.

An event-driven approach with makespan/cost tradeoff analysis for project portfolio scheduling

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) has become increasingly important in managing multiple projects simultaneously. However, during execution, the project portfolio is associated with considerable uncertainty that leads to resource contention among projects and schedule disruptions. Regarding the need to revise a schedule when unexpected events occur, we adopt an event-driven approach to develop a tradeoff decision framework for project portfolio scheduling and rescheduling. In the framework, High Level Petri nets, Activity-Based Costing and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are applied in sequence to generate feasible schedules, estimate their makespan and costs, and select the best compromise schedule. This framework is advantageous in the evaluation of scheduling performance from a multi-criteria perspective and the incorporation of both objective and subjective measurements in the decision process.

Multiobjective vendor allocation in multiechelon inventory systems: a spreadsheet model

The vendor selection problem (VSP) is a critical element of the numerous managerial decisions in the consideration of both outsourcing and integrated supply chain management. Many papers in the literature have dealt with VSPs from a multicriteria perspective, but few have looked into the implications of such decisions in a multiechelon supply chain with the explicit consideration of multiple time-phased demands. A new integrated supply chain model is proposed for a multiechelon supply chain. This model takes into account the usual cost objective and other important criteria in a multiechelon supply chain ranging from the most upstream suppliers' quality to end customers' satisfaction level through a large-scale multiobjective linear programme (MOLP). Furthermore, various Pareto optimal solutions can be graphically presented to facilitate decision making and negotiations with existing and potential suppliers.

Towards multicriteria clustering: An extension of the k-means algorithm

The research within the multicriteria classification field is mainly focused on the assignment of actions to pre-defined classes. Nevertheless the building of multicriteria categories remains a theoretical question still not studied in detail. To tackle this problem, we propose an extension of the well-known k-means algorithm to the multicriteria framework. This extension relies on the definition of a multicriteria distance based on the preference structure defined by the decision maker. Thus, two alternatives will be similar if they are preferred, indifferent and incomparable to more or less the same actions. Armed with this multicriteria distance, we will be able to partition the set of alternatives into classes that are meaningful from a multicriteria perspective. Finally, the examples of the country risk problem and the diagnosis of firms will be treated to illustrate the applicability of this method.

INTELLIGENT PROTOCOL ADAPTATION IN A MEDICAL E-COLLABORATION ENVIRONMENT

Distributed multimedia e-health applications have a set of specific requirements which must be taken into account if effective use is to be made of the limited resources provided by public telecommunication networks. Moreover, there is an architectural gap between the provision of network-level Quality of Service (QoS) and user requirements of e-health applications. In this paper, we address the problem of bridging this gap from a multi-criteria decision-making perspective in the context of a remote collaborative environment for back pain treatment. We propose adaptable data transport mechanisms, capable of responding to evolving networking, application and user requirements. To this end we present a framework which allows for not only construction of tailored multimedia communication protocols, but also for the inclusion of user requirements in such protocols. This is achieved by equipping our protocol adaptation mechanism with multi-criteria decision making based techniques that can be used to allocate resources according to their ratio-scale priorities in response to detection of system degradation or evolving user preferences. The applicability of our approach is illustrated in three usage scenarios.

The Redistributive Effects of Tax Evasion: A Comparison between Conventional and Multi-Criteria Perspectives

The first part of the paper extends the approach developed by Lambert and Ramos (1997) for the measurement of the redistributive effects of a personal income tax to include tax evasion. Particular attention is paid to the concept and measurement of horizontal equity. We show that the criteria adopted to identify the equals are critical in order to evaluate the fairness of income taxation. In particular, we compare the traditional criterion, when income alone is considered (what we call conventional perspective), with a criterion based on a composite set of socio-economic features (multi-criteria perspective). Secondly, this framework is applied to the measurement of the redistributive effects of tax evasion in Italian income tax. The empirical analysis shows that in the multi-criteria perspective, taxation improves the horizontal equity of pre-tax income distribution whereas, if the sole income is assumed as criterion of equity, income tax determines horizontal inequity.