Prioritization Of Critical Factors Research Articles

Prioritization of critical factors toward Industry 4.0 adoption in service industries: an emerging economy perspective

PurposeSignificant developments in the service sector have been brought about by Industry 4.0. Automated digital technologies make it possible to upgrade existing services and develop modern industrial services. This study prioritizes critical factors for adopting Industry 4.0 in the Indian service industries.Design/methodology/approachThe author identified four criteria and fifteen significant factors from the relevant literature that have been corroborated by industry experts. Models are then developed by the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and analytical network process (ANP) approach to ascertain the significant factors for adopting Industry 4.0 in service industries. Further, sensitivity analysis has been conducted to determine the sensitivities of the rank of criteria and sub-factors to corroborate the results.FindingsThe outcome reveals the top significant criteria as organizational criteria (0.5019) and innovation criteria (0.3081). This study prioritizes six significant factors information technology (IT) specialization, digital decentralization of all departments, organizational size, smart services through customer data, top management support and Industry 4.0 infrastructure in the transition toward Industry 4.0 in the service industries.Practical implicationsThe potential factors identified in this study will assist managers in determining strategies to effectively manage the Industry 4.0 transition by concentrating on top priorities when leveraging Industry 4.0. The significance of organizational and innovation criteria given more weight will lay the groundwork for future Industry 4.0 implementation guidelines in service industries.Originality/valueOur research is novel since, to our knowledge, no previous study has investigated the potential critical factors from organizational, environmental, innovation and cost dimensions. Thus, the potential critical factors identified are the contributions of this study.

Assessing Mobile and Smart Technology Applications for Active and Healthy Aging using a Fuzzy Collaborative Intelligence Approach

Active and healthy living is critical in an aging society. Mobile and smart technology applications can assist in achieving this goal of healthy living. However, selecting a suitable and smart technology application for active and healthy living is difficult. To address this difficulty, a fuzzy collaborative intelligence (FCI) approach was proposed in this study to assess the suitability of a mobile and smart technology application. The FCI approach is a posterior-aggregation fuzzy analytic hierarchy process approach that combines the fuzzy inverse of column sum, partial-consensus fuzzy intersection, and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution. The FCI approach starts from the prioritization of critical factors using the fuzzy inverse of column sum by each expert. Subsequently, partial-consensus fuzzy intersection is applied to aggregate the priorities derived by all experts. Based on the aggregation result, each mobile and smart technology application for active and healthy aging is assessed using fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution. The FCI approach was applied to assess five existing mobile and smart technology applications, with various aspects of life as parameters. According to experimental results, the most and least suitable mobile technology applications were smart canes and online food ordering and delivery platforms, respectively. This is because the current elderly population is not very familiar with smartphone applications. This problem will be solved over time when the current middle-age population becomes old. In addition, the ranking result obtained using the proposed methodology was considerably different from those using several existing methods. The aging of population is a natural phenomenon. The results of this study are helpful to creating an environment that is friendly and assists elderly people to age actively and healthily.