Search Results (10)

Site selection for an institute or a university is a challenging task. The selection of sites for setting up a new university depends on multiple criteria. In backward, under privileged area people’s perception towards the co-educational universities and women universities are different. Poor families with their conservative mentality possess inhibitions while sending their girl child to co-educational universities as they have concerns about safety, security and family honor. Hence many attributes which are not so important for co-educational universities are more pertinent for women university. In this research paper, we have considered a model for selecting women’s university sites in different backward locations in the state of West Bengal, India. This model incorporated different types of uncertainty related to site selection. Ten important criteria are chosen for the selection of sites. To capture the uncertainty of the problem, trapezoidal neutrosophic numbers are used along with the Multi-criteria Decision Making tool Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for obtaining criteria weights. Finally, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and COmplex PRoportional ASsessment (COPRAS) are applied for ranking of the sites. Comparative and sensitivity analyses are conducted to check the steadiness of the techniques used. Full article

The paper addresses a new facet of problem regarding the application of AHP in the real world. There are occasions that decision makers are not certain about relative importance assignment in pairwise comparison. The decision makers think the relative importance is among a set of scales, each of which is associated with a different possibility degree. A Discrete Single Valued Neutrosophic Number (DSVNN) with specified degrees of truth, indeterminacy, and falsity is employed to represent each assignment by taking into account all possible scales according to the decision maker’s thought. Each DSVNN assignment is transformed into a crisp value via a deneutrosophication using a similarity-to-absolute-truth measure. The obtained crisp scales are input to a pairwise comparison matrix for further analysis. The proposed neutrosophic set-based relative importance assignment is another additional novelty of the paper, which is different from all prior studies focusing only on the definition of measurement scales. The presented assignment emulates the real-world approach of decision making in human beings which may consider more than one possibility. It is also shown herein that the single and crisp relative importance assignment in the original AHP by Saaty is just a special case of the proposed methodology. The sensitivity analysis informs that when decision makers have neither absolute truth nor falsity about a scale, the proposed methodology is recommended for obtaining reliable relative importance scale. The applicability of the proposed methodology to the real-world problem is shown through the investment in equity market. Full article

The development of sustainable green buildings (GBs) is a major contribution to the preservation of the environment. Sustainable thinking in GB construction is not a supplementary element, but rather necessary to achieve the building’s functional, economic, and environmental efficiency in order to preserve resources and meet current and future needs. In particular, developing countries can apply the idea of sustainability in GBs by following international policies and standards, combined with their local characteristics, to construct GBs that are aligned with the environment and are in line with the available local capabilities and resources. The paper focuses on the dimensions and indicators of sustainable design for GBs in developing countries to achieve the positive dimensions of building sustainability, such as preserving energy and natural resources, water management, adaptation to the surrounding environment, and respecting the needs of its users. We assess and prioritize the dimensions and indicators of GBs through the use of a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method under a neutrosophic environment. Initially, the Delphi method is employed to capture preference and to determine the dimensions and their indicators in addition to provide preference among sub-indicators. The relative importance of the selected dimensions and indicators is assessed through the analytical hierarchy method (AHP) method. The results indicate that the water efficiency dimension is the most significant, with a weight of 0.330, while the energy efficiency dimension is the least significant for GBs in developing countries, with a weight of 0.100. The paper concludes with a set of administrative implications for applying sustainable development strategies in GBs. Full article

COVID-19 has had a major impact on health, economic, social, and industrial activities. It has disrupted supply chain management and affected the movement of essential supplies to a large extent. This study aims to identify and evaluate the challenges hampering sustainable humanitarian supply chain management (SHSCM). Twenty critical challenges to SHSCM are identified using a comprehensive literature review, and three strategies were developed. The challenges and strategies were verified using expert input. The challenges were evaluated using the neutrosophic analytic hierarchical process (AHP) method. The neutrosophic TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multicriteria decision making) method was then used to select the best strategy. The findings reveal that facility location problems, short lead times for emergency supplies, spread of rumors, rapid emergence of new clusters, and doubt concerning the available remedy are five critical challenges in SHSCM during COVID-19. Public–private partnerships are identified as the best strategy in SHSCM. Finally, this paper discusses the implications to sustainable development goals in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. Full article

Reverse logistics (RL) is considered the reverse manner of gathering and redeploying goods at the end of their lifetime span from consumers to manufacturers in order to reutilize, dispose, or remanufacture. Whereas RL has many economic benefits, it presents compromises to businesses that wish to remain competitive but be responsible global citizens in terms of social, environmental, risk, and safety aspects of sustainable development. Managing RL systems therefore is considered a multifaceted mission that necessities a significant level of technology, infrastructure, experience, and competence. Consequently, various commerce institutions are looking to outsourcing their RL actions to third-party reverse logistics providers (3PRLPs). In this work, a novel hybrid multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework is proposed to classify and choose 3PRLPs, which comprises the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique, and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) technique under neutrosophic environment. Accordingly, AHP is availed for defining weights of key dimensions and their subindices. In addition, TOPSIS was adopted for ranking the specified 3PRLPs. The efficiency of the proposed approach is clarified through application on a considered car parts manufacturing industry case in Egypt, which shows the features of the combined MCDM methods. A comparative and sensitivity analyses were performed to highlight the benefits of the incorporated MCDM methods and for clarifying the effect of changing weights in selecting the sustainable 3PRLP alternative, respectively. The suggested framework is also shown to present more functional execution when dealing with uncertainties and qualitative inputs, demonstrating applicability to a broad range of applications. Ultimately, the best sustainable 3PRLPs were selected and results show that social, environmental, and risk and safety sustainability factors have the greatest influence when determining 3PRLPs alternatives. Full article

After the recent establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Agenda 2030, the sustainable design of products in general and infrastructures in particular emerge as a challenging field for the development and application of multicriteria decision-making tools. Sustainability-related decision problems usually involve, by definition, a wide variety in number and nature of conflicting criteria, thus pushing the limits of conventional multicriteria decision-making tools practices. The greater the number of criteria and the more complex the relations existing between them in a decisional problem, the less accurate and certain are the judgments required by usual methods, such as the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The present paper proposes a neutrosophic AHP completion methodology to reduce the number of judgments required to be emitted by the decision maker. This increases the consistency of their responses, while accounting for uncertainties associated to the fuzziness of human thinking. The method is applied to a sustainable-design problem, resulting in weight estimations that allow for a reduction of up to 22% of the conventionally required comparisons, with an average accuracy below 10% between estimates and the weights resulting from a conventionally completed AHP matrix, and a root mean standard error below 15%. Full article

Professional selection is a significant task for any organization that aims to select the most appropriate candidates to fill well-defined vacancies up. In the recruitment process, various individual characteristics are involved, such as leadership, analytical skills, independent thinking, innovation, stamina and personality, ambiguity and imprecision. It outlines staff contribution and therefore plays a significant part in human resources administration. Additionally, in the era of the Internet of Things and Big Data (IoTBD), professional selection would face several challenges not only to the safe selection and security but also to make wise and prompt decisions especially in the large-scale candidates and criteria from the Cloud. However, the process of professional selection is often led by experience, which contains vague, ambiguous and uncertain decisions. It is therefore necessary to design an efficient decision-making algorithm, which could be further escalated to IoTBD. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid neutrosophic multi criteria decision making (MCDM) framework that employs a collection of neutrosophic analytical network process (ANP), and order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) under bipolar neutrosophic numbers. The MCDM framework is applied for chief executive officer (CEO) selection in a case study at the Elsewedy Electric Group, Egypt. The proposed approach allows us to assemble individual evaluations of the decision makers and therefore perform accurate personnel selection. The outcomes of the proposed method are compared with those of the related works such as weight sum model (WSM), weight product model (WPM), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), multi-objective optimization based on simple ratio analysis (MOORA) and ANP methods to prove and validate the results. Full article

Risk is inherent in all parts of life and brings consequences, but when it specifically emerges in supply chains, it is susceptible. Therefore, this study aims at identifying and assessing supply chain risks and developing criteria for managing these risks. Supply chain (SC) risks consist of complex, uncertain, and vague information, but risk assessment techniques in the literature have been unable to handle complexity, uncertainty, and vagueness. Therefore, this study presents a holistic approach to supply chain risk management. In this paper, neutrosophic (N) theory is merged with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to deal with complexity, uncertainty, and vagueness. Then the proposed methodology is practically implemented through a case study on the automotive industry. SC resilience, SC agility, and SC robustness were selected as criteria for managing supply chain risks and analyzed using N-AHP. Furthermore, seventeen risks were identified and assessed by using N-TOPSIS. Results suggest supply chain resilience is the most important criterion for managing supply chain risks. Moreover, supplier delivery delays, supplier quality problems, supplier communication failures, and forecasting errors are the most vulnerable risks that occur in supply chains of the automotive industry in Pakistan. Full article

Sgraffito is an ancient decorative technique applied in walls, produced by using layers of cement plaster tinted in contrasting colours to a moistened surface. This decoration originated in Italy and has been expanded in different European cities or villages. Nowadays, this decoration technique has almost disappeared because of decomposition, inexperience, or lack of knowledge. The preservation and restoration of the sgraffito technique is the most challenging and vital task of cultural heritage buildings’ preservation. Consequently, the conservation of sgraffito depends not only on the historical and architectural knowledge, studies, and conservation projects of the cultural heritage buildings, but also demands the experience, proper qualification, and knowledge of the contractor. This paper presents six principal criteria. Three possible variants for contractor selection for sgraffito decoration of cultural heritage buildings are proposed, and six principal criteria for their evaluation are suggested. The research employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), SWARA (Step-Wise Weights Assessment Ratio Analysis), and WASPAS-SVNS (Weight Aggregated Sum Product Assessment-Single- Valued Neutrosophic Set) methods. Full article

Every organization seeks to set strategies for its development and growth and to do this, it must take into account the factors that affect its success or failure. The most widely used technique in strategic planning is SWOT analysis. SWOT examines strengths (S), weaknesses (W), opportunities (O) and threats (T), to select and implement the best strategy to achieve organizational goals. The chosen strategy should harness the advantages of strengths and opportunities, handle weaknesses, and avoid or mitigate threats. SWOT analysis does not quantify factors (i.e., strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and it fails to rank available alternatives. To overcome this drawback, we integrated it with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP is able to determine both quantitative and the qualitative elements by weighting and ranking them via comparison matrices. Due to the vague and inconsistent information that exists in the real world, we applied the proposed model in a neutrosophic environment. A real case study of Starbucks Company was presented to validate our model. Full article