Search results

The paper aims to analyse the reasons behind the leadership shown by a case study retailer through the introduction of factory gate pricing (FGP) within the grocery sector. Further, there is an evaluation of the transport management techniques used to support FGP and the operational benefits gained.

The research is based around a single case study of a UK grocery retailer, which has adopted FGP. A range of data sources has been collected during a project with the retailer. Techniques used include process mapping, interviews, workshops and company presentations.

Strategically, the introduction of FGP has provided economies for the retailer strengthening its position in the market. Four main transport management techniques have been deployed to achieve this, generating reductions in transport and inventory costs while improving customer service levels. There are also some issues that need addressing, in relation to the need for a single point of control, who manages this point and the technological capabilities of transport providers.

Only a single case study is presented, and the research was carried out during the early phase of implementation.

FGP requires a certain degree of scale to be effective, and should complement current processes within a business. There is a need to manage relationship issues with suppliers and transport providers.

The paper presents a detailed case study of FGP within the grocery sector, which is more complex than previous application of the concept. The strategic rationale for pioneering FGP is considered, along with its tactical deployment and operational benefits. Concerns are also highlighted, to provide a balanced evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize that the growing of competitiveness at any level may be possible through more responsibility (business ethics) on the one hand and less corruption (as lack of business ethics) on the other.

The objective of the paper is to identify the double‐way relationships between competitiveness and the responsible (beyond ethics) behaviour. In order to do this, the authors used correlation indexes CORREL and R² and the graphic representation able to illustrate the above‐mentioned interrelations.

The authors observed that there is a strong and direct correlation between GCI, RCI and CPI – at national level, and six possible situations which reflect the interrelations between NP and FGP.

The paper may be continued with specific behavioural models of MNEs in different host countries – integrating different approaches of business ethics.

The practical implications of the paper consist in offering some guidelines/starting points for firms in the search of global competitiveness through responsible/ethical conduct.

The paper develops a new conceptual framework, which integrates two “obsessions” of nowadays (competitiveness and responsibility) into the concept of global performance – national and firm related.

The purpose of this study is a numerical simulation and an analytical analysis about the low-velocity impact on a functionally graded porous plate with porosity distribution in the thickness direction. In this article, polymethyl methacrylate is used for matrix, and single-walled carbon nanotube (CNTs) (10,10) with consideration agglomeration sizes and lumping of CNT inside the agglomerations is applied for reinforcement.

In analytical formulation, the non-linear Hertz contact law is applied for interaction between projectile and plate surface. High-order shear deformation plate theory is developed, and energy of the system for impactor and plate is written. The governing equations are derived using Ritz method and Lagrange equations and are solved using the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. Also, ABAQUS finite element model of functionally graded porous plate with all edges simply supported and reinforced by CNT under low-velocity impact is simulated and is compared with those is achieved in the present analytical approach.

In parametric studies, the influence of porosity distribution patterns include uniform, non-uniform symmetric and non-uniform asymmetric on the histories of contact force and impactor displacement of simply supported plate reinforced by CNT are presented. Eventually, the effects of porosity coefficient, impactor initial velocity, impactor radius and CNTs lumping inside agglomerations for non-uniform symmetric distribution patterns are discussed in impact event in detail.

In this paper, the effect of combination of polymethyl methacrylate and CNTs with consideration agglomeration sizes and lumping of CNTs inside the agglomerations in the form of a functionally graded porous plate is studied in the problem of low-velocity impact analysis.

In the contemporary global market, supplier selection represents a crucial process for enhancing firms’ competitiveness. This is a multi-criteria decision-making problem that involves consideration of multiple criteria. Therefore this requires reliable methods to select the best suppliers. The purpose of this paper is to examine and propose appropriate method for selecting suppliers.

ANFIS and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process-fuzzy goal programming (FAHP-FGP) are new methods for evaluating and selecting the best suppliers. These methods are used in this study for evaluating suppliers of dairy industries and the results obtained from methods are compared by performance measures such as Mean Squared Error, Root Mean Squared Error, Normalized Root Men Squared Error, Mean Absolute Error, Normalized Root Men Squared Error, Minimum Absolute Error and R2.

The results indicate that the ANFIS method provides better performance compared to the FAHP-FGP method in terms of the selected suppliers scoring higher in all the performance measures.

The proposed method could help companies select the best supplier, by avoiding the influence of personal judgment.

This study uses the well-structured method of the fuzzy Delphi in order to determine the supplier evaluation criteria as well as the most recent ANFIS and FAHP-FGP methods for supplier selection. In addition, unlike most other studies, it performs the selection process among all available suppliers.

This paper is a case study that aims to trace the adoption of innovation of the fabric filter, an innovative pollution control device utilized in the industrial energy sector, in order to profile early adopters of this technology.

Following their introduction in the mid‐1970s, fabric filters, a new type of industrial scrubber, experienced aggressive growth, and by 1990, this new technology represented close to half of the new flue gas particulates (FGP) control units installed. The paper analyzes data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) Form 767, using t‐tests, cross tabulations and binomial regression to identify the characteristics of those boilers, plants and utilities that installed fabric filters from the late 1970s to 1990.

Analysis indicates that there are specific characteristics of early adopters of fabric filter technology such as the capacity and age of the associated boiler, the capacity and size of the utility, and whether the utility was privately or publicly owned.

This research is important in light of forthcoming rules for mercury control at these same units as they will likely require installation of some sort of control technology. The profile of the early adopter of environmental technology that emerges from this study can lead to a first‐to‐market advantage for firms eager to market the next innovation to this unique industrial marketplace.

Energy and environmental concerns have gained a significant role in public policy agenda as well as in energy economics literature. As policies often rely on imprecise information on data and goals, fuzzy goal programming (FGP) modeling is a relevant choice to evaluate multi-criteria sustainability. This technique is suitable for the analysis of the Europe 2020 strategy plan dealing with several possibly conflicting objectives in economy, environment, energy and employment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper presents a FGP model for sustainable implementations for all European Union (EU) countries with respect to Europe 2020 policy goals and provides insights for decision makers to better satisfy conflicting criteria by suggesting optimal allocations of workers in several economic sectors.

The analysis shows an overall great performance of European Union countries in the environmental and social criteria and outlines the needs for significant additional policy measures to reduce energy consumption while increasing the economic output. Comparing the performance of countries within the European Union between those who adopted the euro and those who maintained national currencies shows that Euro countries tend to perform worse in terms of Europe 2020 sustainability, opening opportunities for further research to better investigate on the causes and determinants of these differences.

The paper presents a conceptual model of sustainable development that improves understanding of the concept and reconciles highly competing policy objectives in a common framework. Applying this model to all European Union countries offers both comparison and policy recommendations at a large new scale.

The main motive behind framing this paper is to provide a compromised solution for trapezoidal fuzzy number–multi-objective fully quadratic fractional optimisation model (TrFN-MOFQFOM) by avoiding ambiguities and confusion of decision-makers (DMs). Many researchers have used Taylor's series and parametric approach to transform fractional objective function into non-fractional ones, but Taylor's series expansion is valid only up to a neighbourhood. To avoid these extra efforts, this article suggests a methodology in which numerator of objective function is optimised under the condition of optimising denominator.

This paper suggests an efficient procedure to search for compromised solution of MOFQFOM with fuzzy coefficients using α-level set and FGP approach. Incomplete data in model is dealt with α-level set. Then after defuzzification, non-fractional models are built from fractional model to get optimal solution of every objective. Finally, the linear weighted sum of negative deviational variables is minimised to satisfy all objective functions up to maximum possible extent.

On applying suggested approach to the example given in end, the authors arrived at compromised solution having μO1(O1(x))=1 and μO2(O2(x))=0.71. The applied procedure requires less computational efforts and provides the preferred compromised solution.

This work has not been done previously by anyone. The idea being developed here of constructing non-fractional model by dealing numerators and denominators separately is completely new. 10; In the end, an algorithm, flowchart and numerical are also given to clarify the applicability of the suggested approach.

The purpose of this paper is to use personal fuzzy demand, assisted by system computing to find a job, using job search systems to achieve this goal.

The search system uses the fuzzy goal programming (FGP) method by setting personal preferences as property values and screening the data for comparison and calculation. By presenting information sorted by the inputted property values, the methodology suggests the best job options.

FGP algorithms make job-searching systems meet the needs of users better, which can really affect jobseekers’ approaches to pursuing work.

As it has only considered the local cultural environment, this paper’s findings are limited by being confined to Taiwanese samples.

The experimental results of the proposed method have been compared with other websites to show their effectiveness.

This paper has assisted personal decision making using FGP applied to the internet which has seldom been studied previously.

To investigate wavelet modulus maxima distribution (MMD) in machinery condition monitoring and extract a parameter that can give a quantitative description of machinery‐operating status.

Signal decomposition technique is applied to extract gear motion signal and then wavelet transform modulus maxima are utilized to define fault growth parameter (FGP).

MMD were proposed and the distribution used to derive an EWMA statistic representing machinery fault growth. A comparison with other research works indicates better performance of this parameter.

This paper presents an innovative scheme for the machinery condition monitoring, on the basis of wavelet modulus maxima representation. The definition of MMD can be utilized to derive a parameter that describes the operating status of machinery. This parameter is load‐independent so that it demonstrates better performance when compared with other research works. Further, the MMD may be treated as input of condition classification system in the future work.

The idea for this paper stems from wavelet modulus maxima representation, whilst the application in vibration signal analysis is new. It was found that, by applying this approach, the occurrence of failure is correctly identified and the proposed EWMA FGP is independent of the load applied, which is a very important property in machinery condition monitoring and fault detection.

The purpose of this study is to develop a holistic optimization model for an integrated sustainable fleet planning and closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network design problem under uncertainty.

A novel mixed-integer programming model that is able to consider interactions between vehicle fleet planning and CLSC network design problems is first developed. Uncertainties of the product demand and return fractions of the end-of-life products are handled by a chance-constrained stochastic program. Several Pareto optimal solutions are generated for the conflicting sustainability objectives via compromise and fuzzy goal programming (FGP) approaches.

The proposed model is tested on a real-life lead/acid battery recovery system. By using the proposed model, sustainable fleet plans that provide a smaller fleet size, fewer empty vehicle repositions, minimal CO₂ emissions, maximal vehicle safety ratings and minimal injury/illness incidence rate of transport accidents are generated. Furthermore, an environmentally and socially conscious CLSC network with maximal job creation in the less developed regions, minimal lost days resulting from the work's damages during manufacturing/recycling operations and maximal collection/recovery of end-of-life products is also designed.

Unlike the classical network design models, vehicle fleet planning decisions such as fleet sizing/composition, fleet assignment, vehicle inventory control, empty repositioning, etc. are also considered while designing a sustainable CLSC network. In addition to sustainability indicators in the network design, sustainability factors in fleet management are also handled. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no similar paper in the literature that proposes such a holistic optimization model for integrated sustainable fleet planning and CLSC network design.