Search results

At the substantive level, there exists a gap in knowledge about the position of security risk management (i.e. SRM) during the terminals’ operations and management; particularly when there is potential for deliberate anti-security acts. Correspondingly, the purpose of this paper is a need for more practical research to find out the justification for the existence of the SRM and different techniques for its appropriate execution on these logistics infrastructures principally with due regard to the potential requirements in the near future.

Both qualitative and quantitative techniques are used in this study incorporating fuzzy set theory and risk assessment matrix to achieve the research objective.

A designed SRM framework tailored for Qalhat liquefied petroleum gas (LNG) terminal in Sultanate of Oman was established to manage the security threats which can be resulted from any probable terrorist attacks.

The limited numbers of experts for the purpose of the addressed SRM are causing challenges in data collection.

The pressures for enhanced attention to critical infrastructure security have fostered new challenges for petrochemical seaports and terminals (PSTs). These tendencies dictate to maintain comprehensive security regimens that can be integrated with national and international strategies to support the country’s security against terrorism.

The development of the security risk factor table model in the case of Qalhat LNG Terminal.

Different from manufacturing resources allocation problems, the prices and amounts of limited public service resources could not be changed with the consumers’ requirements and social fairness is the most important objective for improving allocation efficiency. To measure social fairness reasonably, the purpose of this paper is fourfold: first, divide social fairness into longitudinal comparative fairness and crosswise comparative fairness, therefore providing their calculation formula and describing the comprehensive fair degree by using the interval numbers. Second, the comparison regulations of interval numbers are given and the corresponding features are also described. Third, an extension of VIKOR method is put forward for evaluating social fairness of different allocation alternatives with interval numbers. Finally, a numerical example illustrates the proposed method and clarifies the main results developed in the paper.

In this paper, the author depicts the social fair degree as an interval number, and thus proposes the comparison method between any two interval numbers. Based on the basis procedure of the VIKOR method, the paper proposes an extension of the fuzzy VIKOR method with the interval numbers to rank and select the compromise allocation alternatives. Finally, a numerical example illustrates the practicability of the proposed method.

The comparison of interval numbers is very important when the author evaluates the decision alternatives. Through analyzing the present comparison methods, the paper proposes the simple method of comparing the interval numbers, which can obtain the same results with the above two methods. The fuzzy VIKOR method, a popular multi-criteria decision-making method, focusses on ranking and selecting from a set of alternatives in a fuzzy environment. For the fuzzy value, the paper also proposes the extension of the VIKOR method to perform an evaluation and get the compromise alternatives.

According to the huge customers’ requirement, how to improve their social fair degree has become the focus in public service resources allocation, where the social fair degree may be a comprehensive concept which includes the fair degree compared with all the other allocation alternatives and the fair degree compared with the other small group under the same allocation alternative. In the paper, the author defines the above two types of fair degree and then depicts the comprehensive fair degree as their integration, which will be interval numbers.

The strategic location of city logistics facilities may help to establish more efficient urban logistics systems, reduce social and environmental costs of urban freight transport, and improve urban traffic conditions. In addition, it may allow a number of shippers or freight carriers to jointly operate freight vehicles and terminals or information systems while allowing them to have the capability to provide higher levels of services to their customers. This paper considers the problem of selecting a location for a city logistics facility while considering linguistic factors. This paper identifies the important factors in the selection of a location for a city logistics facility by performing a case study which applies the analytic hierarchy process method on data from Chongqing, China. The optimal location in Chongqing is then determined by using the fuzzy synthetic evaluation method. The results of this paper are expected to help municipal governments select appropriate locations for city logistics facilities and quantify the advantages and disadvantages of alternative locations.

This paper aims to classify journal papers in the context of hybrid quality function deployment QFD and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods published during 2004–2021.

A conceptual classification scheme is presented to analyze the hybrid QFD-MCDM methods. Then some recommendations are given to introduce directions for future research.

The results show that among all related areas, the manufacturing application has the most frequency of published papers regarding hybrid QFD-MCDM methods. Moreover, using uncertainty to establish a hybrid QFD-MCDM the relevant papers have been considered during the time interval 2004–2021.

There are various shortcomings in conventional QFD which limit its efficiency and potential applications. Since 2004, when MCDM methods were frequently adopted in the quality management context, increasing attention has been drawn from both practical and academic perspectives. Recently, the integration of MCDM techniques into the QFD model has played an important role in designing new products and services, supplier selection, green manufacturing systems and sustainability topics. Hence, this survey reviewed hybrid QFD-MCDM methods during 2004–2021.

The national logistics policy report published by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism in 2011 proposes to establish international logistics strategy teams in 10 different regions around Japan to satisfy the increasing demand for advance transportation infrastructure and stay competitive in Asia Pacific. The globalization of world economies creates many opportunities as well as challenges for international logistics companies to gain more business chances in this changing environment. The purpose of this paper is to improve service quality of international logistics companies and explores the quality function deployment in terms of quality evaluation method. The logistics service is particularly characterized by offering a series of transport solution and including other logistics activities. The major customers of the logistics services are the industrial clients. The customer satisfaction is key managerial mission since the competitiveness is a growing issue in this industry. The quality function deployment is one of the unique procedures to expose the requirements of customer and transform them into managerial tasks by cross correlation analysis between requirements and technical measures. The empirical study is performed to investigate service quality of the logistics industry by focusing on a group of leading logistics companies.

Cruise tourism is the fastest-growing segment of the shipping and port industry. This study aims to develop an analytic model to assess the key criteria and sub-criteria influencing four cruise port's development in Taiwan.

Based on the literature review, four criteria and 13 sub-criteria are developed and analysed by fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). Four cruise ports include Kaohsiung, Keelung, Taichung and Hualien ports. The 26 relevant field experts (including cruise operators, governmental officials and academics) were invited to provide information for assessing the sub-criteria in the model.

The results indicate that port infrastructure and facilities are the most important criterion, followed by port-city development plans, port geography and climate and port regulations and services. In addition, the three most important sub-criteria overall are the onshore tourism programme, the city’s historical and cultural features and the green port hinterland transport system. Also, Keelung port is ranked as the best port, followed by Kaohsiung, Taichung and Hualien.

As Asia is an important cruise market in the world (ranked as third) and passenger number in Taiwan has achieved the top two in Asia, denoting Taiwan is a good market to develop an evaluation model of cruise ports. The findings present a holistic picture of the relative importance of the various criteria associated with cruise port development and raise issues related to cruise port marketing and the economic and environmental sustainability of ports and their hinterlands.

Halal integrity assurance is the primary objective of Halal supply chain management. Several halal-related risks are present that have the potential to breach halal integrity. Therefore, this study aims to develop the framework for the assessment of halal-related risk from a supply chain perspective.

Risk related to halal is identified through the combined approach of the systematic literature review and experts’ input. Further, these risks are assessed using the integrated approach of intuitionistic fuzzy number (IFN) and D-number based on their severity score. This integrated approach can handle fuzziness, inconsistency and incomplete information that are present in the expert’s input.

Eighteen significant risks related to halal are identified and grouped into four categories. These risks are further prioritised based on their severity score and classified as “high priority risk” or “low priority risks”. The findings of the study suggests that raw material status, processing methods, the wholesomeness of raw materials and common facilities for halal and non-halal products are more severe risks.

This study only focusses on halal-related risks and does not capture the other types of risks occurring in the supply chain. Risks related to halal supply chain management are not considered in this study. Prioritisation of the risks is based on the expert’s input which can be biased to the experts' background.

The proposed risk assessment framework is beneficial for risk managers to assess the halal related risks and develop their mitigation strategies accordingly. Furthermore, the prioritisation of the risks also assists managers in the optimal utilisation of resources to mitigate high-priority risks.

This study provides significant risks related to halal integrity, therefore helping in a better understanding of the halal supply chain. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study for developing a risk assessment model for the halal supply chain.

The existing literature expresses a strong need to develop tools that support the manufacturing reshoring decision-making process. This paper aims to examine the suitability of analytical hierarchy process (AHP)-based tools for initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions.

Two AHP-based tools for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions are developed. The first tool is based on traditional AHP, while the second is based on fuzzy-AHP. Six high-level and holistic reshoring criteria based on competitive priorities were identified through a literature review. Next, a panel of experts from a Swedish manufacturing company was involved in the overall comparison of the criteria. Based on this comparison, priority weights of the criteria were obtained through a pairwise analysis. Subsequently, the priority weights were used in a weighted-sum manner to evaluate 20 reshoring scenarios. Afterwards, the outputs from the traditional AHP and fuzzy-AHP tools were compared to the opinions of the experts. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the stability of the developed decision support tools.

The research demonstrates that AHP-based support tools are suitable for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions. With regard to the presented set of criteria and reshoring scenarios, both traditional AHP and fuzzy-AHP are shown to be consistent with the experts' decisions. Moreover, fuzzy-AHP is shown to be marginally more reliable than traditional AHP. According to the sensitivity analysis, the order of importance of the six criteria is stable for high values of weights of cost and quality criteria.

The limitation of the developed AHP-based tools is that they currently only include a limited number of high-level decision criteria. Therefore, future research should focus on adding low-level criteria to the tools using a multi-level architecture. The current research contributes to the body of literature on the manufacturing reshoring decision-making process by addressing decision-making issues in general and by demonstrating the suitability of two decision support tools applied to the manufacturing reshoring field in particular.

This research provides practitioners with two decision support tools for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions, which will help managers optimize their time and resources on the most promising reshoring alternatives. Given the complex nature of reshoring decisions, the results from the fuzzy-AHP are shown to be slightly closer to those of the experts than traditional AHP for initial screening of manufacturing relocation decisions.

This paper describes two decision support tools that can be applied for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions while considering six high-level and holistic criteria. Both support tools are applied to evaluate 20 identical manufacturing reshoring scenarios, allowing a comparison of their output. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates the relative importance of the reshoring criteria.

Considering the human factor, the quality of the personnel is vital to ensure especially the value creation in the ports. Therefore, employee quality stands out for withstanding the pressures that stem from global trade on its operational speed felt by ports in recent years. Accordingly, the selection of the qualified personnel at the ports is very critical and a tool based on dynamic capabilities is needed to manage this process well. The aim of this study is to develop a model based on dynamic capabilities for recruitment process of ports.

Port personnel should have dynamic capabilities detected from the literature. These capabilities were approached as criteria. In this study, Buckley's proposed fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method was employed for weighting the whole criteria. After that, weights of the criteria were used to prioritize alternatives with the fuzzy TOPSIS method.

This model reflects port managers' priorities and port customers' evaluations. Thus, the model can also reflect the level of integration of ports' related department managers into the recruitment process. The analyses allow the evaluation of the attitudes of the human resources department in the related port while fulfilling the personnel recruitment function. As a result of analyses, differences between perceptions of port managers and customers served as a feedback to the human resource management department of the ports.

One of the originalities of this study was derived from its customer-oriented perspective. This is a unique study that gathers common personnel capabilities related to the operation, planning and customer relationship departments and evaluates the success of these capabilities from the customer perspective.

This paper covers the development of a multidimensional contract administration performance model (CAPM) for construction projects. The proposed CAPM is intended to be used by the industry stakeholders to measure the construction contract administration (CCA) performance and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the CCA system for running or completed projects.

The research design follows a sequential mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. In the first phase, contract administration indicators were collected from relevant literature. In the second phase, an online questionnaire was prepared, and data were collected and analyzed using the crisp value of fuzzy membership function, and structural equation modeling (SEM). The fuzzy set was chosen for this study due to the presence of uncertainty and fuzziness associated with the importance of several key indicators affecting the CCA performance. Finally, SEM was used to test and analyze interrelationships among constructs of CCA performance.

The data collected from 336 construction professionals worldwide through an online survey was utilized to develop the fuzzy structural equation model. The goodness-of-fit and reliability tests validated the model. The study concluded a significant correlation between CCA performance, CCA operational indicators, and the process groups.

The contribution of this paper to the existing knowledge is the development of a fuzzy structural equation model that serves as a measurement tool for the contract administration performance. This is the first quantitative structural equation model to capture contract administration performance. The model consists of 93 Construction Contract Administration(CCA) performance indicators categorized into 11 project management process groups namely: project governance and start-up; team management; communication and relationship management; quality and acceptance management; performance monitoring and reporting management; document and record management; financial management; changes and control management; claims and dispute resolution management; contract risk management and contract closeout management.