In real world multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, it is tough to solve a decision matrix with vague and imprecise data. The degree of impreciseness depends on the kind of data avail-able. For interval valued data this impreciseness is less and interval-valued MCDM methods can be effectively used to solve the problem. A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) selection prob-lem was taken into consideration to find the best FMS among available alternatives. An interval extension of CODAS method is proposed in this paper which was used to solve the problem along with two other interval-valued decision-making methods i.e. interval-valued TOPSIS, interval-valued EDAS. All the three methods are distance-based approaches and it was found that the interval-valued CODAS method gave the exact same ranking with that of interval-valued TOPSIS and interval-valued EDAS.

The purpose of this research is to study the role of the social media for knowledge sharing. The study presents a comprehensive review of the researches associated with the effect of knowledge management in social media. The study uses Scopus database as a primary search engine and covers 1858 of highly cited articles over the period 1994-2019. The records are statistically analyzed and categorized in terms of various criteria using an open source software package named R. The findings show that researches have grown exponentially during the recent years and the trend has continued at relatively stable rates. Based on the survey, knowledge management is the keyword which has carried the highest citations followed by social media and social networking. Among the most cited articles, papers published by researchers in United States have received the highest citations, followed by United Kingdom and China.

Green supply chain is a new concept in recent literature. The purpose of the study is to identify the importance of different factors related to green practice, performance and pressure during manufacturing in Indian manufacturing industries. The approach of this research includes in depth literature review, experts interviews and questionnaire surveys. The questionnaires are developed and data are collected through mail and two rounds of data collection were carried out to obtain more reliable responses. The major activities of the green supply chain; namely internal environmental management system, green packaging, green purchasing, eco designing, cooperation with customers, internal recovery, environmental, positive economic, negative economic, regulatory, competition are covered throughout the research. Factor analysis is performed using IBM SPSS 21 statistical software to understand the importance of green supply chain. Factor analysis is used to obtain the relative importance of various factors of green practice, green performance, and pressure. The collected data are analyzed by applying “mean score” method and the graphs are designed in SPSS software to compare the different factors.

In this paper, a deterministic inventory model with depletion rate dependent holding cost is developed. The demand rate is a power function of the on-hand inventory behind to a certain stock level, at which the demand rate becomes a constant. Shortages are allowed and partially backlogged with the function of waiting time of next replenishment. It is also proved in this model that the optimal replenishment policy not only exists but also is unique. Furthermore, it is provided a simple solution procedure for finding the maximum total profit per unit time. Numerical examples have also been given to illustrate the model and real managerial fact in inventory holding for stock dependent demand.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of retail brand on organizational competitiveness. The study has accomplished among 247 randomly selected retail stores located in city of Tehran, Iran. We have designed a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributed the questionnaires among some managers of retail stores. Bartlett KMO and Cronbach alpha have been calculated as 0.7 and 0.863, respectively, which are within the desirable levels. Using principal component analysis, the study has detected five factors influencing on organizational competitiveness including effective brand, distribution management, customer strategy, retail location and competitive tools. The highest value belongs to retail location (B = 1.196) followed by distribution management (B = 0.825), effective brand (B = 0.47) and competitive tools (B = 0.470).

In the past, different methods for asset depreciation have been defined but most of these procedures deal with certain parameters and inputs. The availability of certain parameters in many real world situations is difficult and sometimes impossible. The primary objective of this paper is to obtain methods for calculating depreciation where some of the defined parameters are under uncertainty. Hence, by using the fuzzy science basics, extension principle and ?-cut technique, we rewrite some classic methods for calculating depreciation in fuzzy form. Then, for comparing the methods of fuzzy depreciation under uncertain conditions by using the formula of calculating the Fuzzy Present worth (FPW), the Present worth of Tax saving (PWTS) of any aforementioned methods has been obtained. Finally, since the amount of tax savings achieved for each of the methods is a fuzzy number, one of the fuzzy prioritization methods is used in order to select the best depreciation technique.

Non-traditional machining (NTM) refers to a variety of thermal, chemical, electrical and mechanical material removal processes, developed to generate complex and intricate shapes in advanced engineering materials with high strength-to-weight ratio. Selection of the optimal NTM process for generating a desired feature on a given material requires the consideration of several factors among which the type of the work material and shape to be machined are the most significant ones. Presence of a large number of NTM processes along with their complex characteristics and capabilities, and lack of experts in NTM process selection domain compel for development of a structured approach for NTM process selection for a given machining application. Thus, the objective of this paper is set to develop a decision-making model in Visual BASIC 6.0 to automate the NTM process selection procedure with the help of graphical user interface and visual decision aids. It is also integrated with quality function deployment technique to correlate the customers’ requirements (product characteristics) with technical requirements (process characteristics). Four illustrative examples are also provided to demonstrate the potentiality of the developed model in solving NTM process selection problems.

Over time, the number of unexpected earthy, oceanic and atmospheric events is rising each year. Hence, disaster management is considered as one of the most important scientific and practical issues in developed and developing countries. Therefore, in this study, we review and develop the problem of locating the emergency units with constraints including the number of available ambulances, limited budget for deployment of ambulances and the minimum acceptable level of covering. The proposed model improves the spatial queuing model (SQM) and Maximal Covering Location Problem (MCLP) by considering the cost of the deployment of the emergency units, which makes it closer to real-world conditions. Because the proposed model is NP-hard, the model is solved using three heuristics including Simulated Annealing (SA), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a hybrid of both. The preliminary results indicate that the hybrid method had better performance to achieve the optimal or close to optimal solution.

The efficient evaluation of technological innovation capabilities of enterprises is an important factor to enhance competitiveness. This paper aims to assess and to rank technological innovation evaluation criteria in order to provide a practical insight of systematic analysis by gathering the qualified experts’ opinions combined with three methods of multi-criteria decision making approach. A framework is proposed and uses a novel hybrid multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to address the dependence relationships of criteria with the aid of the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), analytical network process (ANP) and VIKOR (VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje). The study reports that the interaction between criteria is essential and influences technological innovation capabilities; furthermore, this ranking development of technological innovation capabilities assessment is also one of key management tools for managements of other related high- tech enterprises. Managers can then judge the need to improve and determine which criteria provide the most effective direction towards improvement.