Flight interruption is one of the most important issues in today’s airline industry. Every year, most airlines spend significant amount of money to compensate flight delays. Therefore, it is important to detect important factors influencing on flight delays. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important factors on this issue. The study also asks some decision makers to make pairwise comparison and ranks various factors using the art of analytical hierarchy process. The study determines that technical defects and delayed entry were among the most important factors to blame for flight delays. In addition, announcing the postponement, replacement aircraft and path replacement are among the most important decisions facing managers in the aviation industry during the disruption of the flight.

One of the most important issues in urban planning programs is to allocate necessary spaces for educational applications. Selecting appropriate locations for training centers increases students & apos; mental capabilities. Suitable location for the establishment of educational facilities is the first fundamental step for development of educational systems. The selection of optimal sites for educational facilities involves numerous parameters and it is essential to use multiple criteria decision making approaches to make wise decisions. This paper presents an empirical investigation on facility layout planning for educational systems in city of Birjand, Iran. Using fuzzy GIS as well as analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the study determines the most appropriate candidates for training centers.

This study aims to identify and to classify Open book accounting (OBA) dimensions according to inter-organizational cost management (IOCM). The study selects six university professors in the field of accounting and by studying the theoretical literature and conducted investigations inside and outside of the country, the OBA dimensions were identified and then they were classified by analytical hierarchy process technique. According to the studies and experts’ ideas, four dimensions including nature of data and accounting data disclosure practices, uses of disclosed accounting data, conditions of OBA, cost implementation of OBA were identified as OBA dimensions. The results of our survey indicate that the form of data disclosure as well as coordination and planning among team members played essential role for OBA development. In addition, trust and the cost of the second party were other important factors, which must be considered when OBA is applied in any industry.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study different factors influencing auto parts in different regions of Iran. The study has asked some experts who worked for the biggest auto parts supplier named SaipaYadak to express their insights about important factors influencing demand for auto parts in different region and their insights have grouped into four categories of parts related issues, weather conditions, regional as well as cultural factors. The study has been applied in five different regions of country including central, south, north, west and east. The study has used analytical network process (ANP) to rank different factors and the results indicate that regional factors is the most important item followed by cultural issues, auto parts and weather conditions.

This paper prioritizes the trust factors among electronic banking clients of an Iranian bank named Parsian Bank. The study first analyzes and reviews the literature and interviews with experts of electronic banking and academicians and determines client trust as the most important factor for development of electronic banking. The study also determines different factors associated with trust, which includes individual factors, banking factors and infrastructural factors. The sample populations consist of 25 experts who are academicians, managers and bank officers, clients of electronic banking. The necessary data was collected through conducting interviews and questionnaires and they are analyzed using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The research findings indicate that the attitudinal factors, telecommunication infrastructure and cultural factors were the most influential factors accordingly and the customer orientation and ease of access were the least influential factors.

Capacity waste management is highly essential because under utilization of capacity is often referred to as a major reason for lower productivity among industries around the world. For better estimation of capacity and its utilization and then for its improved management; newer techniques are being devised in industrial sector. The current case of capacity waste problem has been taken up as a Six Sigma project, where we try to analyze critical factors responsible for the capacity waste. Decisions on critical factor selection in analysis phase of Six Sigma are always very crucial. The paper discusses an approach for selection of capacity waste factors at an automotive industry using fuzzy logic based AHP method. The fuzzy AHP is a well recognized tool to undertake the fuzziness of the data involved in choosing the preferences of the different decision variables engaged in the process of capacity waste factors selection. In this context, we have explored six crucial parameters for selection of capacity waste factors. Final ranking is calculated through priority vector thus obtained and it is seen that conveyor malfunction is found to be the key factor for capacity waste among all alternatives at the selected site.

Managing an organization under chaos and uncertainty is often a concern of academic society. These days, we may face unpleasant natural, economical or even political incidents where mangers need to handle them, properly. This paper presents an empirical survey to investigate on an electromotor maker when it faces different chaos. The proposed study uses balanced scorecard in terms of four different perspectives including internal process, learning and growth, customer and financial performances. For each perspective, the proposed study uses analytical hierarchy process to rank different sub-criteria. Based on the results of our survey profit margin is the most important item followed by profit capability and brand name while productivity and sales force performance were the least important items.

Having appropriate technology is an important managerial decision in today’s manufacturing industry and to choose a good technology, we need to consider various alternatives. In other words, when we intend to purchase a technology, we need to go beyond price as a primary criterion and look for other important factors such as technical support, quality, powers, etc. In this paper, we present two methods including preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to rank different manufacturing facilities based on various criteria including price, weight, power, etc. and analyze the results. The proposed study of this paper considers six criteria including price, weight, power, spindle, diameter and stroke for selection of a manufacturing equipment. The results of our survey have shown that diameter and weight are number priority for ranking different alternatives.

In this paper, a comparison is presented between two prime methods of producing prosthetic sockets by using the fuzzy linguistic hedges approach on the qualitative feedback of Indian prosthetic users. Recent trends indicate that the Indian manufacturers have tried to adopt the newer technologies like reverse engineering (RE) approach to achieve the desired goals. However, the satisfaction of the user is of utmost importance for the unique and customized products for rehabilitation. In order to analyze the effectiveness of the manufacturing approaches, user case studies are taken, based on the linguistic feedbacks, and a comparative study is conducted. Thirteen users from four different manufacturing units are taken for study and sockets made by conventional as well as RE are experimented. Fuzzy membership functions are constructed using the linguistic hedges based on the user feedbacks. An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to arrive at a decision to select the manufacturing process for user satisfaction and manufacturing excellence.

Measuring the performance of governmental organizations plays an important role on increasing public satisfaction in any society. One of the effective models for assessing the organizations performance is balance scorecard (BSC) model, which investigates all aspects of organizations. In this paper, we use a hybrid of analytical hierarchy process along with BSC to measure the performance of five different civil registry offices in Tehran, Iran. We use fuzzy terms to handle uncertainty in input numbers and using some technique convert fuzzy numbers into crisp values. The results of our survey indicate that learning and development is number one priority with relative importance of 0.491, followed by customer with relative importance of 0.293, internal process with relative importance of 0.173 and financial affairs comes at last with relative weight of 0.043. The study uses organizational researchers, training, quality, customer satisfaction, performance measurement, expenses and annual budget as major components for analyzing five regions. We have also performed sensitivity analysis to see the effects of different changes on ranking.