Numerous aspects of job scheduling in manufacturing systems have been the focus of several studies in the past decades. However, human factors in manufacturing systems such as workers’ mental conditions are still neglected issues and have not received adequate attentions. Job boredom and mental fatigue are both aspects of workers’ mental condition. They affect work performances by increasing sick leave duration and decreasing work productivity. On the other hand, job rotation could be an alternative strategy to cope with such human issues at work. The benefits of job rotation for both employees and firms have been widely recognized in the literature. Although some studies found job rotation as a means to reduce workers' physical work-related traumas, they did not consider the effect of variable mental conditions on workers. Despite the proven importance of boredom and mental fatigue at the workplace, they have not been a combined precise objective of any job rotation problem in current literature. The study of mental conditions proposed in this paper attempts to extend the previous works by addressing new methods and developing a feasible solution to increase manufacturing productivity. A new job scheduling program has been designed specifically which combines a new job rotation model and a job assignment method.

Decision making is an essential activity for humans and often becomes complex in the presence of uncertainty or insufficient knowledge. This research aims at estimating preferences using pairwise comparisons. A decision maker uses pairwise comparison when he/she is unable to directly assign criteria weights or scores to the available options. The judgments provided in pairwise comparisons may not always be consistent for several reasons. Experimentation has been used to obtain statistical evidence related to the widely-used consistency measures. The results highlight the need to propose new consistency measures. Two new consistency measures - termed congruence and dissonance - are proposed to aid the decision maker in the process of elicitation. Inconsistencies in pairwise comparisons are of two types i.e. cardinal and ordinal. It is shown that both cardinal and ordinal consistency can be improved with the help of these two measures. A heuristic method is then devised to detect and remove intransitive judgments. The results suggest that the devised method is feasible for improving ordinal consistency and is computationally more efficient than the optimization-based methods. There exist situations when revision of judgments is not allowed and prioritization is required without attempting to remove inconsistency. A new prioritization method has been proposed using the graph-theoretic approach. Although the performance of the proposed prioritization method was found to be comparable to other approaches, it has practical limitation in terms of computation time. As a consequence, the problem of prioritization is explored as an optimization problem. A new method based on multi-objective optimization is formulated that offers multiple non-dominated solutions and outperforms all other relevant methods for inconsistent set of judgments. A priority estimation tool (PriEsT) has been developed that implements the proposed consistency measures and prioritization methods. In order to show the benefits of PriEsT, a case study involving Telecom infrastructure selection is presented.

[pt] Com o intuito de obter parte do lucro futuro de uma empresa, o investidor adquire uma ação - título que representa a menor parcela do capital de uma empresa. Tal investidor, interessado em investir em ações, se depara com uma primeira decisão a tomar: em quais ações investir. Existem diversos métodos para a seleção de ações, podendo ser classificados em métodos puramente objetivos, puramente subjetivos e métodos compostos. O presente trabalho visa propor um método composto, baseado no modelo multicritério Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), para ordenar as ações nas quais o investidor deve investir dado um determinado grupo de ações pré-selecionado. Com base no presente estudo, o modelo proposto demonstrou ser uma ferramenta de simples aplicação e viável para que qualquer investidor – dos mais qualificados aos menos qualificados – possa tomar a decisão de escolha de ações utilizando esta ferramenta. Dentre a amostra de 10 ações pré selecionadas, as empresas que obtiveram maior pontuação, e por isso, fariam parte do portfólio de ações, foram: Itaú Unibanco, BMF Bovespa e Vale. / [en] In order to obtain a part of the future profit of a company, an investor buys a stock - the smaller share of a company s capital. The investor, interested in putting money into stocks, faces his/her first decision: in which stock to invest. There are several methods to select the stocks which can be classified as purely objective method, purely subjective and combined method. This paper intends to propose a combined method based on the multicriteria model Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in order to rank stocks for investors to choose his/her investments from the given group of stocks. Based on this study, the proposed model proved to be a simple application tool and viable for any investor - from the most qualified to least qualified - be able to make decision of choosing stocks using this tool. Among the sample of 10 pre selected stocks, the ones which achieved a higher score, and therefore would be part of the portfolio of shares, were: Itaú Unibanco and Vale BMF Bovespa.

<p>U ovoj disertaciji je definisan i predstavljen pristup monitoringu poljoprivredne su&scaron;e (SPEI-based approach to agricultural drought monitoring - ADM-SPEI) u Vojvodini koji objedinjuje vi&scaron;e poznatih i priznatih metoda i kritičko mi&scaron;ljenje eksperata zasnovano na njihovom znanju i iskustvu i pri tome uzima u obzir lokalne specifičnosti agroklimatskih uslova. Iako je kreiran za područje Vojvodine, predloženi pristup monitoringu poljoprivredne su&scaron;e baziran na SPEI indeksu opisan je generalno kroz tri faze i pripadajuće korake koji su detaljno opisani i obja&scaron;njeni &scaron;to omogućava da se ADM- SPEI pristup modifikuje i primeni u bilo kojim drugim agroklimatskim uslovima. Predstavljeni pristup baziran je na modifikovanom i &scaron;iroko prihvaćenom i kori&scaron;ćenom Standardizovanom Indeksu Padavina i Evapotranspiracije (SPEI). Ovom modifikacijom SPEI je povezan sa&nbsp; specifičnom kulturom &scaron;to omogućava da se su&scaron;a, odnosno uslovi vlažnosti analiziraju individualno za specifičnu ratarsku ili povrtarsku kulturu u agroklimatskim uslovima Vojvodine. Kreiranju pristupa monitoringu poljoprivredne su&scaron;e prethodilo je istraživanje koje se tiče uticaja referentne evapotranspiracije (ET0) na rezultate SPEI indeksa kako bi se potvrdila polazna pretpostavka da različiti metodi za izračunavanje ET0 u okviru SPEI indeksa daju u nekim slučajevima značajno različite vrednosti indeksa na području Vojvodine. Iz navedenih razloga je važno koristiti metod koji najvi&scaron;e odgovara specifičnom području od interesa. Modifikacija SPEI indeksa, odnosno zamena ET0 sa ETc (potencijalnom evapotranspiracijom kulture) izvr&scaron;ena je uključivanjem ekspertskog mi&scaron;ljenja odnosno intervjuisanjem vi&scaron;e stručnjaka različitih ekspertiza iz domena kori&scaron;ćenja i upravljanja vodama u poljoprivredi &scaron;to je omogućilo da se dođe do grupne odluke koja u najvećoj meri reprezentuje lokalne agroklimatske prilike. U tu svrhu upotrebljen je Analitički Hijerarhijski Proces (AHP metod) kao podr&scaron;ka odlučivanju kako bi se dobile individualne odluke stručnjaka i da bi se u narednom koraku dobila jedna grupna odluka o najpogodnijem metodu za izračunavanje ET0, odnosno ETc. U narednoj fazi predloženog pristupa, prateći dalju proceduru originalnog SPEI indeksa izračunati su klimatski vodni bilansi kultura. Analizom su obuhvaćeni podaci sa devet meteorolo&scaron;kih stanica na području Vojvodine, kao i jedanaest ratarskih i povrtarskih kultura. Zatim je statističkim metodama odabrana odgovarajuća teorijska distribucija za koju je potvrđeno najbolje slaganje sa empirijskim vrednostima klimatskog vodnog bilansa kultura i u narednom koraku dobijen modifikovani SPEI povezan sa specifičnom kulturom (agricultural drought SPEI - AD-SPEIcrop). Pristup omogućava i direktnu transformaciju indeksa u vrednosti klimatskog vodnog bilansa kulture, odražavajući potrebe useva za vodom. Sagledavanjem su&scaron;e i sa tog aspekta omogućava analizu mogućnosti sistema za navodnjavanje u borbi protiv su&scaron;e. U sledećoj fazi izvr&scaron;ena je validacija predloženog pristupa sa vi&scaron;e različitih aspekata koji podrazumevaju: ispitivanje povezanosti indeksa sa prinosima kultura, kako na lokalnom nivou op&scaron;tina tako i na nivou cele teritorije Vojvodine; poređenje stepena slaganja sa prinosima kultura u odnosu na originalni indeks SPEI; komparaciju sa op&scaron;te priznatim i prihvaćenim indeksima su&scaron;e (SPI, SPEI i SC-PDSI); i povratnu informaciju od strane eksperata. Bazirajući se na dobijenim rezultatima u fazi validacije može se zaključiti da predloženi pristup monitoringu poljoprivredne su&scaron;e na području Vojvodine baziran na SPEI indeksu može biti uspe&scaron;no primenjen i sa dobrim performansama, odnosno da indeks AD-SPEIcrop, dobijen kao rezultat ovog pristupa, predstavlja adekvatan pokazatelj poljoprivredne su&scaron;e na području Vojvodine.</p> / <p>In the doctoral dissertation, the SPEI-based approach to agricultural drought monitoring (ADM-SPEI) in Vojvodina has been defined and presented. While integrating several well-known and recognized methods and experts&rsquo; critical opinion based on their knowledge and experience, ADM-SPEI takes into account local specificities of agro-climatic conditions. Although it was created for the Vojvodina region, the proposed approach to agricultural drought monitoring based on the SPEI index has been described in three phases alongside the corresponding steps, for which a detailed description and explanation have also been provided. This allows for the ADM-SPEI approach to be modified and applied in any other agro-climatic conditions. The presented approach is based on the modified and widely accepted and used Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). The modification enables relating the SPEI to a specific crop, thereby ensuring the possibility for the analysis of drought or moisture conditions separately for specific field or vegetable crops in the agro-climatic conditions of Vojvodina. The creation of the approach to agricultural drought monitoring was preceded by the research of the impact of reference evapotranspiration (ET0) on the results of the SPEI index. The aim of the research was to confirm the initial assumption that different methods for calculating ET0 within the SPEI index give in some cases significantly different index values in the Vojvodina region. For these reasons, it is important to use the most appropriate method for the specific area of interest. Carrying out the modification of the SPEI index, i.e., the replacement of the ET0 with the ETc (potential crop evapotranspiration) included the involvement of experts&rsquo; opinions by interviewing experts of various expertise in the domain of water use and water management in agriculture. This led to making a group decision representing the local agro-climatic conditions. For this purpose, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP method) was used as a decision-making support in order to get experts&rsquo; individual decisions and, in the next step, to obtain a group decision on the most suitable method for calculating ET0 and ETc. In the next phase of the proposed approach, following the procedure of the original SPEI index, the cropspecific climate water balances were calculated. The analysis includes data from nine meteorological stations in the Vojvodina region, as well as eleven field and vegetable crops. Then, statistical methods were used to select the appropriate theoretical distribution which proved to best fit to the empirical values of the crop-specific climatic water balance. In the next step, the modified SPEI related to specific crops (agricultural drought SPEI - ADSPEIcrop) was obtained. The approach also enables the direct transformation of the index into the values of the climate water balance of crops reflecting the crop water needs. Examining drought from this perspective as well makes it possible to analyze the capabilities of irrigation systems to cope with drought. In the next phase, the validation of the proposed approach was carried out from several different perspectives including examining the correlation of the index with the crop yields, both at the local county level and at the level of the entire territory of Vojvodina; the comparison between the degree of the agreement of the AD-SPEIcrop and the original SPEI index with the crop yields, respectively; the comparison with the generally acknowledged and accepted drought indices (SPI, SPEI and SC-PDSI); and experts&rsquo; feedback. According to the obtained results in the validation phase, it can be concluded that the proposed approach to agricultural drought monitoring in the Vojvodina region based on the SPEI index can be applied successfully and with good performance, and that the ADSPEIcrop index obtained as a result of this approach is an adequate indicator of agricultural drought in the Vojvodina region.</p>

[pt] Na maioria das empresas, ferramenta de apoio à decisão é sinônimo de questões tangíveis como Valor Presente Líquido (VPL) e Taxa Interna de Retorno (TIR) do investimento, e é a maneira mais adotada para mostrar o valor financeiro que cada projeto agrega à empresa e aos acionistas. Verifica, também, se o projeto está coerente com a taxa de atratividade proposta para o crescimento desejado. No entanto, a análise de investimentos em diversos setores tem levado em consideração critérios subjetivos que não são totalmente medidos por ferramentas econômicas clássicas. Na indústria de refino de petróleo, a situação é semelhante porque há fatores governamentais, ambientais e políticos, entre outros, que influenciam na tomada de decisão. Assim, devido à dificuldade de expressar a realidade na ordenação e seleção de projetos, utilizando apenas as ferramentas tradicionais, o trabalho foi elaborado com o objetivo de ordenar um grupo de cinco projetos pertencente a uma grande carteira de investimentos de uma empresa de petróleo. Para isso levou-se em consideração diversos critérios, adotando o método AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) como ferramenta de análise multicritério. O resultado obtido leva em consideração a análise de variados critérios ponderados por influenciadores de decisão, apontando o alinhamento às metas estratégicas e a exigência legal como os principais a serem considerados e permitindo uma priorização dos projetos escolhidos. Nesse sentido, o projeto de qualidade de diesel na região sudeste foi eleito como de maior prioridade no momento. / [en] In the eyes of most companies, decision support tools are related to tangible or measurable issues, such as Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of investment. Such straightforward indicators are the most adopted solutions to show the financial value that each project brings to the company and shareholders. They also check if a project is consistent with the attractiveness rate proposed for the desired growth. However, the investment analysis in many sectors has been taken into account subjective criteria that are not fully measurable by classical economic tools. In the petroleum refining industry the situation is similar because there are governmental, environmental and political factors that influence the decision-making. Therefore, due to the difficulty of expressing the reality in ranking and selecting projects only using traditional tools, this work was developed in order to provide insights on ranking a group of five projects belonging to a large investment portfolio from an oil company. To make such work operational, it was taken into account several criteria that reflect the concerns of the decision makers involved, and it was adopted the AHP method (Analytic Hierarchy Process) as a tool to perform the rank of the projects under a multicriteria analysis. The key finds from such application were that the results reflect the preferences of the decision makers, and show the alignment with strategic goals and the legal requirements as the most relevant criteria, along with the project of diesel quality in the southeast region as the major investment priority at the present time.

With more and more countries transforming their energy focus onto renewable energy, the growth of wind energy is at its all-time high. Despite being a relatively new technology, offshore wind has thrived rapidly in the past decade. Sweden has been incorporating offshore wind energy into marine spatial planning (MSP) and national interest in energy production with a view to realizing the national goals of 100% renewable electricity generation by 2040 and net zero emissions by 2045. The goal of this study is to identify locations that are suitable for harvesting wind energy resources in nearshore sea areas of Sweden, with the consideration of social, environmental, economic, and technical criteria. The spatial analysis was performed by the combination of Geographical Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was the MCDA method adopted, where the criteria, including 11 constraints and 5 factors, were identified and examined by processes of weighted linear overlay (WLC) and Boolean overlay respectively. Then, the suitability index (SI) was computed and a suitability map, showing 4 classes of suitability, was generated.The results show that less than half of the Swedish coastal sea areas are highly or fairly suitable for offshore wind power development, while the rest was unsuitable. The unsuitable areas were mainly a consequence of the constraints of protected areas and military-related claims. The results were also compared to the areas indicated in the municipal plans for wind power, the national interest for wind energy production, as well as the existing and rejected wind turbines. This indicated that the study results correspond well with them and that the space for offshore wind energy is still plentiful despite the large exclusion area. The applied methodology and results of this study can be a stepping stone to planning authorities and developers in the planning decision-making process.

With rapid urban development in China, many cities are still concerned about the quantity of the economy growth while ignoring the quality of the growth; ecological systems face a challenging situation. How to evaluate and guide a sustainable devel-opment is a vitally important question to the government of China. The study was partly performed in cooperation with the Institute of Building Research (IBR), who was entrusted by Changsha government of the Hunan Province. To evaluate the sus-tainability of urban development, a comprehensive indicator system was developed and applied, which was consistent to the policy of the so called "Two oriented socie-ty", which means Resource conservation and Environment friendly society. This pa-per shows a logic methodology to develop an indicator system – through the re-search, from literature review to modern concept; it shows clearly the factors that are important to build a sustainable city. The indicator system was derived and compared with other existing systems. The comparison showed that the indicator system we developed for the city is operational and integrated with a consistent hierarchy. Thereafter, the established indicator sys-tem was evaluated using an Analytical Hierarchy Process methodology. Indictors of ecological aspects were evaluated using the data collected, including the Changsha green field map, wetland map and ecological control maps. The indicator system was applied and the result was used as decision support in urban planning for 2020. How-ever, a main limitation lied in data collection: since the data we collected was not completely the data we expected. Besides, the indicator system was developed on the base of the policy called the "Two oriented society",which has its preference and limi-tation itself. Still, in sum, the indicator system we built through the research provided a satisfactory framework to the government to guide the development of the society in a macro scale. It needs future involvement to improve the data collection and standardization.

The location of logistics hubs is one of the most crucial success factors for potential economic growth in logistics sector. Since the logistics hub has direct and indirect impacts on different stakeholders including investors, policy makers, infrastructure providers, hub operators, hub users and the community itself, it needs to be considered carefully. Therefore, logistics hubs should be located in such a way that it can provide a better accessibility to three different modes of transportation- road, rail and waterways. The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential locations for logistics hubs and to find out the criteria that affect for the selection of location for logistics hubs. A comprehensive literature study reveals the factors that are affecting the selection of location for logistics hubs and the methods to evaluate those locations considering the criteria. Location selection or evaluation is a typical multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem in which performance criteria plays a vital role for the final decision making. Both qualitative and quantitative MCDM methods are applied in this study, where the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is qualitative and the gravity method is quantitative method. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a structured approach to reach the final decision which is one of the best methods of all MCDM problems, used in recent literature to evaluate the location selection problems. A case study is done for the logistics company, Brinova Fastigheter AB in Sweden. This study is followed by AHP method which is considered with selected factors, i.e. highway accessibility, intermodal capacity, port capacity and land availability. Moreover, this study is conducted by evaluating the four major potential locations in Sweden i.e. Stockholm, Göteborg, Helsingborg and Karlshamn for selecting as a logistics hub. Besides, the location for selecting logistics hubs is evaluated by the gravity method, which is a quantitative method to determine the level of accessibility for the selected locations, considering the flow of goods both inbound and outbound and the transport cost between the locations. The result from the AHP method recommend that Göteborg is the best potential location to establish logistic hub whereas the Gravity model represents that Stockholm has the highest level of accessibility for logistics activity. Therefore the study suggested that both Göteborg and Stockholm are considered to be the best potential locations considering in present situation

When natural disasters such as earthquakes happen, there is a need for an efficient method to support humanitarian aid organizations in the decision making process. One such decision is placement of Foreign Field Hospitals to assist with medical help.To support such a decision lots of different information and data needs to be gathered and combined. The main objectives of this thesis are to collect existing data published shortly after the earthquake in Haiti 2010 as well as data published up to two months after the earthquake. The data is then to be evaluated according to adequacy for analysis and the result of the analysis to be compared to the actual placements of the field hospitals after the 2010 earthquake.The method used in this analysis is Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE). Data regarding population, elevation, roads, land use, damage, climate, water, health facility locations and airport location are collected and weighted relative with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with weights retrieved from a questionnaire sent out to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and countries involved in the disaster relief. The result obtained from the MCE is a final suitability map depicting areas that are suitable according to the different factors.The data availability for the thesis project is an issue, due to lack of data published shortly after the earthquake. Some of the data used in the analysis do not have the sufficient detail level. Still, an analysis can be performed where suitable areas are obtained.The suitable locations found in the analysis agree well in most cases with where the actual FFHs are placed, however a few locations are not in proximity to where the suitable areas lie. A few of the locations were located in areas exposed to frequently floods. Even though the data availability and quality leaves things to desire, the analysis method shows promising results for future research. The approach could help aggregating information from different sources and provide support in pre-dispatch organization, already having a set of suitable locations to arrive to.

A number of attempts have been made to define strategic business and information technology (IT) alignment; several representations of what it is are available in academic and practitioners’ fields. The literature suggests that firms need to achieve strategic business and IT alignment to be competitive. Strategic business and IT alignment impact business performance and IT effectiveness. We propose a unified strategic business and IT alignment model based on four strategic business and IT alignment models: Strategic Alignment Model (SAM), Strategic Alignment Maturity Model (SAMM), information system strategic alignment model and an operational model of strategic alignment. I argue that such a unified model will provide a better understanding of the nature and key aspects of strategic business and IT alignment from different, and sometimes complementary, theories. The unified model represents the concepts and instruments used in these four strategic businesses and IT alignment models. Our principal research goal is to pave the way to develop a common understanding between the different models. The components of the unified strategic business and IT alignment model were ranked with a group of IT experts and business experts from four public universities in Nicaragua. The result can be used as a basis for improving strategic business and IT alignment. / QC 20111212