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The shift in mindset of decision makers, from maintenance being a “necessary evil” and “cost centre” to a “profit contributor” in manufacturing companies has driven outsourced maintenance suppliers to employ value-centric approaches in order to design more effective maintenance programs. A value assessment for maintenance outsourcing must facilitate the trade-off between cost-centric and value-centric approaches to enable the maintenance service providers to design more effective maintenance organizations. This assessment should also help the customers in a well informed decision making in outsourcing their maintenance function in order to add value to their businesses. Therefore the aim of this research is to develop a decision making framework for maintenance outsourcing based on the assessed customer-value of outsourced maintenance services. Cont/d.

The shift in mindset of decision makers, from maintenance being a “necessary evil” and “cost centre” to a “profit contributor” in manufacturing companies has driven outsourced maintenance suppliers to employ value-centric approaches in order to design more effective maintenance programs. A value assessment for maintenance outsourcing must facilitate the trade-off between cost-centric and value-centric approaches to enable the maintenance service providers to design more effective maintenance organizations. This assessment should also help the customers in a well informed decision making in outsourcing their maintenance function in order to add value to their businesses. Therefore the aim of this research is to develop a decision making framework for maintenance outsourcing based on the assessed customer-value of outsourced maintenance services. Cont/d.

Le monde industriel est sans cesse confronté à des problèmes de choix. Une multitude de critères doit être pris en compte dans la résolution de ces derniers. Face à ces situations, les outils d’aide à la décision prennent tout leur sens. Nous utiliserons ici la méthode Analytic Hierarchic Process dans le domaine de la Production et plus particulièrement dans le cadre de l’ordonnancement d’une ligne de production de prothèses cardiovasculaires. Le paramétrage initial de cette méthode fait appel à l’évaluation d’un expert. Bien que ce dernier ait les connaissances nécessaires pour faire un paramétrage convenable, il n’en reste pas moins humain et introduira, même involontairement, une partie subjective dans ses décisions. L’ordonnancement en résultant ne sera donc pas forcément optimal. La réduction de cette subjectivité passe par l’utilisation d’une méta heuristique, de type algorithme génétique, pour améliorer ce paramétrage par l’exploration de solutions voisines à celles proposées par l’expert. / The industrial world is continually faced with problems of choices. Multitude of criterion must be taken into account in resolving them. Faced with these situations, the decision making tools give solutions. We will use the Analytic Hierarchy Process in the production field and especially in the scheduling of a cardio vascular prosthesis production line. The initial parameterization of this method involves the evaluation of an expert. Although he has the required knowledge to make a fitting setup, he is no less human and he will bring even unintentionally a subjective part in his decision. The resulting scheduling will therefore not necessarily be optimal. The reduction of the subjectivity can be done using a metaheuristic method, of genetic algorithm type, to improve this parameterization by exploring neighbouring solutions compared to those proposed by the expert.

The aim of my thesis is using a questionnaire to find out level of insurance, habits and preferences of respondents in selected areas of insurance. These results will also be used as input data for the analysis of the insurance products of selected insurance companies. Offers of insurance company will be assessed by several criteria. The formed options will be evaluate by multi-criteria methods for evaluation of alternatives. Insurance offer will be assessed on the basis of model examples using the above mentioned methods. There will be analyzed the products of the compulsory insurance, travel insurance and property insurance. The output of my thesis will be identification of the best deals in each type of insurance and also in general. In addition, there will be created a sequence of other insurance companies with their percentage ranking. It will also be evaluated the insurance company, which respondents considered as the best and also those for which they usually have their insurance contracts. Analyzed insurance companies will be selected on the basis of survey results.

The research applied multi-criteria decision-making analysis to donor decisions regarding the choice of a particular charity in order to identify which donor attitudes are significant in the giving decision. Factors affecting the appeal of major charities in Health and Disability were compared. The giving decision has not been widely researched overseas and particularly in New Zealand there is a need to do this in order to better manage Not-for-profit marketing resources. 24 factors associated with giving decisions were identified and quantified giving rise to a fully-specified giving model and potentially direct benefits to charitable organizations. The research has made a contribution to our understanding of donor choice determinants and giving models.

Continuous development has been occurring in the area of decision support systems. Modern systems focus on applying decision models that can provide intelligent support to the decision maker. These systems focus on modelling the human reasoning process in situations requiring decision. This task may be achieved by using an appropriate decision model. Multicriteria decision making (MCDM) is a common decision making approach. This research investigates and seeks a way to resolve various issues associated with the application of this model. MCDM is a formal and systematic decision making approach that evaluates a given set of alternatives against a given set of criteria. The global evaluation of alternatives is determined through the process of aggregation. It is well established that the aggregation process should consider the importance of criteria while determining the overall worth of an alternative. The importance of individual criteria and of sub-sets of the criteria affects the global evaluation. The aggregation also needs to consider the importance of the sub-set of criteria. Most decision problems involve dependent criteria and the interaction between the criteria needs to be modelled. Traditional aggregation approaches, such as weighted average, do not model the interaction between the criteria. Non-additive measures such as fuzzy measures model the interaction between the criteria. However, determination of non-additive measures in a practical application is problematic. Various approaches have been proposed to resolve the difficulty in acquisition of fuzzy measures. These approaches mainly propose use of past precedents. This research extends this notion and proposes an approach based on similarity-based reasoning. Solutions to the past problems can be used to solve the new decision problems. This is the central idea behind the proposed methodology. The methodology itself applies the theory of reasoning by analogy for solving MCDM problems. This methodology uses a repository of cases of past decision problems. This case base is used to determine the fuzzy measures for the new decision problem. This work also analyses various similarity measures. The illustration of the proposed methodology in a case-based decision support system shows that interactive models are suitable tools for determining fuzzy measures in a given decision problem. This research makes an important contribution by proposing a similarity-based approach for acquisition of fuzzy measures.

The research applied multi-criteria decision-making analysis to donor decisions regarding the choice of a particular charity in order to identify which donor attitudes are significant in the giving decision. Factors affecting the appeal of major charities in Health and Disability were compared. The giving decision has not been widely researched overseas and particularly in New Zealand there is a need to do this in order to better manage Not-for-profit marketing resources. 24 factors associated with giving decisions were identified and quantified giving rise to a fully-specified giving model and potentially direct benefits to charitable organizations. The research has made a contribution to our understanding of donor choice determinants and giving models.

Notre travail de recherche traite la problématique de la conception d’une chaîne logistique multi-niveaux tout en tenant compte du cycle de vie du produit. Par cycle de vie du produit, nous voulons dire la succession des quatre phases de commercialisation que traverse un produit à travers le temps, à savoir : l’introduction, la croissance, la maturité et le déclin. L’objectif est de mette en place un modèle mathématique qui soit fondé sur une analyse approfondie des différents acteurs de la chaîne, selon la phase du cycle de vie du produit.Trois principaux modèles ont été développés dans cette thèse. Chacun fait l’objet d’un chapitre à part entière.Le premier modèle développé vise à concevoir une chaîne logistique de coût minimum, tout en prenant en considération l’efficacité des différents acteurs potentiels calculée selon plusieurs critères (coût, qualité, innovation, qualité du service, délais de livraisons, …), ainsi que sa variation au cours du cycle de vie du produit. Un deuxième modèle a été mis en place pour la conception d’une chaîne logistique durable, tout en prenant en considération le cycle de vie du produit. Dans ce modèle, trois objectifs différents ont été pris en compte à la fois, à savoir, un objectif économique, un objectif environnemental et un objectif social. Dans les deux premiers modèles, nous avons supposé que le produit aura un cycle de vie classique. Cependant, dans la réalité, ceci n’est pas toujours le cas. En effet, quelques produits connaissent des cycles de vie très atypiques et donc très éloignés de la courbe d’un cycle de vie théorique. Pour ce faire, un troisième modèle stochastique a été proposé pour la conception d’une chaîne logistique robuste, tenant compte des différents scénarios du cycle de vie du produit. / Our research addresses the problem of designing a multi-level supply chain, while taking into consideration the product life cycle. By product life cycle, we mean the succession of the four marketing stages that a product goes through since its introduction to the market and until it will be removed from. All products have a life cycle which can be classified into four discrete stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.Depending on the product life cycle phases, and based on a thorough analysis of the different supply chain potential actors, this study aims to establish mathematical models to design an efficient supply chain network. Three main models have been developed in this thesis. The first proposed model aims to design a product-driven supply chain with a minimal total cost, taking into consideration the evaluation of the different potential actors effectiveness, according to several criteria (cost, quality, innovation, quality service, timely delivery, ...).A second model was developed to design of a sustainable supply chain network, taking into account the product life cycle. In this model, three different objectives at the time were considered, namely, an economic objective, an environmental objective and a social objective.In the two previous models, we have assumed that the product has a classical life cycle. However, in the reality this is not always the case. Indeed, some products have very atypical life cycles, whose curves are very different from the classical one. To tackle this problem, in the third part of this thesis, we propose a stochastic model to design a robust supply chain network, taking into account the different product life cycle scenarios.

Este trabalho apresenta o processo de seleção de estratégia de reconversão industrial de uma pequena refinaria de petróleo no Sul do Brasil através da aplicação de uma modelagem integrada, utilizando um método multicriterial e programação matemática. Neste estudo foram identificadas linhas de negócio potencialmente aplicáveis à realidade da companhia e definido um conjunto de critérios de análise abrangendo as três dimensões da sustentabilidade empresarial: econômica, social e ambiental. Com base na avaliação da importância relativa de cada critério, atribuída por um grupo de decisores, e no desempenho das linhas de negócio em cada um dos critérios, foi aplicado método fuzzy TOPSIS para análise e ordenação das linhas de negócio. As informações resultantes desta análise, juntamente com dados econômicos objetivos, foram utilizadas em um modelo de programação linear inteira para avaliar portfólios viáveis de linhas de negócio, identificando estratégias candidatas à implementação na refinaria. O desempenho global de cada estratégia candidata, obtido mediante agregação dos desempenhos individuais das linhas de negócio e calculado conforme método fuzzy TOPSIS, foi analisado através de ferramentas gráficas, de modo a gerar elementos para subsidiar a seleção da melhor estratégia de reconversão. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram a eficiência da abordagem proposta, no sentido de facilitar o entendimento e a exploração da situação problema e, assim, oferecer um adequado suporte à tomada de decisão. / This dissertation presents a selection process of industrial reconversion strategy in a small oil refinery in southern Brazil by applying an integrated modeling approach, using a multicriteria and a mathematical programming method. Potentially performing business lines were identified, as well a set of criteria covering the three dimensions of corporate sustainability: economic, social and environmental. Based on the relative importance evaluation of each criteria given by a group of decision-makers, and on performance of the business lines in each of the criteria, fuzzy TOPSIS method was applied for analysis and sorting of business lines. The information resulting from this analysis, along with objective economic data, were used in integer linear programming model to evaluate effective portfolios of business lines, identifying candidate strategies to implement in the refinery. Fuzzy TOPSIS is used to generate overall performance scores of each candidate strategy, aggregating the individual performance of the business lines. The sustainability assessment was analyzed through graphical tools in order to generate information to support the selection of the best strategy for the industrial reconversion. The results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed approach to facilitate the understanding and exploitation of the problem situation and thus offer adequate support to decision making.