• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.843-851
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• 2020

This study focuses on identifying and prioritizing the broader performance measures for the service supply chains by taking the case of Majan Electricity Company, Sohar, in the Sultanate of Oman. For an examination of the uniformity of ultimate objectives and the priorities therein, two strata of respondents with a total of fourteen respondents were approached for their valuable insights. Suitable structured instruments were personally administered to elicit the insightful and worthy responses. The two multi-criteria decision-making techniques, namely, the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and the Best-Worst Method were used to reach a meaningful prioritization of the identified and refined broader performance measurement dimensions. The results show that there exists a minor gap between the two respondents' groups in terms of their prioritizations. The major finding points to the difference in terms of the topmost priorities as revealed by the two set of respondents. For one group of respondents, the customer satisfaction matters the most, whereas for the other group, it is the overall profitability that matters the most. This gap against the utopian state assists in concluding that there is a requirement to reorient the employees so as to have a shared and common understanding of the organizational priorities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

Developing Build-Own (or Operate)-Transfer (BOT) nuclear power project carrying large capital in the long term requires initially well-made multi-decision which it prevents sorts of risks from unexpected situation of target countries. In order to analyze the feasibility of project country, the Analytic Hierarchy Process is adopted. Firstly, the factors influencing the success of BOT nuclear power project in overseas countries were investigated through the literature survey for the country risk and were evaluated by expert interview for estimating comparative weight through pairwise comparison between such factors. Finally, it is developed comparative database of alternate countries with respect to each factor. This analytic method enables the developer to select and focus on the country which has preferable circumstance so that it enhances the efficiency of the project promotion. Also, it enables the developer to quantify the qualitative factors so that it diversifies the project success strategy and policy for the target country.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.12spc
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• pp.375-382
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• 2021

The paper introduces a model for evaluating and prioritizing mobile quality attributes and refactoring techniques through the examination of their effectiveness during the mobile application development process. The astonishing evolution of software and hardware has increased the demand for techniques and best practices to overcome the many challenges related to mobile devices, such as those concerning device storage, network bandwidth, and energy consumption. A number of studies have investigated the influence of refactoring, leading to the enhancement of mobile applications and the overcoming of code issues as well as hardware issues. Furthermore, rapid and continuous mobile developments make it necessary for teams to apply effective techniques to produce reliable mobile applications and reduce time to market. Thus, we investigated the influence of various refactoring techniques on mobile applications to understand their effectiveness in terms of quality attributes. First, we extracted the most important mobile refactoring techniques and a set of quality attributes from the literature. Then, mobile application developers from nine mobile application teams were recruited to evaluate and prioritize these quality attributes and refactoring techniques for their projects. A prioritization-based model is examined that integrates the lightweight multi-criteria decision making method, called the best-worst method, with the process of refactoring within mobile applications. The results prove the applicability and suitability of adopting the model for the mobile development process in order to expedite application production while using well-defined procedures to select the best refactoring techniques. Finally, a variety of quality attributes are shown to be influenced by the adoption of various refactoring techniques.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.107-128
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• 2017

Energy is a major component of almost all economic, production, and service activities, and rapid population growth, urbanization and industrialization have led to ever growing demand for energy. Limited energy resources and increasingly evident environmental effects of fossil fuel consumption has led to a growing awareness about the importance of further use of renewable energy sources in the countries energy portfolio. Renewable hydrogen production is a convenient method for storage of unstable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy for use in other place or time. In this study, suitability of 25 cities located in Iran's western region for renewable hydrogen production are evaluated by multi-criteria decision making techniques including TOPSIS, VIKOR, ELECTRE, SAW, Fuzzy TOPSIS, and also hybrid ranking techniques. The choice of suitable location for the centralized renewable hydrogen production is associated with various technical, economic, social, geographic, and political criteria. This paper describes the criteria affecting the hydrogen production potential in the study region. Determined criteria are weighted with Shannon entropy method, and Angstrom model and wind power model are used to estimate respectively the solar and wind energy production potential in each city and each month. Assuming the use of proton exchange membrane electrolyzer for hydrogen production, the renewable hydrogen production potential of each city is then estimated based on the obtained wind and solar energy generation potentials. The rankings obtained with MCDMs show that Kermanshah is the best option for renewable hydrogen production, and evaluation of renewable hydrogen production capacities show that Gilangharb has the highest capacity among the studied cities.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.254-263
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• 2013

Disassembly of discarded products takes place in the process of remanufacturing, recycling, and disposal. The disassembly lines have been taken as available choice for automated disassembly; therefore, it has become essential that it be designed and balanced to work efficiently. The multi-objective disassembly line balancing problem seeks to find a disassembly sequence which provides a feasible disassembly sequence, minimizes the number of workstations and idle time, and balances the line for the disassembly of post consumed product by considering the environment effects. This paper proposes a multi-criteria decision making technique based heuristic for assigning the disassembly tasks to the workstations. In the proposed heuristic, the PROMETHEE method is used for prioritizing the tasks to be assigned. The tasks are assigned to the disassembly workstations according to their priority rank and precedence relations. The proposed heuristic is illustrated with an example, and the results show that substantial improvement in the performance is achieved compared with other heuristics.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.811-830
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• 2022

Purpose: In this paper, we will discuss 1) prioritizing databases to be integrated; 2) which data elements should be emphasized in federated database integration; and 3) the degree of efficiency in the integration. This paper aims to lay the groundwork for building data governance by presenting guidelines for database integration using metrics to identify and evaluate the capabilities of the UK's air quality databases. Methods: This paper intends to perform relative efficiency analysis using Data Envelope Analysis among the multi-criteria decision-making methods. In federated database integration, it is important to identify databases with high integration efficiency when prioritizing databases to be integrated. Results: The outcome of this paper aims not to present performance indicators for the implementation and evaluation of data governance, but rather to discuss what criteria should be used when performing 'federated integration'. Using Data Envelope Analysis in the process of implementing intelligent data governance, authors will establish and present practical strategies to discover databases with high integration efficiency. Conclusion: Through this study, it was possible to establish internal guidelines from an integrated point of view of data governance. The flexiblity of the federated database integration under the practice of the data governance, makes it possible to integrate databases quickly, easily, and effectively. By utilizing the guidelines presented in this study, authors anticipate that the process of integrating multiple databases, including the air quality databases, will evolve into the intelligent data governance based on the federated database integration when establishing the data governance practice in the railway industry.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.25-31
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• 2017

With tremendous advancement of information and communication technologies, mobile learning systems have been widely adopted in language learning contexts, and several frameworks have been developed for identifying and categorizing different factors of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). However, pre-existing frameworks have limitations when evaluating the importance level of criteria. The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive hierarchical framework for identifying and categorizing success factors of MALL and prioritizing them according to the importance level. To do that, AHP method is used to quantitatively estimate weight values of MALL criteria. Results reveal that the priority of MALL criteria is ordered as follows: content, system, learner, language learning. Local weights of each criterion are also analyzed; for example, usefulness, accuracy, and authenticity are critical factors for improving MALL contents. Ease of use and mobility of MALL systems are also considered more critical than other systematic factors. In addition, availability of immediate feedback and self-directness has the highest weight values of importance. The findings of the study are discussed regarding hierarchical orders of MALL criteria and conclude that successful MALL implementation may be achieved if related elements are diversely measured and evaluated. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are also presented.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.159-170
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• 2022

As the severity of water-related disasters increases in urban watersheds due to climate change, reducing flood damage in urban watersheds is one of the important issues. This study focuses on prioritizing the optimal site for permeable pavement to maximize the efficiency of reducing flood damage in urban watersheds in the future climate environment using multi-criteria decision making techniques. The Mokgamcheon watershed which is considerably urbanized than in the past was selected for the study area and its 27 sub-watersheds were considered as candidate sites. Six General Circulation Model (GCM) of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6(CMIP6) according to two Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios were used to estimate future monthly precipitation for the study area. The Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework was used to select the water quantity evaluation criteria for prioritizing permeable pavement, and the study area was modeled using ArcGIS and Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). For the values corresponding to the evaluation criteria based on the DPSIR framework, data from national statistics and long-term runoff simulation value of SWMM according to future monthly precipitation were used. Finally, the priority for permeable pavement was determined using the Fuzzy TOPSIS and Minimax regret method. The high priorities were concentrated in the downstream sub-watersheds where urbanization was more progressed and densely populated than the upstream watersheds.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.116-133
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• 2002

Background : It is very common in Korea to take care of non-acute patients in an acute setting, due to the lack of long-term facilities. Long term hospitalization increase medical expenses and decreases the bed utilization, which can affect the urgent and emergent admissions, and eventually jeopardize the hospital financially. In this study, strategies for effective transfers to the lower levels of care, and to decrease the length of stay were presented by surveying and analyzing the patient's knowledge of the transfer needs, and the willingness to transfer those whose hospital length of stay was more than 30days. Method : The survey is subject to a group of 251 patients who have been hospitalized over 30 days in a general hospital in Seoul. Excluding those that were in the Intensive Care Unit and psychiatric ward, 214 in-patients were used as participants. They were surveyed from April 9, 2002 to April 17, 2002. One hundred and thirty seven out of 214 were responded which made the response rate 64%. Data were analyzed by SAS and SPSS. Result : Multi-variable Logistic Regression Analysis showed a significant effect in medical expenses, knowledge of referral system and the information of the receiving hospital. The financial burden in medical expenses made the patient 10.7 times more willing to be transferred, knowledge of the referral system made them 5 times more willing to be transferred, and the information of receiving hospital makes 6.5 times more willing to be transferred. Reasons for willing to be transferred to a lower level of care were the phase of physical therapy, the distance from home, the attending physician's advice and being unable to be treated as an out patient. Reasons for refusing to be transferred were the following. The attending physician's competency, not being ready to be discharged, not trusting the receiving hospital's competency due to the lack of information, or never hearing about the referring system by the attending physician. Conclusion : Based on this, strategies for the effective transfer to the lower levels of care were suggested. It is desirable for the attending physician to be actively involved by making an effort to explain the transfer need, and referring to the Healthcare Coordinating Center, which can help the patient make the right decision. Nationwide networking for the referral system is the another key factor that may need to be suggested as an alternative to decrease the medical expenses. Collaborating with the Home Health Agency for the early discharge planning and the Social Service Department for financial aid are also needed. It is recommended that the hospital should expedite the transfer process by prioritizing the cost and the information as medical expenses, knowledge of referring system and the information of the receiving hospital, are the most important factors to the willingness to transfer to a lower level of care.