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The bullwhip effect leads to considerable inefficiencies along the food supply chain such as missed production schedules, poor customer service, excessive inventory, and misguided capacity plans. To tackle this problem, it is necessary, apart from other interventions, to continuously monitor the performance of food suppliers so that the demand information flow, order batching, transportation planning, and inventory management can be substantially improved. Therefore, supplier assessment has then become critical decision‐making support for identifying and addressing inefficiencies of food providers, which ends up reducing the variation of several key logistics parameters for upstream members of the food supply chain. In addition, such assessment is of multicriteria nature given the presence of several criteria from different domains and various food suppliers. With these considerations in mind, this paper proposes a hybrid approach integrating the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) for evaluating the performance of pork suppliers. Thereby, the economic and operational burden caused by the bullwhip effect throughout the pork supply chain can be alleviated. AHP was first used to determine the criteria and subcriteria weights. Then DEMATEL was applied to assess the interdependence and feedback between the decision elements. Finally, TOPSIS was implemented to discriminate between high‐performance and low‐performance pork suppliers. A case study from the Colombian pork supply chain is presented to validate the proposed approach. The results of this study evidenced that the most important criterion was the "service level" and the most influencing factor was the "financial profile." In addition, based on the supplier assessment results, improvement plans, and new negotiation, strategies were established for each supplier in order to diminish the bullwhip effect along the pork supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of people with dementia (PwD) is increasing dramatically. PwD exhibit impairments of reasoning, memory, and thought that require some form of self‐management intervention to support the completion of everyday activities while maintaining a level of independence. To address this need, efforts have been directed to the development of assistive technology solutions, which may provide an opportunity to alleviate the burden faced by the PwD and their carers. Nevertheless, uptake of such solutions has been limited. It is therefore necessary to use classifiers to discriminate between adopters and nonadopters of these technologies in order to avoid cost overruns and potential negative effects on quality of life. As multiple classification algorithms have been developed, choosing the most suitable classifier has become a critical step in technology adoption. To select the most appropriate classifier, a set of criteria from various domains need to be taken into account by decision makers. In addition, it is crucial to define the most appropriate multicriteria decision‐making approach for the modelling of technology adoption. Considering the above‐mentioned aspects, this paper presents the integration of a five‐phase methodology based on the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution to determine the most suitable classifier for supporting assistive technology adoption studies. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to determine the relative weights of criteria and subcriteria under uncertainty and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution is applied to rank the classifier alternatives. A case study considering a mobile‐based self‐management and reminding solution for PwD is described to validate the proposed approach. The results revealed that the best classifier was k‐nearest‐neighbour with a closeness coefficient of 0.804, and the most important criterion when selecting classifiers is scalability. The paper also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm that should be addressed in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]