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Assessing the performance of the Research and development (R&D) organizations to achieve higher productivity, growth, and development is always a critical necessity. Therefore, developing a more accurate model to evaluate the performance is always required. For this purpose, this study is aimed at developing a decision-making model for evaluating R&D performance. The model comes up with determining the most proper evaluative criteria for assessing R&D organizations. Then, it integrates Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with Analytical Network Process (ANP) to assess R&D performance. This paper is aimed to develop an integrated model for evaluating R&D performance. The findings of the study show that the DEA-ANP model is an accurate and acceptable model for evaluating R&D organizations' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Technological & Economic Development of Economy is the property of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Contractor evaluation is a vital part of the project management cycle and deals with risk and risk management. One of the most important phases in the construction industry is the bidding process. In order to select the most appropriate contractor for the project and prepare the most realistic and accurate bid proposal, stakeholders have to know all financial, technical and general information about these contractors. The information can be determined as qualitative, quantitative or verbal data. This paper presents the multi-attribute contractors ranking method bay applying Ordering of feasible alternatives of solutions in terms of preferability technique. This method allows dealing with qualitative and quantitative data as well as with data expressed in words (verbal data). Finally, an illustrative example of contractor selection is used to demonstrate the feasibility and practicability of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Technological & Economic Development of Economy is the property of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is aimed at utilizing a hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model for selecting a supplier. First, eight evaluation criteria, including cost, quality, distance, delivery reliability, reputation, technology level, compatibility and development ability are identified. The Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) is initially used for calculating the weight of each criterion. The Complex Proportional Assessment of alternatives to Grey relations (COPRAS-C method) is adopted for ranking and selecting suppliers. In order to illustrate the functional ability of the developed model, Kalleh Company is chosen as a case study and can be used as a pattern for supplier selection and future researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now, the role of quality management in education is increasing. Managing for quality is now one of the major issues for educational organizations. One of the key tasks for education managers is to provide the learning process participants with an effective and motivating educational environment. Management of the educational environment presupposes giving a particular attention to students' needs and requirements in order to improve educational practice and enhance educational quality. Among other things having their impact on the educational environment effectiveness is to what extent it motivates students for further studies. In this context, we regard student motivation as an essential factor for the educational environment quality improvement. This paper considers some quality management procedures that can be used by education managers to provide qualitative changes in the educational environment. To improve the quality of the educational environment we may use several management tools, regular educational environment evaluation being one of them. It includes collecting student feedback, which is a valuable source of analytical input in the process of the environment quality enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are interested in the hierarchy of the main Romanian companies in the manufacturing industry by considering eight financial and seven non-financial indicators. Thirty three listed companies, that are non-financial institutions, were selected for the study and in order to control the reliability of the data we used the Bucharest Stock Exchange database, official data published by the Romanian Ministry of Public Finance, and the annual reports released by the companies on their websites, collecting information for the years 2011-2015. Because the human thinking is subjective and ambiguous we prefer linguistic variables, converted afterwards in triangular fuzzy numbers, to represent the importance of indicators. Our method involves the calculation of the weights of individual or categories of indicators based on Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process. Then, the level of performance for each company, separately for financial, non-financial and all indicators is obtained by TOPSIS method. We deduce an objective hierarchy of the companies on a rigorous basis, which is however dependent from the choice of indicators and the conversion scale of linguistic variables into triangular fuzzy numbers. Also, following the obtained results we concluded that the overall performance of companies for the analyzed period is significantly influenced by non-financial indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demand for natural gas has severely challenged the world supply among other types of energy sources such as coal, geothermal, nuclear and etc. Natural gas is the most important form of energy because it is clean, abundant, reliable and versatile. Due to the limited and transportable characterizes of natural gas, sharing pipelines for natural gas with other nations can either bring peace and stability or create chaos. To avoid insoluble strategies, it is very explicit to decide scientifically for these kinds of global issues. To do so, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) - ANP (Analytic Network Process) integrated approach is presented to evaluate natural gas policies for Turkey in terms of East Mediterranean Region. In the first step, the appropriate strategies, SO (strengths-opportunities), ST (strengths-threats), WO (weaknesses-opportunities) and WT (weaknesses-threats) are determined via SWOT analysis including four criteria, 20 sub-criteria and seven strategies. Due to inability of SWOT analysis to prioritize the criteria and rank the strategies, ANP approach which also considers the dependency between criteria is applied in the second step. Finally, the proposed SWOT-ANP approach is compared with other multi criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques to represent the effectiveness and applicability of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of multifaceted objects or phenomena can be hardly described or evaluated by a single criterion. The quality of the trip by train is described by a set of quantitative and qualitative criteria. The influence of all the criteria on the trip by international train may be evaluated by a comprehensive quality index (CQI) or quality indexK. An additive model is offered for calculating CQI, which consists of the average weights of the criterion groups, as well as normalized weights and variables of the criteria, showing the correspondence of the real value of each criterion to the best, critical or allowable value. A mathematical model, which may be used for determining the quality of the trip by train based on the criteria describing the elements of the train and technical state of the railway track is also presented. Based on the use of 16 criteria describing the elements of the train and the parameters and the technical state of the railway track, the quantitative estimateKA(multiple criteria index) is obtained. The suggested model and the techniques used in the work may be applied to determining the quality or effectiveness of other objects or processes, which can be described by sets of criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]