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The logistic and transportation plays an integral part in maintaining a well-functioning organization. One of the most extensively used, original, famous, and popular non-parametric methods for evaluating the efficiency of organizations is the Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA technique. Suppose we can formulate the concept of effectiveness in the DEA technique. In that case, we will be able to measure the productivity of organizations since productivity is a blend of efficiency and effectiveness. Several studies have been developed, e.g., the "Malmquist Productivity Index" (MPI) and the "Lunberger Productivity Index" (LPI), which assess the productivity of corporations through the DEA technique, but these models do not display all factors in a system. Also, they need at least two periods to appraise productivity. Furthermore, their two components of efficiency and effectiveness are not considerably evident. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is not possible in these models. Therefore, a model was presented that can measure the relative productivity of decision-making units through the technique of DEA, simultaneously in a period through the two elements of efficiency and effectiveness with the feature of sensitivity analysis and its solution method is more reliable due to the use of multi-objective planning method. In addition, a case study was used to indicate the application of the proposed model, which demonstrated that a branch could be efficient but unproductive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to develop a multi-objective mathematical programming model for the trade-off of time, cost, and quality in the project-scheduling problem (PSP) by taking priorities and resource constraints as well as activity preemption into account. First, a small-sized problem instance that was a sub-project of an oil and gas construction project was used for te validation of the proposed model and algorithm. Subsequently, considering the sensitivity, complexity, and importance of oil and gas projects, the proposed model was implemented in a large-sized oil and gas construction project. Considering the NP-hardness of this problem, the NSGA-II metaheuristic algorithm was used to deal with the time, cost, and quality trade-off problem. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was implemented on the three main parameters of time, cost, and quality to investigate the effects of changes on the results. The findings show that the proposed model is more sensitive to cost changes, so an increase in project costs leads to a drastic change in the values of other objective functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the growing number of development projects, proper project planning and management are crucial. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a heuristic algorithm for scheduling a power plant project construction and project resource management to determine the size of project buffers and feeding buffers. This algorithm consists of three steps: 1. estimating the duration of project activities; 2. determining the size of the project buffer and feeding buffers; and 3. simulating the mentioned algorithm, which will be explained below. Innovations of this research are as follows: estimating the exact duration of project activities by using a heuristic algorithm, in addition to determining the buffer size; calculating both project buffer and feeding buffers; and applying the algorithm to implement an ACC used in combined cycle power plant projects as a numerical example. In order to evaluate the proposed algorithm, inputs from this project were run through several algorithms recently presented. The results showed that a suitable amount of buffers can be allocated for projects using this algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]