Internal – External (IE), Strategic Position and Action Evaluation (SPACE), Boston Consulting Gro... more Internal – External (IE), Strategic Position and Action Evaluation (SPACE), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Grand Strategy matrices are important tools in generating and evaluating alternative output strategies which is the most important step in the formulation stage in strategic management process. Managers need to make difficult and important decisions on the basis of imprecise information and incomplete knowledge and select the right strategic position or alternative output strategies. Managers found it difficult to make the right decision when the values that resulted from the internal and external audits of an organization's environment fall in the middle or on the sharp edges in these matrices. It is found that each matrix depends on some factors that represent the internal and external environment of an organization and neglect the others. A systematic approach that incorporates fuzzy set theory in conjunction with strategic planning is proposed to assist managers in...
International Journal of Fuzzy System Applications, 2011
Injection molding process is increasingly more significant in today’s plastic production industri... more Injection molding process is increasingly more significant in today’s plastic production industries because it provides high-quality product, short product cycles, and light weight. This research optimizes the performance of this process with three main quality responses: defect count, cycle time, and spoon weight, using the weighted additive goal programming model. The three quality responses and process factors are described by appropriate membership functions. The Taguchi’s orthogonal array is then utilized to provide experimental layout. A linear optimization based on the weighted additive model in goal programming model is built to minimize the deviations of the product/process targets from their corresponding imprecise fuzzy values specified by the process engineer’s preferences. The results show that the average defect count is reduced from an average of 0.75 to 0.16. Moreover, the average cycle time becomes 13.06 seconds, which is significantly smaller than that obtained at ...
Today's complexity of product design requires improving multiple quality characteristics. This re... more Today's complexity of product design requires improving multiple quality characteristics. This research proposes an approach that integrates the desirability function and data envelopment analysis to enhance process performance with dynamic multi-responses. Firstly, the desirability function is employed. Then, data envelopment analysis is used to obtain the best settings of controllable factor levels that make the effect of noise factors as small as possible. Three case studies are utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, in all of which the proposed approach is found an effective procedure in reducing the effect of noise factors, does not need huge data for the analysis or any subjective information and human judgment, and can be used regardless of linearity or nonlinearity relationship between the signal factor and responses. Such advantages should provide great assistance to product engineers in improving performance of dynamic systems with multiple responses.
Taguchi method is a widely used approach for parameter design to achieve quality and yield improv... more Taguchi method is a widely used approach for parameter design to achieve quality and yield improvements for many business applications. Nevertheless, there has been much discussion in literature about the invalidity of the statistical techniques adopted in this method. This research proposes an extension to ongoing research by investigating the alpha risk of Taguchi method with L 18 (2 1 ×3 7) array for the nominal-the-best (NTB) type quality characteristic (QCH) using simulation. It is assumed that all QCH values are normally distributed with the same mean and standard deviation. Then the null hypothesis, that all factors should be identified as insignificant, is true. Simulation results however, showed that the alpha risk is very high and hence Taguchi method may provide a misleading parameter design. This research, therefore, recommends relying on more efficient alternatives.
International Journal of Information Systems and Social Change, 2014
This research examines the effects of leadership (LP), strategic planning (SP), organization cult... more This research examines the effects of leadership (LP), strategic planning (SP), organization culture (OC), human resources (HR), partnership (PS), availability of resources (RC), and systems, structures and processes (SSP) on public firms' innovation in Jordan. Moreover, it aims at identifying the key barriers hinder implementing innovative systems. One hundred ninety two are collected from 67 public organizations. A conceptual model is proposed and then analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). SEM results showed that: (1) LP significantly affects HR, PS, and SSP. However, it insignificantly affects on RC, (2) SP is positively related with HR, PS, RC, and SSP, (3) OC significantly affect HR, PS, RC, and SSP, (4) HR, PS, RC, and SSP positively affect innovation, and finally (5) innovation has direct positive effects on customer satisfaction, process performance, and financial performance; whereas it has insignificant effect on employee satisfaction. Further, it is found...
International Journal of Fuzzy System Applications, 2012
The fuzzy regression has been found effective in modeling the relationship between the dependent ... more The fuzzy regression has been found effective in modeling the relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables when a high degree of fuzziness is involved and only a few data sets are available for model building. This research, therefore, proposes an approach for optimizing multiple responses in the Taguchi method using fuzzy regression and desirability function. The statistical regression is formulated for the signal to noise (S/N) ratios of each response replicate. Then, the optimal factor levels for each replicate are utilized in building fuzzy regression model. The desirability function, pay-off matrix, and the deviation function are finally used for formulating the optimization models for the lower, mean, and upper limits. Two case studies investigated in previous literature are employed for illustration; where in both case studies the proposed approach efficiently optimized processes performance.
International Journal of Artificial Life Research, 2012
This study aims at developing an Activity Based Costing (ABC) for the Emergency Department (ED) i... more This study aims at developing an Activity Based Costing (ABC) for the Emergency Department (ED) in a Jordanian hospital to determine associated costs and clarifies the financial practices inside ED rooms. For this purpose, simulation model is built for patients at the current ED activities and determine the costs for each room in ED. The total costs (JD), number of served patients, and profits (JD) are 263562, 10256, and 146677, respectively. Improvement is suggested by studying three three-level controllable factors using simulation. It is noted that focusing on the lowest total costs, B-1 (adding two beds with one added nurse) and B-2 (introducing four beds with two added nurses) provide the two smallest total costs (JD) of 252568 and 253320, respectively. Whereas, for the largest number of served patients is achieved by A-1 (assigning one sharing doctor for Abdominal) and C-1 (adding another room for abdominal with new doctor) of equal number of served patients of 10466. In order...
Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, 2009
This research proposes a procedure for solving the multiresponse problem in the Taguchi method ut... more This research proposes a procedure for solving the multiresponse problem in the Taguchi method utilizing two data envelopment analysis (DEA) approaches, including comparisons of efficiency between different systems (CEBDS) and bilateral comparisons. In this procedure, each experiment in Taguchi's orthogonal array (OA) is treated as a decision-making unit (DMU) with the multiresponses as the inputs and outputs for all DMUs. For each factor of OA, the DMUs are divided into groups, each at the same factor level. Then,…
Jordan is a rich country with natural resources. Silica sand is considered as one of these resour... more Jordan is a rich country with natural resources. Silica sand is considered as one of these resources. Composites in which Jordanian silica sand is used as a reinforcement can be manufactured to improve the properties of polymers. In this work, Bakelite was taken as a matrix material. To study how the properties of this new material can be controlled, it was decided to study the variables that may affect these properties. In this study, the effect of the processing parameters such as applied load and cooling rate, and their interaction with the material parameters such as particle size and reinforcement content on the compressive load capacity of the manufactured composite were investigated. It was found that a higher compressive load capacity can be achieved with the increase of the applied load during manufacturing, the increase of the content of the reinforcement, and the increase of the particle size. The effect of the cooling rate depended on the sand content. For example, samples of low sand content (5 and 25%) showed no significant effect. In contrast, samples of high sand content (35 and 50%) showed that the higher the sand content, the lower the strength is.
ABSTRACT The Emergency Department (ED) is considered the most critical department in Jordanian ho... more ABSTRACT The Emergency Department (ED) is considered the most critical department in Jordanian hospitals. Crowdedness and long waiting times of patients in the ED are the most common harmonies problems that hospitals are suffering from. Thus, this study aims at reducing the average waiting time of the patient in the ED, improving the nurses’ utilization, and increasing the number of served patients. A cellular service system is proposed and utilized for developing ten nurse assignment configurations. Simulation is run for a one month period (672 h) each with 10 replicates to evaluate the performance measures for each configuration. The best scenario is then determined using aggressive formulation in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results showed that the best scenario depends on work load sharing assignments, which results in reducing patient’s average waiting time from 195 to 183 min, increasing the number of patients served from 8853to 8934 patients, and improving the nurses’ utilization from 52% to 62%. In conclusion, nurses’ flexibility in cellular service systems shall provide a great assistance to decision makers in hospitals when improving the performance of ED.
The burgeoning environmental regulations are forcing companies to green their supply chains by in... more The burgeoning environmental regulations are forcing companies to green their supply chains by integrating all of their business value-adding operations so as to minimize the impact on the environment. One dimension of greening the supply chain is extending the forward supply chain to collection and recovery of products in a closed-loop configuration. Remanufacturing is the basis of profit-oriented reverse logistics in which recovered products are restored to a marketable condition in order to be resold to the primary or secondary market. In this paper, we introduce a multiechelon multicommodity facility location problem with a trading price of carbon emissions and a cost of procurement. The company might either incur costs if the carbon cap, normally assigned by regulatory agencies, is lower than the total emissions, or gain profit if the carbon cap is higher than the total emissions. A numerical study is presented which studies the impact of different carbon prices on cost and configuration of supply chains.
Internal – External (IE), Strategic Position and Action Evaluation (SPACE), Boston Consulting Gro... more Internal – External (IE), Strategic Position and Action Evaluation (SPACE), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Grand Strategy matrices are important tools in generating and evaluating alternative output strategies which is the most important step in the formulation stage in strategic management process. Managers need to make difficult and important decisions on the basis of imprecise information and incomplete knowledge and select the right strategic position or alternative output strategies. Managers found it difficult to make the right decision when the values that resulted from the internal and external audits of an organization's environment fall in the middle or on the sharp edges in these matrices. It is found that each matrix depends on some factors that represent the internal and external environment of an organization and neglect the others. A systematic approach that incorporates fuzzy set theory in conjunction with strategic planning is proposed to assist managers in...
International Journal of Fuzzy System Applications, 2011
Injection molding process is increasingly more significant in today’s plastic production industri... more Injection molding process is increasingly more significant in today’s plastic production industries because it provides high-quality product, short product cycles, and light weight. This research optimizes the performance of this process with three main quality responses: defect count, cycle time, and spoon weight, using the weighted additive goal programming model. The three quality responses and process factors are described by appropriate membership functions. The Taguchi’s orthogonal array is then utilized to provide experimental layout. A linear optimization based on the weighted additive model in goal programming model is built to minimize the deviations of the product/process targets from their corresponding imprecise fuzzy values specified by the process engineer’s preferences. The results show that the average defect count is reduced from an average of 0.75 to 0.16. Moreover, the average cycle time becomes 13.06 seconds, which is significantly smaller than that obtained at ...
Today's complexity of product design requires improving multiple quality characteristics. This re... more Today's complexity of product design requires improving multiple quality characteristics. This research proposes an approach that integrates the desirability function and data envelopment analysis to enhance process performance with dynamic multi-responses. Firstly, the desirability function is employed. Then, data envelopment analysis is used to obtain the best settings of controllable factor levels that make the effect of noise factors as small as possible. Three case studies are utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, in all of which the proposed approach is found an effective procedure in reducing the effect of noise factors, does not need huge data for the analysis or any subjective information and human judgment, and can be used regardless of linearity or nonlinearity relationship between the signal factor and responses. Such advantages should provide great assistance to product engineers in improving performance of dynamic systems with multiple responses.
Taguchi method is a widely used approach for parameter design to achieve quality and yield improv... more Taguchi method is a widely used approach for parameter design to achieve quality and yield improvements for many business applications. Nevertheless, there has been much discussion in literature about the invalidity of the statistical techniques adopted in this method. This research proposes an extension to ongoing research by investigating the alpha risk of Taguchi method with L 18 (2 1 ×3 7) array for the nominal-the-best (NTB) type quality characteristic (QCH) using simulation. It is assumed that all QCH values are normally distributed with the same mean and standard deviation. Then the null hypothesis, that all factors should be identified as insignificant, is true. Simulation results however, showed that the alpha risk is very high and hence Taguchi method may provide a misleading parameter design. This research, therefore, recommends relying on more efficient alternatives.
International Journal of Information Systems and Social Change, 2014
This research examines the effects of leadership (LP), strategic planning (SP), organization cult... more This research examines the effects of leadership (LP), strategic planning (SP), organization culture (OC), human resources (HR), partnership (PS), availability of resources (RC), and systems, structures and processes (SSP) on public firms' innovation in Jordan. Moreover, it aims at identifying the key barriers hinder implementing innovative systems. One hundred ninety two are collected from 67 public organizations. A conceptual model is proposed and then analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). SEM results showed that: (1) LP significantly affects HR, PS, and SSP. However, it insignificantly affects on RC, (2) SP is positively related with HR, PS, RC, and SSP, (3) OC significantly affect HR, PS, RC, and SSP, (4) HR, PS, RC, and SSP positively affect innovation, and finally (5) innovation has direct positive effects on customer satisfaction, process performance, and financial performance; whereas it has insignificant effect on employee satisfaction. Further, it is found...
International Journal of Fuzzy System Applications, 2012
The fuzzy regression has been found effective in modeling the relationship between the dependent ... more The fuzzy regression has been found effective in modeling the relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables when a high degree of fuzziness is involved and only a few data sets are available for model building. This research, therefore, proposes an approach for optimizing multiple responses in the Taguchi method using fuzzy regression and desirability function. The statistical regression is formulated for the signal to noise (S/N) ratios of each response replicate. Then, the optimal factor levels for each replicate are utilized in building fuzzy regression model. The desirability function, pay-off matrix, and the deviation function are finally used for formulating the optimization models for the lower, mean, and upper limits. Two case studies investigated in previous literature are employed for illustration; where in both case studies the proposed approach efficiently optimized processes performance.
International Journal of Artificial Life Research, 2012
This study aims at developing an Activity Based Costing (ABC) for the Emergency Department (ED) i... more This study aims at developing an Activity Based Costing (ABC) for the Emergency Department (ED) in a Jordanian hospital to determine associated costs and clarifies the financial practices inside ED rooms. For this purpose, simulation model is built for patients at the current ED activities and determine the costs for each room in ED. The total costs (JD), number of served patients, and profits (JD) are 263562, 10256, and 146677, respectively. Improvement is suggested by studying three three-level controllable factors using simulation. It is noted that focusing on the lowest total costs, B-1 (adding two beds with one added nurse) and B-2 (introducing four beds with two added nurses) provide the two smallest total costs (JD) of 252568 and 253320, respectively. Whereas, for the largest number of served patients is achieved by A-1 (assigning one sharing doctor for Abdominal) and C-1 (adding another room for abdominal with new doctor) of equal number of served patients of 10466. In order...
Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, 2009
This research proposes a procedure for solving the multiresponse problem in the Taguchi method ut... more This research proposes a procedure for solving the multiresponse problem in the Taguchi method utilizing two data envelopment analysis (DEA) approaches, including comparisons of efficiency between different systems (CEBDS) and bilateral comparisons. In this procedure, each experiment in Taguchi's orthogonal array (OA) is treated as a decision-making unit (DMU) with the multiresponses as the inputs and outputs for all DMUs. For each factor of OA, the DMUs are divided into groups, each at the same factor level. Then,…
Jordan is a rich country with natural resources. Silica sand is considered as one of these resour... more Jordan is a rich country with natural resources. Silica sand is considered as one of these resources. Composites in which Jordanian silica sand is used as a reinforcement can be manufactured to improve the properties of polymers. In this work, Bakelite was taken as a matrix material. To study how the properties of this new material can be controlled, it was decided to study the variables that may affect these properties. In this study, the effect of the processing parameters such as applied load and cooling rate, and their interaction with the material parameters such as particle size and reinforcement content on the compressive load capacity of the manufactured composite were investigated. It was found that a higher compressive load capacity can be achieved with the increase of the applied load during manufacturing, the increase of the content of the reinforcement, and the increase of the particle size. The effect of the cooling rate depended on the sand content. For example, samples of low sand content (5 and 25%) showed no significant effect. In contrast, samples of high sand content (35 and 50%) showed that the higher the sand content, the lower the strength is.
ABSTRACT The Emergency Department (ED) is considered the most critical department in Jordanian ho... more ABSTRACT The Emergency Department (ED) is considered the most critical department in Jordanian hospitals. Crowdedness and long waiting times of patients in the ED are the most common harmonies problems that hospitals are suffering from. Thus, this study aims at reducing the average waiting time of the patient in the ED, improving the nurses’ utilization, and increasing the number of served patients. A cellular service system is proposed and utilized for developing ten nurse assignment configurations. Simulation is run for a one month period (672 h) each with 10 replicates to evaluate the performance measures for each configuration. The best scenario is then determined using aggressive formulation in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results showed that the best scenario depends on work load sharing assignments, which results in reducing patient’s average waiting time from 195 to 183 min, increasing the number of patients served from 8853to 8934 patients, and improving the nurses’ utilization from 52% to 62%. In conclusion, nurses’ flexibility in cellular service systems shall provide a great assistance to decision makers in hospitals when improving the performance of ED.
The burgeoning environmental regulations are forcing companies to green their supply chains by in... more The burgeoning environmental regulations are forcing companies to green their supply chains by integrating all of their business value-adding operations so as to minimize the impact on the environment. One dimension of greening the supply chain is extending the forward supply chain to collection and recovery of products in a closed-loop configuration. Remanufacturing is the basis of profit-oriented reverse logistics in which recovered products are restored to a marketable condition in order to be resold to the primary or secondary market. In this paper, we introduce a multiechelon multicommodity facility location problem with a trading price of carbon emissions and a cost of procurement. The company might either incur costs if the carbon cap, normally assigned by regulatory agencies, is lower than the total emissions, or gain profit if the carbon cap is higher than the total emissions. A numerical study is presented which studies the impact of different carbon prices on cost and configuration of supply chains.
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