This paper presents new concepts and methodological tools to decide the investments that electric distribution utilities must perform under regulatory frameworks based on performance (Performance Based Regulation or PBR). The proposal is focused on short-term investments. In this work, the...

Application of fuzzy inference system to increase efficiency of management decision- making in agricultural enterprises. Theoretical and methodological issues, practical recommendations on improvement of management decision-making in agricultural enterprises to increase their competitiveness...

Hazardous and toxic industrial wastes may cause or significantly contribute to extensive damage to both humans and the environment when improperly handled. Evaluation of the proper and most appropriate hazardous industrial waste transportation firm is an important problem for hazardous waste...

In this paper, the production process is decomposed for typical manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the metrics of the defined sub processes, based on the requirements of ISO 9001:2008, are developed. The weight values of production process performance indicators are...

The free disposal hull (FDH) models are used as an alternative to data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for performance measurement and efficiency assessment. The conventional FDH models are used to evaluate the performance of a set of firms or decision-making units (DMUs) using deterministic...

The increasing complexity in workflow management systems (WMSs) has led to greater vulnerability due to system failure. Although system vulnerabilities cannot be completely eliminated, the accidental or anticipated failures have to be thoroughly understood and guarded. Traditionally, the failure...

Yield prediction is a very important task to a semiconductor manufacturing factory. However, it is difficult because yield improvement is a learning process, and the uncertainty and variation inherent in the learning process are not easy to consider. In addition, the competition in the...

The availability of data for the size of the "Underground Economy" is important for macroeconomic policy. We use fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic to construct an annual time-series for the (unobservable) New Zealand underground economy over the period 1968 to 1994. Two input variables are used -...

This paper examines the role of the interest rate in investment decisions for firms in Taiwan. To reflect the human side of decision making and the uncertain nature of information provided, we employ fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic to examine the nonlinear relationship between these two...