Prioritization of dimensions of visual merchandising for apparel retailers using FAHP

Determinants of customer value at department stores in Taiwan: An application of fuzzy AHP

Evaluating the factors affecting customer value in department stores will shed light on the motivations of customers when choosing department stores, which will help department stores to improve their business performance and competitiveness. This paper applies the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to empirically analyze the determinants of customer value at department stores in Taiwan. This study first found the major factors influencing customer value at department stores in Taiwan through a review of the literature and expert interviews, and these factors consisted of four evaluation dimensions and 20 evaluation criteria. An empirical investigation was then conducted through an AHP expert questionnaire survey. The main findings of this paper were as follows: (1) “Physical environment” was the most important evaluation dimension for customer value at department stores in Taiwan. (2) The four leading factors influencing customer value in department stores were “roomy and comfortable space,” “responsive customer service,” “planning of lines of movement at counters,” and “parking area and facilities.” This study also performed further discussion of the four evaluation criteria as a reference for department stores that wish to raise their competitiveness.

A multi-product and multi-period aggregate production plan: a case of automobile component manufacturing firm

Purpose

The study attempts to develop a multi-product multi-period (MPMP) aggregate production plan (APP) to fulfill the customers' demand in terms of throughput and lead time for achieving market competence.

Design/methodology/approach

This research proposes an integrated Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP), multi-objective linear programming (MOLP), and simulation approach. Initially, FAHP is used to select the essential objectives a firm desires to achieve. Adopting the MOLP, an APP is formulated for the firm under study. Later, the simulation model of a firm is created in a discrete-event simulation (DES) software Arena© to evaluate the applicability of the proposed APP. A comparative analysis of the manufacturing performance levels (namely throughput, lead time, and resource utilization) achieved through the implication of an existing production plan and proposed APP is conducted further.

Findings

The findings from the study depict that the proposed MOLP-based APP can satisfy the customers' requirement (namely throughput and lead time) and improve the level of resource utilization compared with the firm's existing production plan.

Research limitations/implications

The proposed research facilitates researchers and practitioners to understand the process of developing MOLP-based MPMP APP and analyzing its applicability through simulation technique to be utilized for developing APP at their firm.

Originality/value

An integrated FAHP-MOLP-simulation framework is the novel contribution to the literature on production planning. It can be extended to solve strategic, tactical, and operational problems in different domains like service, healthcare, supply chain, logistics, and project management.

Site suitability analysis for potential agricultural land with spatial fuzzy multi-criteria decision analysis in regional scale under semi-arid terrestrial ecosystem

The main purpose of this study is to identify suitable potential areas for agricultural activities in the semi-arid terrestrial ecosystem in the Central Anatolia Region. MCDA was performed in fuzzy environment integrated with GIS techniques and different geostatistical interpolation models, which was chosen as the basis for the present study. A total of nine criteria were used, as four terrain properties and five soil features to identify potential sites suitable for agriculture lands in Central Anatolia which covers approximately 195,012.7 km². In order to assign weighting value for each criterion, FAHP approach was used to make sufficiently sensitive levels of importance of the criteria. DEM with 10 m pixel resolution used to determine the height and slope characteristics, digital geology and soil maps, CORINE land use/land cover, long-term meteorological data, and 4517 soil samples taken from the study area were used. It was identified that approximately 30.7% of the total area (59,921.8 ha) is very suitable and suitable for potential agriculture activities on S1 and S2 levels, 42.7% of the area is not suitable for agricultural uses, and only 27% of the area is marginally suitable for agricultural activities. Besides, it was identified that 34.8% of the area is slightly suitable.