The main objective of the present study is to investigate the risk factors influencing on construction firm’s project success in Pakistan. The study uses the partial least square structural equation modelling technique to analyse the data collected from 61 construction firms. The study finds positive impacts of design risk, financial risk, technical risk and labour risk on the success of the project. Alternatively, the current study finds no relationship between external risk factors and the success of the project. Furthermore, the current study suggests government and construction firms to consider the risk factors during the decision making for project implementation.

This paper proposes a framework to develop a deterministic model for the valuation, selection and grading (ranking) of e-suppliers by using Modified Distance Based Approach (MDBA), which has not been used earlier in e-supplier selection. The e-supplier selection system performs a major part for the successful running of any supply chain. Thus, for effective running of any supply chain, it is necessary to build a system for the selection of e-supplier. Building such a decision support system software is important for the development of any decision support system efficiently with reduced cost, time and effort. The current research is based on 8 criteria and 52 sub-criteria by giving equal weightage to all of them. In this study, the major criteria are disintegrated into small sub-criteria. To validate the results obtained through the proposed distance based approximation method, the results are compared with other methodologies. Finally, with the illustration of the example problem, the applicability of the developed model is described.

Correct application of the classical factorial F-test depends on normality and homogeneity of variance assumptions. If these assumptions are violated the type I error rate will be inflated and power of the test will be decreased. Therefore nonparametric statistical tests have been proposed to analyze the interaction effects in factorial designs. A simulation was conducted to investigate the effect of non-normality on type I error rate and power of the test of the classical factorial F-test and five nonparametric tests namely rank transformation (FR), Winsorized mean (FW), modifies mean (FM), adjusted rank transform (ART) and adjusted median transform (AMT) using program SAS 9.4 with 1,000 replications. The study used 2×2 factorial design with replications of 3, 4 and 6 making sample sizes of 12, 16, and 24, respectively and 3×3 factorial designs with replication of 3 making a sample size of 27 studied at 0.05 level of significance. As a results, when the normality of assumption is satisfied all six statistical tests have the ability to control type I error in all situations. The ART test cannot control type I error rate for 3×3 factorial design when sample size is 27 when normality assumption is violated. For power of the test, the F-test provided the highest test power when the normality of assumption is met. The ART and AMT tests provided approximately the same test power. The AMT and ART tests can be effectively used to analyse the interaction effect between factors A and B in 2×2 factorial design when the sample size is 12 and 16 or 24 respectively and the normality of assumption is not met. Moreover, the results showed that when sample sizes increased, all six statistical tests tended to increase the power of the test.

This paper proposes a new distribution named the negative binomial-weighted Lindley. The study uses the maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the parameters of the proposed distribution and compares the performance of the new method with other distributions. The study finds that the negative binomial-weighted Lindley distribution, obtained by the mixing the negative binomial distribution with the weighted Lindley distribution is another mixed negative binomial distribution and may provide an appropriate fit for data estimation with overdispersion. Some characteristics of the proposed distribution, such as mean and variance are also derived.

This paper characterizes the routing problems arising in distribution of rice-for-the-poor in a district and presents a generic mathematical formulation of vehicle routing problems (VRP) for solving the problems. The proposed generic model, framed as a mixed integer linear programming, is formulated in such a way to encompass three distinct features; namely multiple depots (MD) establishment, multiple trips (MT) transportation, and split delivery (SD) mechanism. This model is implemented for a real-world problem of rice-for-the-poor distribution in the Ponorogo district of Indonesia, involved for deliveries among 3 depots—8, 17, and 23 villages depended on the distribution period—using a fleet of 5 vehicles of homogeneous capacity. Three types of distribution model are identified as MD-MT-VRP, MD-VRP-SD and MD-MT-VRP-SD.

Data envelopment analysis models play an important role in decision making. In this paper, one-stage and two-stage nonlinear programming problems are investigated in order to evaluate the efficiency of two types of network data envelopment analysis model. The first type of network data envelopment analysis model has a series structure with three stages and a feedback between the last step and the middle step, the second model has a three-stage series structure with two feedback between the final step and the first step and the middle step. By examining the overall efficiency of the models based on the one-stage programming problem, a two-stage programming problem is also applied in order to evaluate the efficiency of each step. In order to solve one-stage nonlinear programming problems and two-stage linear and nonlinear programming problems derived from modeling, a linearization method based on coordinate transformation, and constant assumption and gradual growth of some variables is presented. In the last section, the proposed methods have been discussed using some numerical examples.

This paper presents a new penalty function called logarithmic penalty function (LPF) and examines the convergence of the proposed LPF method. Furthermore, the LaGrange multiplier for equality constrained optimization is derived based on the first-order necessary condition. The proposed LPF belongs to both categories: a classical penalty function and an exact penalty function, depending on the choice of penalty parameter. Moreover, the proposed LPF is capable of dealing with some of the problems with irregular features from Hock-Schittkowski collections of test problems.

This paper proposes a framework for selecting energy storage technology (EST) for small-scale renewable energy systems. The present study was able to achieve this using the results that were generated from a Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) and a fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD) model. Using the FQFD model, experts' opinions were incorporated into the framework during the evaluation of the techno-economic requirements importance for the selection process. The FQFD model considered system safety, availability, flexibility, reliability and effectiveness as customers’ requirements, while nominal voltage, nominal discharge current, peak measured voltage, operating cost and cost of energy were among the techno-economic requirements. During the framework application, a questionnaire was used to collect information from experts on the techno-economic requirements importance, while information on the techno-economic (eleven) requirements for four ESTs were obtained from literature. The FQFD model results were incorporated into a PROMETHEE and TOPSIS models. The PROMETHEE and the TOPSIS models identified Lithium-Ion EST as the best EST for small-scale renewable energy systems.

This paper introduces a novel practical variant, namely an open close multiple travelling salesmen problem with single depot (OCMTSP) that concerns the generalization of classical travelling salesman problem (TSP). In OCMTSP, the overall salesmen can be categorized into internal/permanent and external/outsourcing ones, where all the salesmen are positioned at the depot city. The primary objective of this problem is to design the optimal route such that all salesmen start from the depot/base city, and then visit a given set of cities. Each city is to be visited precisely once by exactly one salesman, and only the internal salesmen have to return to the depot city whereas the external ones need not return. To find optimal solutions, an exact pattern recognition technique based Lexi-search algorithm (LSA) is developed which has been subjected in Matlab. Comparative computational results of the LSA have been made with the existing methods for general multiple travelling salesman problem (MTSP). Further, to test the performance of LSA, computational experiments have been carried out on some benchmark as well as randomly generated test instances for OCMTSP, and results are reported. The overall computational results demonstrate that the proposed LSA is efficient in providing optimal and sub-optimal solutions within the considerable CPU times.

Seaweed had proven to become a fisheries commodity to provide a significant multiplier economic effect for coastal community in Southeast Maluku District during 2005-2013. However, the declining on the productivity of seaweed has given a direct impact on welfare of farmers and coastal communities in this region during the recent years, due to asymmetric information on seaweed farming associated with prices, latest technology and all pre and post production activities. Thus, forming a dedicated information centre for seaweed farming in the region has become a necessity. As small island regions, in Southeast Maluku district, farmers and all stakeholder have to deal with cliché problems such as insufficient infrastructure, lack of transportation, farmers locations that spread across the islands. This paper focused on the selection of suitable location for the information centre for seaweed farming in Southeast Maluku district, Indonesia. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP), in classical and fuzzy forms, was an approach used on this study for suitability analysis. Moreover, GIS for spatial analysis in addition to AHP was used to compare the best results for the location of information centre for seaweed farmers. The results show that fuzzy AHP could provide more suitability location compared with conventional AHP. Most of suitability locations were located in three sub-districts regions and also most of them were located in Kei Kecil Island and Kei Besar Islands due to the geographical characteristics of the region. The sensitivity analysis was conducted to measure the sensitivity of the results when the weight of each criterion was changed. The outcome of this study was to serve its purpose as an input and comparison study for a recent local government of Southeast Maluku' policy on developing seaweed farming in this region.