Güzin Özdağoğlu

An integrated decision support approach for project investors in risky and uncertain environments

In project investment decisions, it is often assumed that estimated values of project parameters are certain and they would not deviate by the time. However, project parameters normally change during a life cycle of the project. Therefore, an existence of a deviation or gap between forecasted values and actual values is inevitable. Because of the uncertainty of the future, forecasting the true and exact values of project parameters is almost impossible. In this study, an integrated decision support approach based on simulation and fuzzy set theory is proposed for project investors in risky and uncertain environments. This approach determines the risk levels of the projects and helps investors to make investment decisions. In the scope of the study, a flowchart is presented to guide to decision maker in different situations of information uncertainty that belongs to project parameter values. Via this flowchart, the values of project parameters can be chosen depending on how they are determined (deterministic, stochastic or fuzzy) by project analyst. Besides, calculating and analyzing the project risk in all possible situations would be easier. Illustrative examples are given to demonstrate the application of this approach.

Predicting product demand from small-sized data: grey models

Purpose Prediction problems raised in uncertain environments require different solution approaches such as grey prediction models, which consider uncertainty in information and also enable the use of small data sets. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the comparative performances of grey prediction models (GM) and Markov chain integrated grey models in a demand prediction problem. Design/methodology/approach The modeling process of grey models is initially described, and then an integrated model called the Grey-Markov model is presented for the convenience of applications. The analyses are conducted on a monthly demand prediction problem to demonstrate the modeling accuracies of the GM (1,1), GM (2,1), GM (1,1)-Markov, and GM (2,1)-Markov models. Findings Numerical results reveal that the Grey-Markov model based on GM (2,1) achieves better prediction performance than the other models. Practical implications It is thought that the methodology and the findings of the study will be a significant reference for both academics and executives who struggle with similar demand prediction problems in their fields of interest. Originality/value The novelty of this study comes from the fact that the GM (2,1)-Markov model has been first used for demand prediction. Furthermore, the GM (2,1)-Markov model represents a relatively new approach, and this is the second paper that addresses the GM (2,1)-Markov model in any area.

Modern QFD-based requirements analysis for enterprise modelling: enterprise-QFD

Competitiveness and globalisation force enterprises quickly to adapt to changing conditions of markets. Enterprises employ modelling methodologies to organise their strategic knowledge to cope with this change, which results in an enterprise (data) model. Requirements discovery and analysis is the most important phase in creating the enterprise model because any mistake in the requirements discovery deteriorates the validity of the model, resulting in user dissatisfaction. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a well-known and integrated approach used in converting the requirements of users into final product specifications. This paper modifies QFD for enterprise modelling, and proposes Enterprise-QFD, which provides a common platform to be integrated with any methodology for discovering and analysing customer requirements. The modified QFD tables involve some required columns added and unnecessary ones deleted based on enterprise modelling. A novel matrix content and sequence is also proposed.

Topic modelling-based decision framework for analysing digital voice of the customer

The aim of this study is to introduce a decision framework that integrates Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology and topic modelling to facilitate analysing online reviews, that is, a digital source of voice of the customer (VoC), to extract the true customer needs for developing a product/service. Within the framework, after collecting and preprocessing customer reviews, Latent Dirichlet Allocation is used for grouping them as topics. Most representative reviews are determined based on corresponding topic distributions, and QFD methodology is employed to clarify these reviews and reveal true customer needs. For demonstration, this framework was used to analyse 83,545 reviews on Italian restaurants gathered from Yelp.com via topic modelling with a more objective perspective. The number of documents to be examined was decreased by approximately 95%. Thereupon the completion time of customer voice table, one of the most important tools in QFD studies, reduced dramatically. Besides, text mining process is enhanced for retrieving meaningful information from customer reviews by using QFD tools and their tailored approach. This study is the first attempt that integrates QFD and topic modelling in order to increase the efficiency of the VoC clarification process.

The Potential Effect of Industry 4.0 on the Literature About Business Processes: A Comparative Before-and-After Evaluation Based on Scientometrics

Industry 4.0 is a collective term that covers many modern automation systems, data exchanges and production technologies representing the fourth revolution in the industry. This revolution allows for the collection and analysis of all the data that can affect production processes, revealing more efficient business models, and creating a structure that will completely change the production-consumption relations. When the bibliometric information of related publications are examined, it is clear that the concept of Industry 4.0 is beginning to be thoroughly debated in 2010 and later (n: 418, 81.48%), and every day of the post-publication period there is an increasing tendency. These developments affecting all areas of the industry can also be considered to affect the studies on the management of the business processes. This study aims to demonstrate how the developments in industry 4.0 are reflected in the studies related to business processes within the scope of the literature. In this context, by taking 2010 breaking point, it is investigated whether a change in the scientometric structure of the research articles related to the business processes after this year and whether the changes are compatible to the concepts conceived together with the concept of industry 4.0. As a necessary data source, the research articles that are focused on business processes in the Web of Science (WoS) database were collected, and the scientometric analyses were conducted on this data for different time intervals. For the comparisons, the similar the data on the concept of industry 4.0 were also collected and analysed. According to the search attempts on WoS on 1st of April, 2018, 6255 research articles were obtained using the phrase “business process” where 3044 of them were published in 2010 or later. Various citation mining techniques were used in the scope of scientometrics to reveal demographics and linkages. Findings show that there are significant differences before and after the year 2010.

Evaluating the nursing academicians in Turkey in the scope of Web of Science: scientometrics of original articles

Scientometrics, bibliometrics, webometrics, and informetrics are specific research fields that cover statistical analyses of a particular research field which summarize the information related to topics handled during a particular time period; authors, citations and their demographic characteristics; network relationships among the authors. This study, which can be classified in both scientometrics and webometrics, aims at revealing the current situation and the performance of academicians working in the nursing field in Turkey through basic and advanced data analyses conducted on their published original articles in a Web of Science. The raw data including the details of the publications were first parsed into a novel database where the authors’ affiliations were stored with respect to the data obtained from the website of the Turkish Higher Education Council. Over the integrated database, particular tables were generated to show the summary of the academic and demographic distributions of the publications. Specific statistical tests were applied to reveal the relationships and differences. Furthermore, analyses were carried out within text mining on authors, titles, keywords, abstracts, and references in order to examine the contents and references of the articles included in the data set to reveal keyword densities, particular topics, and co-authorship and citation networks. One of the challenging part of this research was the dataset collection and cleansing process, because of the special letters of Turkish Language, e.g. ç, ş, ö, ü. This issue was resolved when the representation pattern of the letters were discovered and queries were executed with respect to those patterns. This study has provided meaningful findings to both the field of nursing the scientometrics, since it reveals the academic performance in a particular field and systematically presents the current situation by examining the relevant studies in an analytical perspective.

Scientometric overview of nursing research on pain management

php?article_id=3411#.WgKw4Wi0OUk. 16. Gupta R, Gupta BM, Bansal J, Kumar A. Scientometric Assessment of India’s Migraine Research Publications during 2006-2015. J Young Pharm. 2016;8(4):294-301. doi: 10.5530/jyp.2016.4.2. 17. Mendoza-Parra S. Coverage, universal access and equity in health: a characterization of scientific production in nursing, Rev. Latino-Am. Enfermagem. 2016;24:e2669. doi: 10.1590/1518-8345.1082.2669. 18. Estabrooks CA, Winther C, Derksen L. Mapping the field a bibliometric analysis of the research utilization literature in nursing. Nurs Res. [Internet]. 2004 [cited Sep 21, 2017];53(59):293-303. Available from: https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15385865. 19. Allen MP, Jacobs SK, Levy JR. Mapping the literature of nursing:1996–2000.J Med Libr Assoc. [Internet]. 2006 [cited Aug 17, 2017];94(2):206-220. AvailableABSTRACT Objective: to analyse research articles on pain and nursing issues using bibliometric and scientometric methodologies. Method: articles in the Web of Science database containing pain and nurse and pain and nursing were analyzed using scientometric methods through data visualization techniques and advanced text analytics. Result: among the 107,559 research articles found in the field of nursing, 3,976 of them were written based on the keywords pain and nursing, and were considered in conformity with the scope of this study. Preliminary analyses indicated that the publications have increased through the years with minor fluctuations. Titles, keywords, and abstracts were analyzed through text analytics to reveal keyword clusters and topic structures. Studies on oncology and pain in the field of nursing have a relatively higher frequency. Conclusion: the results of the analyses revealed the characteristics of the current literature in a broad range of areas by considering the particular dimensions. Therefore, the findings may support present and future research in this field by shedding light on the networks, trends, and contents in the related literature.

Leading the Strategic Decision-Making Process: Conceptual Frameworks

Leading the strategic decision-making process is a crucial issue in organizations. The success of the process is closely related to the experiences and special skills of the managers as well as to the culture and the structure of the organizations and environmental factors. Such a decision-making process requires improved cognitive, behavioral, and analytical skills from managers. This chapter investigates those success factors of the strategic decision-making process emphasized in the current literature and proposes two conceptual frameworks based on the factors for top managers that would help them to track the causality and the performance of their organizations within this scope.

Developing a new product via modern QFD: an application for bedding of laboratory animals

Laboratory animals play a crucial role in early testing of new drugs or methods in medical sciences such as pharmacology and surgery. Since the primary concern of medical scientists is to look for scientific medical outputs only, other factors regarding animal welfare such as environmental factors, feeding and bedding need to be considered to insure that the living conditions of laboratory animals is comfortable and healthy. The purpose of this study is to develop a bedding material for laboratory animals by implementing the basic steps of the Modern QFD methodology which is a new area of research for these kinds of products. Our findings show that Modern QFD can be effectively implemented in developing a new bedding material for laboratory animals. This study is a new implementation for determining the needs of laboratory animals using such a method and is an example of a unique case in the QFD domain.

MÜŞTERİ SADAKATİNİN SAĞLANMASINDA MÜŞTERİ İLİŞKİLERİ YÖNETİMİNİN ÖNEMİ: İZMİR’DE BİR HİPERMARKET ARAŞTIRMASI

Ozet: Musteri ve musteri sadakati gunumuzun rekabetci dunyasinda giderek artan bir oneme sahiptir. Isletmeler pazar payi yerine musteri payi anlayisini izlemektedirler. Bunun icin en cok kullanilan yontem musteri iliskileri yonetimidir. Bu makale, musterinin oneminin en fazla hissedildigi perakendecilik sektorunde musterilerin sadakatini, sadakatlerine etki eden etmenleri ve musteri iliskileri yonetimi degiskenlerinin bu etmenler arasindaki yerini arastirmaktadir. Bu calisma kapsaminda musteri iliskileri icin kullanilan araclari ve etkilerini ortaya cikarmak amaciyla, Izmirde cok tercih edilen bir hipermarketin musterileri uzerinde bir arastirma yapilmistir. Arastirma icin kullanilan ankette, musterilerin sadakati konusunda goz onunde bulundurduklari kriterleri ve bu kriterler acisindan soz konusu hipermarketin mevcut durumunun degerlendirmelerine yonelik sorular yer almaktadir. Anket sonuclari SPSS 13.0 istatistik programi ile degerlendirilmistir. Elde edilen sonuclarla ilgili yorumlar ve isletmeye oneriler yapilmistir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Musteri Iliskileri Yonetimi, Perakendecilik, Musteri Sadakati Abstract: Customer and customer loyalty have an increasing importance in today’s competitive world. The companies follow customer share intelligence instead of market share intelligence. The most used method for this is customer relationship management. This paper investigates customer loyalty, the factors that affect this loyalty, the place of customer relationship management variables among these factors and customer groups that are affected from these variables at retail sector, at which the importance of customer is felt most. For this purpose, a survey was applied to hypermarket customers. The survey consists of the questions that are asked for finding out the importance of criteria for customer loyalty and current status of hypermarket according to these criteria. The survey results are appraised by SPSS 13.0 statistical software. Comments and suggestions are done according to the obtained results. Key Words: Customer Relationship Management, Retailing, Customer Loyalty