Sule Onsel

A power-based measurement approach to specify macroeconomic competitiveness of countries

Abstract The World Economic Forum (Geneva), and the Institute for Management Development (Lausanne) have jointly created, and continue to maintain, a competitiveness rating and ranking for selected countries—the World Competitiveness Index (WCI). The WCI depends on a number of qualitative factors, which, in turn depend on the perception of executives. This paper offers a more robust and objective way of evaluating the competitiveness of countries while replicating the WCI results in a statistically significant manner. The hypothesis is that the long-term competitiveness of a country can be estimated using objective attributes. After validation of results based on this hypothesis versus those of the WCI, the paper explains the relative competitive level of the countries analyzed by using explanatory variables. A sensitivity analysis is used to show how movements, by design or by happenstance, in levels of some of the attributes/indicators may affect a countrys overall competitiveness. The paper suggests some important guidelines for policy formulation at the national level in both developed and developing countries as well as in multinational organizations. These can be used for evaluating changes in a given countrys competitive status between re-evaluations of the WCI. They can also be used for estimating the competitiveness of countries which have not yet been rated by WCI, or which might not have existed before being considered.

A cluster-based approach for the innovation assessment of countries

In this paper, 100 countries investigated by World Economic Forum are analyzed and compared according to their innovation and technological readiness related criteria for 2004 and 2007 respectively. In total, 15 criteria taken into consideration. The countries are clustered to find their respective position in terms of innovation and technological readiness. In order to improve the accuracy of the cluster analysis and to reduce the subjectivity, a combination of hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering is used.

A new ranking methodology based on hierarchical cluster analysis

This paper provides a methodology to rank competing entities in terms of their overall performance. Similarities of the entities are used for ranking. The methodology is composed of three stages. Initially, the data is standardized. Secondly, hierarchical cluster analysis is conducted to capture the similarities among the entities. Then a linear programming model is run for final rankings. Furthermore a benchmark example with sensitivity analysis is given to illustrate the methodology and to show its applicability.

Analyzing competitiveness of automotive industry through cumulative belief degrees

Ulengin, Fusun (Dogus Author) -- Onsel, Şule (Dogus Author) -- Kabak, Ozgur (Dogus Author) -- Conference full title: 10th International Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Technologies inNuclear Science Conference, FLINS 2012; Istanbul; Turkey; 26 August 2012 through 29 August 2012

Operations research–applications, edited by A. Ravi Ravindran

‘‘Operations Research Applications’’ edited by A. Ravi Ravindran covers a wide range of OR applications from both functional and industry-specific areas. The book begins with a brief OR history by the editor of the book. The main text contains 12 chapters all with further readings and/or references sections at the end and a thorough index is also provided. This book aims to provide a detailed overview of OR applications with related available software techniques. The first chapter covers project management. CPM and PERT techniques as well as the required statistical information have been studied along with related examples. Since there are many commercial software packages available, rather than giving information about a specific package, the writer focuses on the important factors to consider when selecting a specific project management software package. Chapter 2 deals with quality control, with a brief information about the new trends and the relationship to the six sigma methodology. The traditional approaches used in quality control and statistical process control are also introduced. Reliability theory, as both a predictive and descriptive tool in new product introduction and in existing system design, is introduced in Chapter 3 through related distributions and examples. In Chapter 4, the consecutive decisions that have to be made throughout a production process such as the forecast of demand, the design of plant layout and production scheduling are studied in several examples. The first four chapters can be considered as functional areas of OR while the remaining chapters deal with industry specific areas. So, the following seven chapters consist of several OR applications categorised under specific business areas. The 5th Chapter focuses on several examples that deal with optimising energy problems. In particular linear and integer mathematical models as well as simulation models have been used in these cases. In Chapter 6, schedule planning problems which can be stated as the major problem of airline optimisation have been studied. Revenue management and load planning are also introduced. OR tools and models are not used only for engineering problems, and the 7th Chapter presents the main tools and techniques that can be applied to different kinds of financial decision making problems. The importance of the interconnectivity of transport and logistics networks in the process of globalisation and various aspects of the supply chain that must be managed are studied in Chapter 8 and appropriate tools and concepts are discussed. The 9th Chapter focuses on e-commerce and includes the evolution of this new type of commerce as well as the OR tools which have been used extensively to offer a wide range of services and to support a variety of models. In the 21st millennium, sustainable development has increasingly become an essential component of international environmental policy, and there is an increased awareness about sustainable natural resources. Therefore Chapter 10 focuses on planning of water resources and the OR models used for water distribution systems

Problem Structuring and Evaluation Integration

This study focuses on the integration of problem structuring with the evaluation of alternatives. The multiple criteria analysis is generally based on the latter with a hidden assumption that the problem is well defined with explicitly known criteria and alternatives. However, especially the strategic planning problems are ill-defined and, thus, the first step of the analysis must be concerned with the structuring of the problem before any careful evaluation of the alternatives is conducted. In this paper, the water crossing infrastructure selection problem is selected as a case study. The cognitive map derived through knowledge acqusition from 19 experts is converted into a hierarchical structure with the goal at the top and the alternatives at the bottom. At the second stage of the analysis, an expert system approach is used to transform tha data of the multiattribute problem into a manageable decision matrix according to the rules. Finally this matrix will be ready to proceed by any appropriate multiattribute method.