Tuğçen Hatipoğlu

Fuzzy multi criteria decision making approach to innovative strategies based on Miles and Snow typology

Innovation which utilizes both competitive and co-operative relationships can be defined as the improvement of some new products, services or systems. Generation of an innovation strategy is an essential challenge in today’s competitive business world. Innovation provides a sustainable competitive advantage when the related activities become an indispensable element of the management within the company. In line with this issue, after a comprehensive literature review, five characteristic parameters of innovation are selected to analyze a company’s innovation strategy. The determined parameters are the strategic orientation of a firm, the abilities of a firm, the cultural structure, the attributes of products, and the environment of competition. The data belonging to the leading companies of their sector are evaluated by using these parameters and with the help of Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process. Based on both the conceptual and empirical research, organizations are classified according to the Miles & Snow typology.

Using Owas in Automotive Subsidiary Sector: A Case Study

Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) that lead to important health problems and the depletion of social resources are the most common drawbacks affecting the working population. MSDs that are at the top of the list showing the expenditures for all disorders, and affecting the job efficiency, life quality and physical and social functions of a worker in a negative way, is generally due to the poor working postures. There are several methods to identify the poor working postures that cause Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) and financial burdens to the economies along with serious health problems for workers. OWAS (Ovako Working Posture Analysing System), one of these methods, depends on the observational analysis of work movements especially in physically demanding works. In this study, the working postures in tire raw materials production process are analyzed with OWAS method and some suggestions are made about the possible improvements to eliminate the poor working postures.

A Fuzzy Approach for Performance Appraisal: The Evaluation of a Purchasing Specialist

One of the most important issues faced in organizations is the objective performance measure of employees who have a crucial role in the success of the production/service processes. Performance appraisal is vital since it helps to clarify whether the company is going in line with the predetermined objectives. Performance appraisal is the evaluation of the general performance level of personnel according to the previously determined targets and/or performance factors. The main purpose of performance appraisal is not only to increase the performance of employees, but also to unite the individual targets with the company’s targets. Performance appraisal requires evaluation and decision making in uncertain environments involving multiple factors. In this paper, a performance appraisal model is constructed to deal with the uncertainty and also to objectively measure the employees’ performances. The criteria used in the model are defined in terms of the fuzzy numbers and linguistic variables. The three main criteria of the performance appraisal model are decision making and leadership, communication and relations, and technical skills. The model is applied in the purchasing department of a company operating in the automotive industry. The developed model has the flexibility to be applied in different departments with a modification in the criteria under the title of “Technical skills”.

Feasibility analysis of a hydraulic ram pump investment project

Usage and management of water resources issues are considered world’s environmental problems of primary importance. Half of the global workforce is employed in several water and natural resource-dependent industries, i.e., agriculture, energy, building, and transport. Due to these reasons, rationally planning and usage of water resources is essential. The most common use of water in the world is in the agriculture sector with the rate of 70%. Since water resources are one of the most important inputs for agriculture, the use of this resource in agricultural irrigation with the right methods has great importance in terms of sustainability of agricultural production. Considering that a great percentage of agricultural areas are very far from the electricity supply due to the geographical conditions, the hydraulic ram pump, taking advantage of basic physic and mechanic principles, the wide spread usage of hydraulic ram pump is crucial. Our attention has been given to the fact that in the abovementioned conditions, a feasibility study of a hydraulic ram investment project was carried out with the proper methods of watering. Hydraulic ram is an environmentally friendly water pumping device with no fuel and no electricity consumption. Two scenarios were examined in the feasibility study. In the first scenario, a feasibility study was carried out for the leasing of a workshop to manufacture hydraulic rams, while all required procedures for manufacturing a water coach were outsourced in the second scenario. As a result of the study, these two evaluated scenarios were presented and interpreted.

Application of lean production techniques in the manufacturing industry

Lean production is producing in a short time, cheaply and error-free, while satisfying customer demands. The aim is to decrease waste and to increase effectiveness by using lean production techniques. The mould room was selected as the pilot application area. For this purpose, several studies were conducted: 1) to determine and decrease the idle capacity and time waste in new mould production, maintenance and repair moulds; 2) to decrease the waiting time and material flow; 3) to diminish supply costs; 4) to turn the system into a FIFO system by decreasing the cycle time. At the end of the study, the efficiency was increased by 10%, the cycle time was decreased by 20% and the distance over which materials flow was decreased by 60%. The implementation of the designed production cells freed 120m2 of space. 8,000 hours per year are gained with the elimination of the non-value adding stations.

Expert system application for prioritizing preventive actions for shift work: shift expert

Introduction. Shift patterns, work hours, work arrangements and worker motivations have increasingly become key factors for job performance. The main objective of this article is to design an expert system that identifies the negative effects of shift work and prioritizes mitigation efforts according to their importance in preventing these negative effects. The proposed expert system will be referred to as the shift expert. Methods. A thorough literature review is conducted to determine the effects of shift work on workers. Our work indicates that shift work is linked to demographic variables, sleepiness and fatigue, health and well-being, and social and domestic conditions. These parameters constitute the sections of a questionnaire designed to focus on 26 important issues related to shift work. The shift expert is then constructed to provide prevention advice at the individual and organizational levels, and it prioritizes this advice using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process model, which considers comparison matrices provided by users during the prioritization process. An empirical study of 61 workers working on three rotating shifts is performed. After administering the questionnaires, the collected data are analyzed statistically, and then the shift expert produces individual and organizational recommendations for these workers.

A Performance Evaluation Model of a Job Title using Fuzzy Approach

Performance evaluation is described as comparing the performance of workers and the work standards and handling the necessary activities in a systematic way to attain these standards. What makes performance measure a necessity is its focus on performance of personnel as an objective measure of whether the company goes in the correct direction or not. This is because the most important problem encountered in organizations is the difficulty in the determination of how successful the personnel are in the satisfaction of their duties and what are their capabilities in their jobs. Besides performance evaluation is a decision making process which involves uncertainty. To overcome the uncertainty and evaluate the workers performance objectively, a performance evaluation model is developed of which the criteria are defined as the fuzzy numbers and the linguistic variables. The scope of the study is to determine the performance evaluation criteria of a purchasing specialist and weight for evaluating this job title.

Implementation of reliability-centred FMEA in a cable cutting process

Reliability is an important criterion affecting the automobile buying decision of customers. One of the most important components in automobiles is the cables ensuring the electricity current. Even the smallest breakdowns in these cables create crucial problems. Because of that, it is aimed to work with zero error in the production phase. In this study, the objective is the determination of possible and present errors in the cutting phase of electric cables and avoidance from these errors before they occur. In this regard, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) methodology is used, which is an analysis done for prevention and identification of all possible error types. Preventions found by FMEA have been implemented and high risk priority numbers (RPNs) are reduced in a cable cutting process. The study shows that significant improvement in possible errors can be ensured with the use of FMEA.

Yapay Sinir Ağı Yaklaşımıyla Çinko Kalınlığının Tahminlenmesi

Since the competition level among the companies is increasing day by day, meeting customer demands with qualified products and cost reduction are primary goals of each company. And zinc, the main raw material in galvanization sector, is the most important cost item. So it is required to forecast the amount of zinc to be spent. In this study it is tried to forecast the amount of zinc consumption using the artificial neural network (ANN) method. To evaluate the convenience of values hypothesis tests are done; and the results showed that there is no significant difference between the predicted and real outputs statistically

Measuring Job Satisfaction of Shift Workers Based on Fuzzy Systems Approach

Companies are supposed to be aware of the parameters of job satisfaction to retain a greater motivation and reduce the staff turnover. Shift workers have non-routine work hours which lead to some social disadvantages, higher levels of various disorders, and lower concentration level. From this point of view, it is inferred that measuring job satisfaction of shift workers plays an important role for companies on the way to reduce the work-related stress. Hence, a questionnaire consists of sleepiness and fatigue, health and well-being, social and domestic situation is submitted to 60 shift workers. The results are analyzed and it is seen that there are both linguistic and numerical data which cause some complexity. In order to overcome the uncertainty, fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making method is adopted which addresses approximate reasoning. The main aim of the study is to emphasize the importance of adverse effects of shift work and propose a model to measure the job satisfaction. In the context of shift working, the findings of the study provide managers prominent results on how to enhance the job satisfaction of their employees. In the light of the obtained results, companies should focus more on “sleep and fatigue” to increase productivity.