Umut Asan

An integrated method for designing modular products

Many recent modular design methods and approaches have focused on the modularization process – decomposition and composition. This paper suggests an integrated methodology that includes additional tools and stages for a complete modular architecture design. The borders of the modular design process are expanded by adding strategic issues, appropriateness to modularity, degree of modularity and modularity strategies, in an operationalized manner. The methodology presents a “requirements analysis‐ decomposition‐composition‐design evaluation” structure. The “modularization process” is designed so as to choose from three different perspectives – customer‐based, function‐based and structure‐based design. To test and validate the methodology it was applied to a domestic gas detector product family. As a result, a new modular product architecture with eight modules was developed.

Risk prioritization in Failure Mode and Effects Analysis using interval type-2 fuzzy sets

A new fuzzy FMEA approach based on IT2 fuzzy sets is proposed.The approach introduces a new aggregation method.The approach utilizes an α-cut based aggregation operator for the first time.The approach introduces a practical method for ranking overall priority values.Comparisons show that the approach provides a satisfactory modeling of uncertainty. The analysis of failure modes and their effects generally requires dealing with uncertainty and subjectivity inherent in the risk assessment process. A review of the literature reveals that although a number of studies have examined these issues, none of them have explicitly studied the variation in one experts understanding (intra-personal uncertainty) and the variations in the understanding among experts (inter-personal uncertainty) together. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new fuzzy FMEA approach based on IT2 fuzzy sets, which has the ability to capture both intra-personal and inter-personal uncertainty. The approach introduces three methods that are new for the analysis of failure modes. First, to provide a more accurate representation of the aggregated data by preserving the variations among the individual judgments a new aggregation method is suggested. It transforms individual judgments in form of intervals into a group judgment in form of an IT2 FN. Second, to allow considering optimal weights for the risk factors and thereby developing more flexible structures for their synthesis, an α-cut based ordered weighted averaging operator is adapted. Finally, to rank failure modes on a continuous scale and reflect subtle differences in the assessments properly, a ranking method for IT2 FNs based on α-cuts is adopted. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by an illustrative example. Comparisons with the results of crisp- and fuzzy-based methods demonstrate that the proposed approach offers additional flexibility to the experts in making judgments and provides a better modeling of uncertainty.

Identifying strategic management concepts: An analytic network process approach

This paper presents an approach to the identification of an organizations strategic management concepts (SMCs) - mission, vision, values and competences. The highly qualitative relationships among these concepts are operationalized using the Analytic Network Process (ANP). As ANP captures the outcome of dependence and feedback between components of elements, the proposed approach enables us to handle indirect relationships and complex interactions existing among the SMCs. The alternatives with the highest overall priorities, resulting from the ANP, are selected as the organizations most dominant SMC set. To improve the quality of the decision further analysis of the ANP results is suggested. Accordingly, alternative concept sets are derived by applying two approaches - bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up approach indicates an explorative perspective where only common values and core competences held by the organization are used to identify the corresponding mission and vision statements. On the other hand, the top-down approach indicates a normative perspective where the necessary values and competences are determined according to a given desired vision statement. The proposed ANP approach has been applied to the Industrial Engineering Department (IED) of Istanbul Technical University. In light of the dominant, bottom-up and top-down sets, a final set of SMCs has been suggested for the IED.

Scenario-driven modular design in managing market uncertainty

Many organisational environments are far from equilibrium. The strategic flexibilities of modular product designs can help organisations prepare for an uncertain future, but managers must develop ways to imagine possible futures in order to use such flexibilities to respond to them. This paper discusses a scenario-based approach to anticipating and responding to uncertain futures by developing modular products that increase a firms chances of succeeding in multiple alternative futures. After introducing the theoretical basis of this study, a structured approach to operationalising the generation of future scenarios and the development of modular product designs is developed. The approach consists of four stages: (1) the generation of scenarios about future market needs, (2) the translation of those needs into goals for modular designs, (3) the modular design process itself and (4) the evaluation of the modular design process. The modular design process we discuss is a function-based design approach that is form independent and thus allows joint consideration of future market needs and the product functions that can serve those needs. We illustrate our proposed approach by applying it to generate scenarios and modular design criteria for the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) market in the security equipment sector in Turkey.

A Fuzzy Analytic Network Process Approach

This chapter describes the Analytical Network Process (ANP), a multi-criteria prioritization method to support decision making in complex and uncertain environments and suggests a fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) approach for prioritizing decision elements. The proposed fuzzy set theoretic method accommodates fuzziness in the supermatrix computations and thereby provides the opportunity to capture the uncertainty associated with the cumulative influence of each factor on every other factor with which it interacts. As its comparison to current methods demonstrates, the method successfully derives meaningful priorities from complex and uncertain decision structures.

SCENARIO-BASED COMPETENCE DESIGNATION

This paper presents an approach for developing critical skills necessary for competition in the future. The study combines the methodology of designing scenarios with the methodology of defining competencies by a transition from future scenarios to skills, based on product scenarios. Product scenarios indicate concrete alternative future products that are key sources for identifying future skills. The approach has been applied to the security equipment sector in Turkey. The product, closed circuit television (CCTV) system is chosen to illustrate the process.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Under Uncertainty: A Literature Review and Tutorial

The multidimensional nature of risks as well as substantial uncertainties and subjectivities inherent in the risk assessment process led a growing number of researchers to develop alternative approaches for failure mode and effects analysis. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of the multi-criteria approaches proposed for failure mode and effects analysis under uncertainty and offer a brief tutorial for those who are interested in these approaches.

A new approach to DEMATEL based on interval-valued hesitant fuzzy sets

Abstract Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory is a widely used method to analyze and visualize the structure of complex systems through matrices and digraphs. The method typically requires dealing with substantial uncertainties and subjectivities inherent in the judgment process. A review of the literature shows that several extensions of DEMATEL have been suggested so far dealing with a variety of sources of uncertainty. However, the uncertainty originating from the human doubt that might arise in the assignment of membership degrees during the assessments is partly or entirely ignored in these studies. To address this problem, this study proposes a new interval-valued hesitant fuzzy approach to DEMATEL, which has the ability to explicitly deal with hesitancy in expert assessments and offer a better representation of uncertainty. To justify the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed approach, an illustrative example is provided where the proposed approach is compared to the classical crisp and fuzzy DEMATEL approaches.

An Introduction to Self-Organizing Maps

As a special class of artificial neural networks the Self Organizing Map is used extensively as a clustering and visualization technique in exploratory data analysis. This chapter provides a general introduction to the structure, algorithm and quality of Self Organizing Maps and presents industrial engineering related applications reported in the literature.

A Systematic Approach to the Analysis of Barriers and Drivers of the ESCO Market in Turkey

This chapter suggests a new systematic approach to analyze the barriers and drivers of energy service contracting. In order to identify the key barriers, the proposed approach examines both direct and indirect causal relationships among barriers and allows a systematic analysis of the actors’ roles in influencing the market’s development. To justify the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach, a case is provided where the energy service contracting market in Turkey is examined.