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Nowadays companies have to be environmentally conscious because of the governmental policies on environmental issues, consumer preferences and insufficient resources. Therefore, the multicriteria evaluation of manufacturers according to environmentally consciousness may give important outputs for the government, companies and consumers. This study presents a framework for multicriteria evaluation of manufacturers. Initially the criteria for being an environmentally conscious manufacturer are determined and their importance ranking is maintained by using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP). Subsequently, the most important criteria are chosen and set as input variables for a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) to get output values representing environmentally consciousness scores of manufacturers. The proposed multicriteria evaluation method is experimented with an numerical illustration The results of the numerical illustration implies that, the most important criteria for being an environmentally conscious manufacturer are; life cycle analysis, design for environment, environmentally conscious process planning, recycling and reducing the waste ate the source.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an intelligent mobile based emergency response system (MERS) framework, a text information extraction and aggregation algorithm to integrate information from multiple sources in the MERS system, and an ontology‐supported case‐based reasoning system for the MERS system.Design/methodology/approachThe paper explains the components of information extraction and aggregation process, and a CBR‐Ontology approach for the MERS system.FindingsThe result of this study will offer a new opportunity to the interaction between government, citizens, responders, and other non‐government agencies in emergency situations, and therefore improve the services of the government in an emergency situation.Originality/valueThe paper indicates the need for usage of mobile technologies to assist the government to get information and make decisions in responding to disasters anytime and anywhere.

PurposeThis study aims to develop a decision making model and approach for logistics planning problem which naturally involves two or more decision units at a hierarchical structure. Such a decision problem in practice often involves uncertain and imprecise factors with the parameters of a bilevel decision model, either in the objective functions or constraints.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes a fuzzy bilevel decision making model for a general logistics planning problem and develops a fuzzy number based Kth‐best approach to find an optimal solution for the proposed fuzzy bilevel decision problem.FindingsThe proposed approach illustrates an optimal solution in logistics management, which meets maximally/minimally the objectives of both supplier and distributor (or other parts of the logistics chain). The proposed fuzzy bilevel decision approach can have a wide range of logistics management applications.Research limitations/implicationsThe decision model, approach and system will be further tested for some more complicated real cases in the future.Originality/valueThe proposed fuzzy bilevel decision model and approach are new, which offer theoretical and practice help to logistics management.

PurposeMuch research on knowledge discovery in database (KDD) merely pays attention to data mining, one of many interacting steps in the process of discovering previously unknown and potentially interesting patterns in large databases, but little to the whole process. However, such approaches cannot satisfy the need of real applications of KDD. The purpose of this work is to extend a process model of KDD in practice at large.Design/methodology/approachA new model based on research experiences of the knowledge discovery process is formalized as an extension of the model by Fayyad et al. A case study by a reduct method from rough set theory is to illustrate why the process model is proposed and in what situation it can be used in practice.FindingsThis model incorporates data collection in the KDD process to supply a sound framework to better support KDD applications.Research limitations/implicationsThis model reflects the native of KDD in some tested cases. It may need further research to be used in all other situations.Practical implicationsIt can be used in the area of information security, medical treatment and other information management.Originality/valueUsing this model, one can directly collect data that are essential and useful for the mining results. It also offers practical help to those KDD researchers both from industry and academia.

A supplier selection decision inherently is a multi‐criterion problem. It is a decision of strategic importance to companies. The nature of this decision usually is complex and unstructured. Management science techniques might be helpful tools for these kinds of decision‐making problems. The aim of this paper is to use fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to select the best supplier firm providing the most satisfaction for the criteria determined. The purchasing managers of a white good manufacturer established in Turkey were interviewed and the most important criteria taken into account by the managers while they were selecting their supplier firms were determined by a questionnaire. The fuzzy AHP was used to compare these supplier firms.

Clean energy technologies which include renewable energy, electric vehicles, nuclear power and biofuels focus on ways to boost demand and de­ ployment by societies. Governments in many countries aim to increase the clean energy technologies and oner incentives to increase tendency on that sec­ tor. One of the reasons of these incentives is to prevent the global warming. For example. 30% of global electricity can be produced from wind and solar power in the long tenn, without adding to the total cost of reaching a low-carbon fu­ ture. In this study, we use an integrated Pythagorean fuzzy MCDM method consist of AHP and TOPSIS for the selection of the most appropriate clean en­ ergy7 technology for the Marmara Region.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for describing and evaluating the representativeness of a small set of search results extracted from the original results: this is deemed desirable in information retrieval in enterprise information systems.Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposes a combined measure, namely RFβ, to evaluate the extracted small set in terms of the notions of coverage and redundancy. Data experiments were conducted on three different extraction strategies to evaluate the representativeness, i.e. coverage and redundancy.FindingsBoth from intuitive and experimental perspectives, the proposed coverage measure, redundancy measure and RFβ measure could effectively evaluate the representativeness.Research limitations/implicationsThe search results, e.g. in the form of documents and texts, are modeled using a vector space model and cosine similarity. Semantic models and linguistic models could be further introduced into this research to improve the proposed measures.Practical implicationsWith the rapidly growing need for information retrieval in enterprise information systems, the representativeness of search results become more desirable and important for search engine users. The well‐designed representativeness measures will help them achieve satisfactory results.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper lies in the definition of representativeness of a small set of search results extracted from the original results. This focuses on the two aspects of coverage rate and redundancy rate both from intuitive and experimental perspectives.

PurposeTo reveal and analyze the key issues concerning information systems management in Mainland China.Design/methodology/approachBased on data collected from 286 Chinese companies, 12 top key issues in information systems management in Mainland China are ranked and compared with the results of an earlier study, as well as those from western countries.FindingsWhile the top three critical issues remain unchanged, largely due to the centralized decision‐making mechanism, mandatory management style, and less experience of IT/IS applications, there are distinguishable changes that took place in the past few years. Furthermore, there are different results between different sectors of companies, reflecting respective characteristics and historical development processes of the sectors.Research limitations/implicationsExtended data and measures are required for in‐depth investigation in specific individual industries.Practical implicationsThe study could be helpful for understanding the situations and challenges in information systems management in China and planning IT/IS strategies accordingly.Originality/valueThe paper offers practical help for managers to better understand the IT/IS application context in China. Meanwhile, researchers interested in IT/IS management in China can use the information provided by this paper to guide their inquiry.

PurposeSignificant productivity improvements have been experienced in business by information technology (IT) implementations in latest decades. However, IT project selection is an important problem because a significant part of IT expenditure is wasted and almost half of IT projects realize no net benefits. Since axiomatic design (AD) has the characteristics of multi‐attribute evaluation, it is proposed for multi‐attribute comparison of information technology systems (ITS).Design/methodology/approachThe comparison of ITS is made for the cases of both complete and incomplete information. The crisp AD approach for complete information and the fuzzy AD approach for incomplete information are developed. The numerical applications of both crisp and fuzzy AD approaches in the comparison of ITS are also given.FindingsThe AD approach takes into account the design range of each criterion, determined by the designer. Thus, the alternative providing the design ranges is selected in AD approach while the alternative meeting the criteria at their best levels is selected in many other methods. This opportunity is not possible when many other existing methods such as AHP, fuzzy AHP, and scoring models are used. The AD approach also differs from many other existing methods from the point of the rejection of an alternative when it does not meet the design range of any criterion.Research limitations/implicationsFor future research, it is suggested that researchers study weighted crisp and fuzzy AD approaches.Originality/valueThis paper is the first which develops the fuzzy AD approach and uses it in the comparison of ITS.