Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is widely used to assess the investment criteria where cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is not economically feasible to apply. CBA is generally used where there is a commercial motive whereas CEA is used where service motive is prioritized. Thus, it is mainly applicable to evaluate social projects where the beneficiaries are scattered in any area or the society at l...

Some operations management researchers tackle real-life problems that are not well-defined, and where the focus is on discovery and problem solving, not explanation. In this paper, we suggest that the principles of design science can be used to formalize research on ill-structured operations management problems, such as research addressing the impact of emergent technologies on the performance ...

Residential water demand is a function of several factors, some of which are within the control of water utilities (e.g., price, water restrictions, rebate programs) and some of which are not (e.g., climate and weather, demographic characteristics). In this study of Aurora, Colorado, factors influencing residential water demand are reviewed during a turbulent drought period (2000-2005). Finding...

Parcel delivery is a complex logistic service, as it serves many small or medium-sized customers who may send or receive parcels. Modeling such delivery system needs to integrate two different research areas of hub location and vehicle routing. As it totally depends on the network and the linkage of the nodes, in this paper, some door-to-door service providers are taken into account to provide ...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First we derive theoretically, using appropriate transformation on x(n), the closed-form solution of the nonlinear difference equation x(n+1) = 1/(±1 + x(n)), n ∈ N_0. The form of solution of this equation, however, was first obtained in [10] but through induction principle. Then, with the solution of the above equation at hand, we prove a case ...

Several authors have proposed different methods to find the solution of fully fuzzy linear programming (FFLP) problems. But all the existing methods are based on the assumption that all the fuzzy coefficients and the fuzzy variables are non-negative fuzzy numbers. in this paper a new method is proposed to solve an FFLP problems with arbitrary fuzzy coefficients and arbitrary fuzzy variables, th...

The present work originates from a previous study in which low-cost Real-Time Locating System (RTLS) based on Ultra-Wideband signals was developed and tested both laboratory real industrial environment for assessing its performance determining the best configuration, according to some selected KPIs. Starting future research directions depicted, evolution herein presented is twofold. First, test...