Decision Support System for Selection of Project Delivery Method in Transit

A decision support system was developed to help transit agencies evaluate and choose the most appropriate project delivery method for their capital projects. The system considers the traditional design–bid–build, construction manager-at-risk, design–build, and design–build–operate–maintain delivery methods. A set of 24 pertinent issues that can affect the choice of project delivery method are identified and described. The described decision support system consists of two distinct tiers. The first tier is a qualitative assessment in which the decision maker evaluates the effectiveness of each delivery method for dealing with the relevant pertinent issues. This tier will help agencies determine if there is a dominant or obvious choice of project delivery method. If at the end of this stage a clear choice is not evident, the user will move to the second tier, where a weighted matrix is used to score competing alternatives. The system will also provide a structure for documenting the project delivery decision in the form of a project delivery decision report. A validation process for the system is described, and a brief example is provided to show the application of the decision support system

Designing an optimal sustainable supply chain system considering pricing decisions and resilience factors

Nowadays, sustainability has become an integral part of industries and supply chains, which are facing the risk of unpredictable disruptions. Therefore, the capability of the supply chains to thwart the harmful effects of disruptions using preventive and recovery policies cannot be neglected. In this respect, this study addresses bi-level programming to optimize a sustainable supply chain by considering resilience factors and pricing decisions. Moreover, it is defined how the governments can optimize and affect environmental and social responsibility by setting an emissions tax rate. In the developed model, Stackelberg game model is employed while the government is considered as the leader and the manufacturer as the follower. Furthermore, the results of the model are compared with the centralized one indicating that the centralized model will result in a better solution for both the manufacturer and the government. Moreover, the results express that keeping emergency stock strategy always is suggested but considering multiple suppliers and extra reserved capacity are not always preferable for mitigating the adverse effect of disruptions in the investigated case study. For highlighting the efficiency of the proposed model, it has been implemented in a real case, and the managerial insights ensuing from the results of the case study are provided