New Integrated Quality Function Deployment Approach Based on Interval Neutrosophic Set for Green Supplier Evaluation and Selection

Luu Huu Van, Vincent F. Yu, Luu Quoc Dat, Canh Chi Dung, Shuo-Yan Chou, Nguyen Viet Loc

Sustainability 2018, 10(3), 838

Green supplier evaluation and selection plays a crucial role in the green supply chain management of any organization to reduce the purchasing cost of materials and increase the flexibility and quality of products. An interval neutrosophic set (INS)—which is a generalization of fuzzy sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFS) and neutrosophic sets (NS)—can better handle the incomplete, indeterminate and inconsistent information than the other sets. This paper proposes a new integrated Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in support of the green supplier evaluation and selection process. In the proposed approach, INS is used to assess the relative importance of the characteristics that the purchased product should have (internal variables “WHATs”) in order to satisfy the company’s needs, the relevant supplier assessment criteria (external variables “HOWs”), the “HOWs”-“WHATs” correlation scores, the resulting weights of the “HOWs” and the impact of each potential supplier. The normalized weighted rating is then defined and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is developed to obtain a final ranking of green suppliers. A case study is applied to demonstrate the efficiency and computational procedure of the proposed method.

Interval Complex Neutrosophic Set: Formulation and Applications in Decision-Making

Mumtaz Ali, Luu Quoc Dat, Le Hoang Son & Florentin Smarandache

International Journal of Fuzzy Systems 20, 986–999 (2018)

Neutrosophic set is a powerful general formal framework which generalizes the concepts of classic set, fuzzy set, interval-valued fuzzy set, intuitionistic fuzzy set, etc. Recent studies have developed systems with complex fuzzy sets, for better designing and modeling real-life applications. The single-valued complex neutrosophic set, which is an extended form of the single-valued complex fuzzy set and of the single-valued complex intuitionistic fuzzy set, presents difficulties to defining a crisp neutrosophic membership degree as in the single-valued neutrosophic set. Therefore, in this paper we propose a new notion, called interval complex neutrosophic set (ICNS), and examine its characteristics. Firstly, we define several set theoretic operations of ICNS, such as union, intersection and complement, and afterward the operational rules. Next, a decision-making procedure in ICNS and its applications to a green supplier selection are investigated. Numerical examples based on real dataset of Thuan Yen JSC, which is a small-size trading service and transportation company, illustrate the efficiency and the applicability of our approach.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40815-017-0380-4

Economic and non-economic determinants of FDI inflows in Vietnam: a sub-national analysis

Ngô Vi Dũng, Đào Thị BíchThủy & Nguyễn NgọcThắng

Post-Communist Economies 30(5), 693-712 (2018)

This article focuses on identifying the factors that determine FDI inflows at the sub-national level (i.e. provinces/cities) in Vietnam. Based on a longitudinal dataset for the period 2008–2013 of 63 provinces/cities, we examine the impact on FDI of conventional factors (market size, human resources and infrastructures) as well as emerging factors (institutions and policies, domestic and foreign agglomeration) that are suggested by theories in economics and international business. Statistical results show that market size, infrastructure, labour quality, institutions and policies, and agglomeration are major determinants of FDI inflows at the sub-national level in Vietnam. Implications for policy makers and future research are also discussed.