The bullwhip effect leads to considerable inefficiencies along the food supply chain such as missed production schedules, poor customer service, excessive inventory, and misguided capacity plans. To tackle this problem, it is necessary, apart from other interventions, to continuously monitor the performance of food suppliers so that the demand information flow, order batching, transportation planning, and inventory management can be substantially improved. Therefore, supplier assessment has then become critical decision‐making support for identifying and addressing inefficiencies of food providers, which ends up reducing the variation of several key logistics parameters for upstream members of the food supply chain. In addition, such assessment is of multicriteria nature given the presence of several criteria from different domains and various food suppliers. With these considerations in mind, this paper proposes a hybrid approach integrating the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) for evaluating the performance of pork suppliers. Thereby, the economic and operational burden caused by the bullwhip effect throughout the pork supply chain can be alleviated. AHP was first used to determine the criteria and subcriteria weights. Then DEMATEL was applied to assess the interdependence and feedback between the decision elements. Finally, TOPSIS was implemented to discriminate between high‐performance and low‐performance pork suppliers. A case study from the Colombian pork supply chain is presented to validate the proposed approach. The results of this study evidenced that the most important criterion was the “service level” and the most influencing factor was the “financial profile.” In addition, based on the supplier assessment results, improvement plans, and new negotiation, strategies were established for each supplier in order to diminish the bullwhip effect along the pork supply chain.

Product design has become a critical process for the healthcare technology industry, given the ever-changing demands, vague customer requirements, and interrelations among design criteria. This paper proposed a novel integration of fuzzy Kano, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to translate customer needs into product characteristics and prioritize design alternatives considering interdependence and vagueness. First, the customer requirements were established. Second, the fuzzy KANO was applied to calculate the impact of each requirement, often vague, on customer satisfaction. Third, design alternatives were defined, while the requirements’ weights were calculated using AHP. DEMATEL was later implemented for evaluating the interdependence among alternatives. Finally, QFD was employed to select the best design. A hip replacement surgery aid device for elderly people was used for validation. In this case, collateral issues were the most important requirement, while code change was the best-ranked design.

The most commonly used techniques for addressing each Emergency Department (ED) problem (overcrowding, prolonged waiting time, extended length of stay, excessive patient flow time, and high left-without-being-seen (LWBS) rates) were specified to provide healthcare managers and researchers with a useful framework for effectively solving these operational deficiencies. Finally, we identified the existing research tendencies and highlighted opportunities for future work. We implemented the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology to undertake a review including scholarly articles published between April 1993 and October 2019. The selected papers were categorized considering the leading ED problems and publication year. Two hundred and three (203) papers distributed in 120 journals were found to meet the inclusion criteria. Furthermore, computer simulation and lean manufacturing were concluded to be the most prominent approaches for addressing the leading operational problems in EDs. In future interventions, ED administrators and researchers are widely advised to combine Operations Research (OR) methods, quality-based techniques, and data-driven approaches for upgrading the performance of EDs. On a different tack, more interventions are required for tackling overcrowding and high left-without-being-seen rates.

Purpose: The risk of adverse events in a hospital evaluation is an important process in healthcare management. It involves several technical, social, and economical aspects. The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated approach to evaluate the risk of adverse events in the hospital sector. Design/methodology/approach: This paper aims to provide a decision-making framework to evaluate hospital service. Three well-known methods are applied. More specifically are proposed the following methods: analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions, based on mathematics and psychology developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s; decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to construct interrelations between criteria/factors and VIKOR method, a commonly used multiple-criteria decision analysis technique for determining a compromise solution and improving the quality of decision making. Findings: The example provided has demonstrated that the proposed approach is an effective and useful tool to assess the risk of adverse events in the hospital sector. The results could help the hospital identify its high performance level and take appropriate measures in advance to prevent adverse events. The authors can conclude that the promising results obtained in applying the AHP–DEMATEL–VIKOR method suggest that the hybrid method can be used to create decision aids that it simplifies the shared decision-making process. Originality/value: This paper presents a novel approach based on the integration of AHP, DEMATEL and VIKOR methods. The final aim is to propose a robust methodology to overcome disadvantages associated with each method.