Suchergebnisse

Today, business organizations are facing increasing pressure from a variety of sources to operate using sustainable processes. Thus, most companies need to focus on their supply chains to enhance sustainability to meet customer demands and comply with environmental legislation. To achieve these goals, companies must focus on criteria that include CO2 (carbon footprint) and toxic emissions, energy use and efficiency, wastage generations, and worker health and safety. As in other industries, the food processing industry requires large inputs of resources, which results in several negative environmental effects ; thus, decision-makers have to evaluate qualitative and quantitative factors. This work identifies the best supplier for edible oil production in the small and medium enterprise (SME) food processing industry in Vietnam. This study also processes a hybrid multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) model using a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and green data envelopment analysis (GDEA) model to identify the weight of all criteria of a supplier's selection process based on opinions from company procurement experts. Subsequently, GDEA is applied to rank all potential supplier lists. The primary objective of this work is to present a novel approach which integrates FAHP and DEA for supplier selection and also consider the green issue in edible oil production in uncertain environments. The aim of this research is also to provide a useful guideline for supplier selection based on qualitative and quantitative factors to improve the efficiency of supplier selection in the food industry and other industries. The results reveal that Decision-Making Unit 1 (DMU 1), DMU 3, DMU 7, and DMU 9 are identified as extremely efficient for five DEA models, which are the optimal suppliers for edible oil production. The contributions of this research include a proposed MCDM model using a hybrid FAHP and GDEA model for supplier selection in the SME food processing industry under a fuzzy environment conditions in Vietnam. This research also is part of an evolution of a new hybrid model that is flexible and practical for decision-makers. In addition, the research also provides a useful guideline in supplier selection in the food processing industry and a guideline for supplier selection in other industries.

Satellite observations of Amazon forests show seasonal and interannual variations, but the underlying biological processes remain debated. Here we combined radiative transfer models (RTMs) with field observations of Amazon forest leaf and canopy characteristics to test three hypotheses for satellite-observed canopy reflectance seasonality: seasonal changes in leaf area index, in canopy-surface leafless crown fraction and/or in leaf demography. Canopy RTMs (PROSAIL and FLiES), driven by these three factors combined, simulated satellite-observed seasonal patterns well, explaining c. 70% of the variability in a key reflectance-based vegetation index (MAIAC EVI, which removes artifacts that would otherwise arise from clouds/aerosols and sun–sensor geometry). Leaf area index, leafless crown fraction and leaf demography independently accounted for 1, 33 and 66% of FLiES-simulated EVI seasonality, respectively. These factors also strongly influenced modeled near-infrared (NIR) reflectance, explaining why both modeled and observed EVI, which is especially sensitive to NIR, captures canopy seasonal dynamics well. Our improved analysis of canopy-scale biophysics rules out satellite artifacts as significant causes of satellite-observed seasonal patterns at this site, implying that aggregated phenology explains the larger scale remotely observed patterns. This work significantly reconciles current controversies about satellite-detected Amazon phenology, and improves our use of satellite observations to study climate–phenology relationships in the tropics. No claim to original US Government works New Phytologist © 2017 New Phytologist Trust