Optimization and evaluation are essential to the operations of several sectors such as the healthcare sector and the agriculture industry. Improvement of optimizations and evaluation are imperative for industry success and ensures that better services are provided to global consumers across sectors. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Operations Management and Service Evaluation is a critical scholarly publication that focuses on operations management across several sectors and assessment strategies for the improvement of these industries. Featuring a range of topics such as fuzzy logic, ecosystem services, and metaheuristics, this book is ideal for managers, service evaluators, marketers, academicians, business professionals, researchers, practitioners, and students.

Turbulent changes in worldwide economies and decreases in overall quality of life have led to a re-evaluation of the current state of health services. Improvements in this sector will allow for more efficient healthcare delivery to the public, as well as increased patient satisfaction. Effective Methods for Modern Healthcare Service Quality and Evaluation is an authoritative reference source for the latest research on emerging tools and methodologies for the design of healthcare models, providing expert analyses on trouble-shooting specific problems in the industry and creating optimal hospital environments. Highlighting various perspectives across a range of relevant health services, this book is ideally designed for policy makers, researchers, upper-level students, and practitioners.

The pervasiveness of the Internet has had a significant impact on global politics, economics, and culture. To create a truly effective product in such a saturated digital environment, developers must study what has come before and how they can utilize existing tools to even greater effect. Evaluating Websites and Web Services: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on User Satisfaction explores some of the various approaches to the study and assessment of Internet technologies, providing scholars, researchers, developers, and professionals with critical knowledge and an interdisciplinary perspective on e-services in a variety of functional areas, from government and commerce to social media and education.

The customer orientation philosophy of modern business organizations and the implementation of the main principles of continuous improvement, justifies the importance of evaluating and analyzing cust omer satisfaction. In fact, customer satisfaction isconsidere d today as a baseline standard of performance and a possi ble standardo f excellence forany business organization. Extensive research has defined several alternative approaches, which examine the customer satisfaction evaluation prob lem from very different perspectives. These approaches include simple quantitative tools, statistical and data analysis techniques, consumer behavioral models, etc. and adopt the following main prin ciples: * The data of the problem are based on th e customers' judgments and are directly collected from them. * This is a multivariate evaluation problem given that customer's overall satisfac tion depends on a setof variables representing product/service characteristic dimensions. * Usually, an additive formula is used in order to aggregate partial evaluations in ano verall satisfaction measure. Many of the aforementioned approaches don ot consider the qualitative form of customers' judgments, although this information constitutes the main satisfaction input data. Furthermore, insev eral cases , the measurements are not sufficient enough to analyze in detail customer sa tisfaction because models' results are mainly focused on a simple descriptive analysis.

This book provides a broad coverage of the recent advances in robustness analysis in decision aiding, optimization, and analytics. It offers a comprehensive illustration of the challenges that robustness raises in different operations research and management science (OR/MS) contexts and the methodologies proposed from multiple perspectives. Aside from covering recent methodological developments, this volume also features applications of robust techniques in engineering and management, thus illustrating the robustness issues raised in real-world problems and their resolution within advances in OR/MS methodologies. Robustness analysis seeks to address issues by promoting solutions, which are acceptable under a wide set of hypotheses, assumptions and estimates. In OR/MS, robustness has been mostly viewed in the context of optimization under uncertainty. Several scholars, however, have emphasized the multiple facets of robustness analysis in a broader OR/MS perspective that goes beyond the traditional framework, seeking to cover the decision support nature of OR/MS methodologies as well. As new challenges emerge in a "big-data'" era, where the information volume, speed of flow, and complexity increase rapidly, and analytics play a fundamental role for strategic and operational decision-making at a global level, robustness issues such as the ones covered in this book become more relevant than ever for providing sound decision support through more powerful analytic tools.

This book presents the main principles of preference disaggregation analysis and covers theoretical advances in preference modelling, group decision making, classification methods, robustness analysis, process mining, and decision support systems. In addition, it highlights several applications of the preference disaggregation analysis in a wide range of areas, such as customer satisfaction analysis, consumer behavior, energy and environmental policy, strategy development, and agricultural marketing. This book was published in honor of Yannis Siskos on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Piraeus, Greece. It offers a unique snapshot of the preference disaggregation philosophy in multiple criteria decision analysis and presents a range of research ideas, many of which were significantly influenced by Professor Siskos work.

This book gathers a selection of refereed papers presented at the 4th International Symposium and 26th National Conference of the Hellenic Operational Research Society. It highlights recent scientific advances in operational research and management science (OR/MS), with a focus on linking OR/MS with other areas of quantitative methods in a multidisciplinary framework. Topics covered include areas such as business process modeling, supply chain management, organization performance and strategy planning, revenue management, financial applications, production planning, metaheuristics, logistics, inventory systems, and energy systems.

This volume presents a state-of-the-art overview of the rapidly evolving field of agribusiness, highlighting the most current issues, concepts, trends and themes in research, practice and policy. With a particular emphasis on technology, product and process innovation, the authors cover a wide array of topics relating to such issues as research and development, technology transfer and patents and licensing, with particular respect to the roles of academic institutions, private organizations and public agencies in generating and disseminating knowledge. Featuring case studies of innovative initiatives across the industry, this book will appeal to researchers, business leaders, university administrators and policymakers concerned with the multi-faceted implications of this dynamic and controversial sector.

The customer orientation philosophy of modern business organizations and the implementation of the main principles of continuous improvement, justifies the importance of evaluating and analyzing cust omer satisfaction. In fact, customer satisfaction isconsidere d today as a baseline standard of performance and a possi ble standardo f excellence forany business organization. Extensive research has defined several alternative approaches, which examine the customer satisfaction evaluation prob lem from very different perspectives. These approaches include simple quantitative tools, statistical and data analysis techniques, consumer behavioral models, etc. and adopt the following main prin ciples: * The data of the problem are based on th e customers' judgments and are directly collected from them. * This is a multivariate evaluation problem given that customer's overall satisfac tion depends on a setof variables representing product/service characteristic dimensions. * Usually, an additive formula is used in order to aggregate partial evaluations in ano verall satisfaction measure. Many of the aforementioned approaches don ot consider the qualitative form of customers' judgments, although this information constitutes the main satisfaction input data. Furthermore, insev eral cases , the measurements are not sufficient enough to analyze in detail customer sa tisfaction because models' results are mainly focused on a simple descriptive analysis.

This book presents the main principles of preference disaggregation analysis and covers theoretical advances in preference modelling, group decision making, classification methods, robustness analysis, process mining, and decision support systems. In addition, it highlights several applications of the preference disaggregation analysis in a wide range of areas, such as customer satisfaction analysis, consumer behavior, energy and environmental policy, strategy development, and agricultural marketing. This book was published in honor of Yannis Siskos on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Piraeus, Greece. It offers a unique snapshot of the preference disaggregation philosophy in multiple criteria decision analysis and presents a range of research ideas, many of which were significantly influenced by Professor Siskos work.

This book provides a broad coverage of the recent advances in robustness analysis in decision aiding, optimization, and analytics. It offers a comprehensive illustration of the challenges that robustness raises in different operations research and management science (OR/MS) contexts and the methodologies proposed from multiple perspectives. Aside from covering recent methodological developments, this volume also features applications of robust techniques in engineering and management, thus illustrating the robustness issues raised in real-world problems and their resolution within advances in OR/MS methodologies. Robustness analysis seeks to address issues by promoting solutions, which are acceptable under a wide set of hypotheses, assumptions and estimates. In OR/MS, robustness has been mostly viewed in the context of optimization under uncertainty. Several scholars, however, have emphasized the multiple facets of robustness analysis in a broader OR/MS perspective that goes beyond the traditional framework, seeking to cover the decision support nature of OR/MS methodologies as well. As new challenges emerge in a "big-data'" era, where the information volume, speed of flow, and complexity increase rapidly, and analytics play a fundamental role for strategic and operational decision-making at a global level, robustness issues such as the ones covered in this book become more relevant than ever for providing sound decision support through more powerful analytic tools.

This book gathers a selection of refereed papers presented at the 4th International Symposium and 26th National Conference of the Hellenic Operational Research Society. It highlights recent scientific advances in operational research and management science (OR/MS), with a focus on linking OR/MS with other areas of quantitative methods in a multidisciplinary framework. Topics covered include areas such as business process modeling, supply chain management, organization performance and strategy planning, revenue management, financial applications, production planning, metaheuristics, logistics, inventory systems, and energy systems.

Optimization and evaluation are essential to the operations of several sectors such as the healthcare sector and the agriculture industry. Improvement of optimizations and evaluation are imperative for industry success and ensures that better services are provided to global consumers across sectors. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Operations Management and Service Evaluation is a critical scholarly publication that focuses on operations management across several sectors and assessment strategies for the improvement of these industries. Featuring a range of topics such as fuzzy logic, ecosystem services, and metaheuristics, this book is ideal for managers, service evaluators, marketers, academicians, business professionals, researchers, practitioners, and students.