Fuzzy Hybrid FMEA for Risk Assessment in Service Industry

Service products are mostly produced and consumed simultaneously through interaction between customer and service providers. To prevent external failures in service operations, it is important to identify potential risks and take relevant actions to eliminate or reduce the occurrence. Therefore, risk assessment is vital to customer satisfaction in any service organization. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is an effective and useful tool for risk assessment. Although FMEA has been extensively studied in the manufacturing literature, there are a limited number of studies considering the application of FMEA in the hospitality industry. In traditional FMEA, the risk priority of failure modes is determined by generating a crisp risk priority number (RPN). However, it has been claimed in the literature that crisp RPN doesn't have a good performance in reflecting real-life situations. To overcome this shortcoming, a fuzzy hybrid FMEA method is developed. The proposed method has been tested on a case study in a five-star hotel to assess its applicability and benefits.

ILLEGAL ACTIVITY OF OFFICIALS OF MILITARY MISSIONS: TYPICAL APPLICATION CIRCUIT FEATURES AND IDENTIFY

The article deals with general issues related to the organization of the work of the military mission, provides normative documents regulating the activities, analyzes the practice of investigating criminal cases committed by officials of military missions, the consequences of their criminal activities, manifested in material damage, damage to the business reputation of the organization, failure to execute state contracts affecting on the defense capability of the country, as well as the issues of detection and forensic support the most common forms of investigation of crimes: giving and receiving bribes, abuse of authority, embezzlement of money by fraudulent means, examples of specific criminal cases investigated by military investigative authorities. The cases described in the article were selected taking into account the specific features of the preliminary investigation of the above crimes. Thus, in one criminal case, operational support was provided, interaction with security forces in the troops was organized, on the other - collection and consolidation of evidence was carried out independently by the investigative body. There is a certain interest in tactical methods used in the conduct of investigative actions, organizational issues and the criminalistic aspect of the preparation of investigative actions and operational activities, the procedure for the appointment and production of forensic examinations of objects submitted for investigation. According to the list of evidence given in the article, it is possible to draw a conclusion about the nature and amount of information to be examined in court sessions, and then put in the basis of sentences passed in criminal cases, and subsequently used in the planning and investigation of criminal cases of similar crimes

Prediction of Financial Vulnerability to Funding Instability

Financial vulnerability of nonprofit organizations arising from governmental funding instability is examined using hazard analysis. Funding instability is characterized by time-at-risk, and vulnerability is expressed by hazard rate measuring the speed of nonprofit organizations closure. The analysis provides estimation of instantaneous probability of a nonprofit organization failure at a given point in time. Drawing on 2,660 Israeli nonprofit organizations, we found that the relationship between hazard rate and time-at-risk has an inverted U–shape curve; hazard rate increases with time-at-risk, reaches a maximum then descends.

Bureaucratic Development and the Structure of Decision-Making in the Meiji Period

One of the most recurrent themes in the descriptions and analyses of political development in Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1912) is the emergence of the genrō as the primary decision and policy-making group. Surprisingly, however, while a great deal has been written by both Japanese and Western scholars concerning the individual members of the genrō, very few attempts have been made to explain the origins of the group and especially the form which it took. A major obstacle to the analysis of this problem appears to be the failure to distinguish clearly between the genrō as an informal collegial decision and policy-making body and membership or participation in the organization. Failure to view membership and organizational structure as two separate aspects of the development of the genrō has had serious consequences for those attempting to explain the place of the genrō in Japanese political development. The emphasis placed on the nine men who are usually designated as the genrō has diverted attention from the more important problem, from the viewpoint of political development, of why the genrō as a decision-making structure emerged at a particular time and took a particular form. Absence of serious concern over the origins of the genrō structure on the part of historians has led them to ignore the question completely or to assign the informal collegial character of the genrō to the general tendency in Japanese society to make decisions through group consensus. The latter is too general an explanation since it does not tell us why consensus in this case should be arrived at through an informal collegial body rather than through some other structural form.

The Organization of Responsibility

Wishes have been the fathers to many thoughts, but wishes alone have never sired an effective international organization. It is only when the desirable and the possible have been brought into some sort of relation with each other that plans for international organization have ever had any chance of succeeding. This statement is of course a truism; anything which succeeds must have been possible. Can one, however, make any statements about the limits of what is possible without waiting for the historical record to complete itself? In the field of international organization failure to undertake this task has resulted in many cruel disappointments, and unfounded optimism has given way to uninformed cynicism. It is therefore of some interest to consider some of the ways in which the stubborn facts of international life condition the range of choice within which men of good will may hope to act successfully.