Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Modelling in Management, Volume 8, Issue 1

Here we are, time really goes by so fast. This is the first issue of the eighth year of publication of JM2. It has been a long and difficult path that we have together pursued, but the signs are reassuring, positive and bright for the future. The areas of research submitted to the journal are becoming more diversified and overall submissions are on the increase. We are also scheduling a number of very challenging special issues. This first issue of 2013 also contains an interesting and diversified content.

The purpose of the article by Shamsuzzoha et al. is to demonstrate the modularity degree in terms of interfaces and innovation. The research objective is achieved through a modeling approach for deciding modular architecture and its implementation issues on unique components and product innovation. A case example is presented to elaborate on the concept of modularity degree and provide an option for choosing the best module among alternatives. The presented approach can be considered as a product design strategy in which loose coupling is achieved through standardized component interfaces. This loosely coupled component interfacing is the prerequisite for developing mass customized products. In the industrial area, there is a research gap in identifying and measuring the modularity level, which is formulated in the presented approach.

Risk management is important to many fields of management decision and control. The key issues in current supply chain management are the formation of the supply chain and its efficient coordination with objectives of customer satisfaction and sustaining competency. To that end, SCM has to identify,evaluate, rank, and manage the supply chain risks. Soni and Kodali proposes a two-phase methodology to assessing the risk associated with selection of global facility location and its configuration of supply chain. The empirical results by PROMETHEE (phase-I) show that it is least risky to locate the manufacturing facility. The supply chain configuration with least risk (phase-II) is obtained by using goal programming. As a result, the proposed methodology can be useful to supply chain managers while evaluating the options for global supply chain in a global scenario with risk under consideration.

Cardin et al.’s paper proposes the Mean-Extended Gini as a workable alternative to classical mean-variance CAPM focusing mainly in the potential gains belonging to the return distribution right-tail. Tibiletti provides evidence that if portfolio distributions are symmetrical and the investor has a moderate risk-gain profile, then the efficient mean-risk portfolio always coincides with the worst inefficient mean-gain portfolio.

Multicriteria analysis addresses difficult decision problems containing competing objectives. Lin investigates the range sensitivity of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and evaluate the effectiveness of using a bottom-up approach to ease the possible range insensitivity bias in the AHP. Lin conducted an experiment to test the four methods: the AHP with bottom-up evaluation,direct ratio weights, swing weights, and trade-off weights. The empirical results show that the range sensitivities of AHP and direct ratio weights are significantly less than those of swing weights and tradeoff weights. This implies that the bottom-up evaluation approach might not be a feasible solution for the range-insensitivity problem.

Prascevic and Prascevic presents one modification of the fuzzy TOPSIS in order to develop a corresponding computer programme that can be used for multi-criteria decision making. The mean contribution of this paper is the way in which the fuzzy decision matrix is derived, as it is expressed by the matrix of generalized expected values and the matrix of generalized variances.

We hope you enjoyed reading some of the striking concepts and notes included in this issue. Hopefully, and we will be trying very hard, the articles accepted by JM2 will continue to increasingly trigger provocative scholarly discussions and debates as important catalytic role for learning and the advancement content of knowledge in management modelling.

All the best to all of you.

Luiz Moutinho, Kun-Huang Huarng, Joaquin Aldes-Manzano