The potentials of the Southern & Eastern European countries in the process of the regionalization of the global supply chains using a q-rung orthopair fuzzy-based integrated decision-making approach

Recent challenges such as COVID 19 and the blockage of the Suez Channel have shown that the global supply chains (GSC) have extremely fragile structures. Hence, the GSCs have started to seek new strategies to be less affected. From this perspective, regionalization of the GSCs may be the best and most practical way to create more strength, well-operating, and robust supply chain systems. When a detailed literature review was performed, two severe and significant gaps were noticed. first is related to the methodological frame. the second gap is also concerned to the criteria used in the previous studies, as it is not clear how these criteria were identified and whether these criteria are suitable to the current real-life decision-making problems. The current paper aims to fill these gaps existing in the literatures. It examines the regionalization potentials of the GSCs and proposes an integrated MCDM framework based on the q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets. Also, it presents updated criteria set that can be commonly accepted. These criteria were identified by performing comprehensive fieldwork with highly experienced professionals with extensive knowledge of the GSCs and a detailed literature review to determine the criteria used in the previous works. The proposed model was applied to evaluate the potential of the southern and eastern European countries to be a manufacturing center for the GSCs. Then, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis performed for validating the proposed MCDM approach approves the proposed model's validity and efficacy by showcasing the close combat among the European countries.

Evaluation of government strategies against COVID-19 pandemic using q-rung orthopair fuzzy TOPSIS method.

The COVID-19 outbreak, which emerged in China and continues to spread rapidly all over the world, has brought with it increasing numbers of cases and deaths. Governments have suffered serious damage and losses not only in the field of health but also in many other fields. This has directed governments to adopt and implement various strategies in their communities. However, only a few countries succeed partially from the strategies implemented while other countries have failed. In this context, it is necessary to identify the most important strategy that should be implemented by governments. A decision problem based on the decisions of many experts, with some contradictory and multiple criteria, should be taken into account in order to evaluate the multiple strategies implemented by various governments. In this study, this decision process is considered as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem that also takes into account uncertainty. For this purpose, q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets (q-ROFSs) are used to allow decision-makers to their assessments in a wider space and to better deal with ambiguous information. Accordingly, two different Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approaches are recommended under the q-ROFS environment and applied to determine the most appropriate strategy. The results of the proposed approaches determine the A1 - Mandatory quarantine and strict isolation strategy as the best strategy. Comparisons with other q-rung orthopair fuzzy MCDM methods and intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS method are also presented for the validation of the proposed methods. Besides, sensitivity analyses are conducted to check the robustness of the proposed approaches and to observe the effect of the change in the q parameter.