Software selection for a liner shipping company using fuzzy logic decision making

Abstract

This thesis mainly focuses on selection of software for managing operations ofEMES Shipping and Transportation Company by the evaluations of scripted scenarios,requests for information (RFI), and demonstrations from software companies. EMES Shipping and Transportation Company, which is a member of Arkas HoldingGroup experiences difficulties and delays in reviewing, approving, controlling andreporting operations between Head Quarter and Agencies due to processes that wereoverburdened with manual tasks, e-mail based workflow, and lack of process information. It is a necessity to select software from the market by evaluating them in the terms ofcompany requirements. This process is a critical issue for future growth andcompetitiveness of EMES.Key operations and activities of the company are obtained from department managers and staff. Gathered information is converted to a generalized request forinformation for the evaluation of the companies and their standard software packages. Fivemajor scripted scenarios are prepared to understand how the software packages handle theoperations of software packages. A demo evaluation document prepared for scripted scenarios to evaluate demonstrations.A fuzzy approach is designed to evaluate companies with RFI scores, developmenttime, and purchase cost variables. Finally an evaluation table and fuzzy based comparisonresults are prepared to show most fitting product to company operations and requirements.