The cold chain industry plays a pivotal role in ensuring the quality and safety of temperature-sensitive products throughout their journey from production to consumption. Central to this process is the effective monitoring of temperature fluctuations, which directly impacts product integrity. With an array of temperature monitoring devices available in the market, selecting the most suitable option becomes a critical task for organizations operating within the cold chain. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of seven prominent temperature monitoring devices utilized in the cold chain industry. Through a systematic evaluation process, each device is rigorously assessed across six key criteria groups: price, accuracy, usability, monitoring and reporting capabilities, flexibility, and capability. A total of 23 independent metrics are considered within these criteria, providing a holistic view of each device's performance. Building upon this analysis, a robust decision support model is proposed to facilitate the selection process for organizations. The model integrates the findings from the evaluation, allowing stakeholders to make informed decisions based on their specific requirements and priorities. Notably, the Chemical Time Temperature Integrators (CTTI) emerge as the top-ranked device, demonstrating superior performance across multiple criteria. The implications of this research extend beyond device selection, offering valuable insights for enhancing cold chain efficiency and product quality. By leveraging the decision support model presented in this study, organizations can streamline their temperature monitoring processes, mitigate risks associated with temperature excursions, and ultimately optimize their cold chain operations. This study serves as a foundation for further research in the field of cold chain management, paving the way for advancements in temperature monitoring technology and strategies. Future studies may explore additional criteria or expand the analysis to include a broader range of devices, contributing to ongoing efforts aimed at improving cold chain sustainability and reliability.
In general, a stable and strong system shouldn't have an overly sensitive/dependent response to inputs (unless consciously and planned desired), as this would reduce efficiency. As in other techniques, approaches, and methodologies, if the results are excessively affected when the input parameters change in MCDM methods, this situation is identified with sensitivity analyses. Oversensitivity is generally accepted as a problem in the MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) methodology family, which has more than 200 members according to the current literature. The MCDM family is not just a weight coefficient-sensitive methodology. MCDM types can also be sensitive to many different calculation parameters such as data type, normalization, fundamental equation, threshold value, preference function, etc. Many studies to understand the degree of sensitivity simply monitor whether the ranking position of the best alternative changes. However, this is incomplete for understanding the nature of sensitivity, and more evidence is undoubtedly needed to gain insight into this matter. Observing the holistic change of all alternatives compared to a single alternative provides the researcher with more reliable and generalizing evidence, information, or assumptions about the degree of sensitivity of the system. In this study, we assigned a fixed reference point to measure sensitivity with a more robust approach. Thus, we took the distance to the fixed point as a base reference while observing the changeable MCDM results. We calculated sensitivity to normalization, not just sensitivity to weight coefficients. In addition, past MCDM studies accept existing data as the only criterion in sensitivity analysis and make generalizations easily. To show that the model proposed in this study is not a coincidence, in addition to the graphics card selection problem, an exploratory validation was performed for another problem with a different set of data, alternatives, and criteria. We comparatively measured sensitivity using the relationship between MCDM-based performance and the static reference point. We statistically measured the sensitivity with four types of weighting methods and 7 types of normalization techniques with the PROBID method. The striking result, confirmed by 56 different MCDM ranking findings, was this: In general, if the sensitivity of an MCDM method is high, the relationship of that MCDM method to a fixed reference point is low. On the other hand, if the sensitivity is low, a high correlation with the reference point is produced. In short, uncontrolled hypersensitivity disrupts not only the ranking but also external relations, as expected.
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