Performance assessment of circular economy for phosphorus chemical firms based on VIKOR-QUALIFLEX method

Abstract

Confronting the dilemma of resource shortage and environmental pollution, the idea of circular economy (CE) has attracted widespread attentions. To address these problems, several industrial companies have incorporated the CE in their operation or design. In this sense, the phosphorus chemical firms (PCFs) are promoting CE to achieve sustainable development goals since phosphorus is a non-renewable resource and one of the nutrient elements essential for crop growth. Thus, this paper aims to find a suitable way to assess the performance of CE for PCFs. Firstly, the evaluation index system of CE is designed according to the characteristics of CE for PCFs. Then, a new framework based on the qualitative flexible (QUALIFLEX) and Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) methods is established to pick out the best enterprise. The linguistic neutrosophic number (LNN) is advised to describe decision making information with linguistic true, hesitant and false membership degree. Moreover, an entropy-based approach is used to determine the index weights, and the VIKOR method is presented to determine the concordance index. After that, all possible permutations are itemized, and the ranking result is obtained according to the general concordance index values of each permutation. Finally, an example of assessing the performance of CE for PCFs in China is given to illustrate the proposed method, and its feasibility is demonstrated. The robustness and advantage of this approach are also indicated with sensitivity and comparison analysis. The results show that the proposed VIKOR-QUALIFLEX method is reliable and stable for assessing the performance of CE for PCFs, and provides references for the construction and management of CE for PCFs.

Proposed Green Development Reporting Framework for Enterprises from a Life-Cycle Perspective and a Case Study in China

“…The performance evaluation of specific GD measures includes the green supply chain [23][24][25], green manufacturing [26], circular economy, etc. [27][28][29]. For specific GD measures, the index system is more targeted.…”

Assessing the Performance of Green Mines via a Hesitant Fuzzy ORESTE–QUALIFLEX Method

“…Besides these, the ideas of other decision-making methods have also been introduced in QUALIFLEX to deal with complex ranking issues. For example, the idea of TOPSIS was recommended to extend QUALIFLEX in [33], the QUALIFLEX was modified with TODIM method to deal with treatment selection issues in [34], and group utility and individual regret in VIKOR were integrated to replace the index in QUALIFLEX in [35].…”

Evaluation of Cleaner Production for Gold Mines Employing a Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach

“…In order to select the appropriate criteria, some principles should be followed, which include the hierarchy principle, independence principle, combination of qualitative and quantitative criteria principle, and data with easy accessibility principle [45]. According to the specific characteristics of CP for gold mines and some existing literature [28,46,47], the evaluation criteria system is established with seven criteria and sixteen sub-criteria. The evaluation criteria system of CP for gold mines is shown in Figure 1, and the detailed descriptions of these criteria are indicated as follows.…”