No abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of two general purpose decision‐making techniques in selecting the most appropriate maintenance strategy for organizations with critical production requirements.Design/methodology/approachThe Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and the Analytical Network Process (ANP) are used for the selection of the most appropriate maintenance strategy in a local newspaper printing facility in Turkey.FindingsThe two methods were shown to be effective in choosing a strategy for maintaining the printing machines. The two methods resulted in almost the same results. Both methods take into account the specific requirements of the organization through its own available expertise.Practical implicationsThe techniques demonstrated in this paper can be used by all types of organizations for selecting and adopting maintenance strategies that have higher impact on maintenance performance and hence overall business productivity. The two methods are explained in a step‐by‐step approach for easier adaptation by practitioners in all types of organizations.Originality/valueThe value of the paper is in applying AHP and ANP decision‐making methodologies in maintenance strategy selection. These two methods are not very common in the area of maintenance, and hence add to the pool of techniques utilized in selecting maintenance strategies.

No abstract

No abstract

Purpose -Previous researches have proven that customer satisfaction and loyalty are affected by complicated relationships and are challenging to European customer satisfaction index (ECSI) model. Existing approaches mostly limit their hypotheses to linear relationships, which hinder much information that would lead to better modeling and understanding the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to reveal potential nonlinear and interaction effects that might be embedded in antecedents of ECSI by exemplifying it in Turkish telecommunications sector. Design/methodology/approach -This papar has justified the validity and reliability of the ECSI model implementation in Turk Telekom Company. The path models are tested via conventional structural equation modeling (SEM) and using a novel method, i.e. universal structure modeling with Bayesian neural networks. Findings -The findings of this study reveal that quality has the most important impact on customer satisfaction. The next important construct was found to be the company image. The relationship between customer expectation and customer satisfaction was revealed to be insignificant. This study reveals the fact that while using the ECSI model more attention must be paid to the consideration of potential nonlinear relationships that might be available among model constructs. Originality/value -This research presents uniqueness in that it reveals significant nonlinear relationships between the model constructs of the ECSI model. Previous studies have identified purely linear relationships, which may not hold true in reality. However, in this study it is revealed that improving one determinant of customer satisfaction may not be as worthy as it is assumed to be in theory, which refers to a nonlinear relationship.