Over time, the number of unexpected earthy, oceanic and atmospheric events is rising each year. Hence, disaster management is considered as one of the most important scientific and practical issues in developed and developing countries. Therefore, in this study, we review and develop the problem of locating the emergency units with constraints including the number of available ambulances, limited budget for deployment of ambulances and the minimum acceptable level of covering. The proposed model improves the spatial queuing model (SQM) and Maximal Covering Location Problem (MCLP) by considering the cost of the deployment of the emergency units, which makes it closer to real-world conditions. Because the proposed model is NP-hard, the model is solved using three heuristics including Simulated Annealing (SA), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a hybrid of both. The preliminary results indicate that the hybrid method had better performance to achieve the optimal or close to optimal solution.

Selection of suitable weapon for armed forces is one of the most complex decisions, which must be taken by martial administrators. The procedure of decision making on weapon selection is integrated with various criteria, which are often in conflict. This paper presents a multi criteria decision making problem based on the implementation of ELECTRE III technique. The proposed model compares all acceptable choices based on a systematic and sophisticated procedure and provides some efficient solutions. The implementation of the proposed model is demonstrated for an infantry rifle selection. The proposed model, first, determines acceptable choices and criteria through Simos method and then it uses ELECTRE III to rank various alternatives. The result of the application of the proposed model for a real-world case study of choosing an infantry rifle indicates its effectiveness.

Product mix problem is one of the most important decisions made in production systems. Several algorithms have been developed to determine the product mix. Most of the previous works assume that all resources can perform, simultaneously and independently, which may lead to infeasibility of the schedule. In this paper, product mix problem and scheduling are considered, simultaneously. A new mixed-integer programming (MIP) model is proposed to formulate this problem. The proposed model differentiates between process batch size and transfer batch size. Therefore, it is possible to have overlapped operations. The numerical example is used to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed model. In addition, the proposed model is examined using some instances previously cited in the literature. The preliminary computational results show that the proposed model can generate higher performance than conventional product mix model.

Reviewing the evolutionary trend of the models used in design and development of mechatronic products reveals the necessity for integration of the design characteristics and requirements in various engineering fields. Such products should agilely embrace rapid, persistent and complex requirements in competitive environments. This research aims to develop an integrated model for designing and developing mechatronic products within the context of agile production system. The study tries to eliminate unnecessary stages of design and simulation of products and increase the number of tested ideas. This suggests a distinction between product innovation and product improvement cycles and thus makes employing a pre-active approach to responding possible. Since the term “mechatronic products” is often used interchangeably with “robots”, one of the most commonly used types of them, i.e. tracer robot is considered as the statistical population for the proposed study. By choosing experimental (laboratory) research method, two categories of tracer robots are created: the tracer robots based on the V-model as the only integrated existing model and the robots based on the W-model as the model proposed by this study with a sample size of 35 sets in each group. The results indicate that both method provide acceptable validity although one model seems to perform better than the other one.

In this paper, we study no-wait flow shop problem where setup times depend on sequence of operations. The proposed problem considers sequence-independent removal times, release date with an additional assumption that there are some preliminary setup times. There are two objectives of weighted mean tardiness and makespan associated with the proposed model of this paper. We formulate the resulted problem as a mixed integer programming, where a two-phase fuzzy programming is implemented to solve the model. To examine the performance of the proposed model, we generate several sample data, randomly and compare the results with other methods. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed two-phase model of this paper performed relatively better than Zimmerman & apos; s single-phase fuzzy method.

This paper considers an economic lot and delivery scheduling problem (ELDSP) in a fuzzy environment with the fuzzy shelf life for each product. This problem is formulated in a flexible job shop with unrelated parallel machines, when the planning horizon is finite and it determines lot sizing, scheduling and sequencing, simultaneously. The proposed model of this paper is based on the basic period (BP) approach. In this paper, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is presented and then it is changed into two models in the fuzzy shelf life. The main model is dependent to the multiple basic periods and it is difficult to solve the resulted proposed model for large-scale problems in reasonable amount of time; thus, an efficient heuristic method is proposed to solve the problem. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated using some numerical examples.

The increase competition and decline economy has increased the relevant importance of having reliable supply chain. The primary objective of many supply chain problems is to reduce the cost of services and, at the same time, to increase the quality of services. In this paper, we present a multi-level supply chain network by considering multi products, single resource and deterministic cost and demand. The proposed model of this paper is formulated as a mixed integer programming and we present two metaheuristics namely MOPSO and NSGA-II to solve the resulted problems. The performance of the proposed models of this paper has been examined using some randomly generated numbers and the results are discussed. The preliminary results indicate that while MOPSO is able to generate more Pareto solutions in relatively less amount of time, NSGA-II is capable of providing better quality results.

In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to measure the effects of intellectual capital using Maxwell model [Maxwell, J. C. (2003). Thinking for a change: 11 ways highly successful people approach life and work. Faith Words]. The proposed model of this survey designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 64 managers in an Iranian switch organization called ABFA. The main hypothesis of this survey studies whether the managers have beautiful mind in their work or not. There are 11 sub-hypotheses in this survey based on Maxwell model and the results of this survey conclude that “Sharing the ideas” index maintains the highest rate of importance and “being detailed oriented” maintains the lowest rate of importance.

During the past few years, there have been extensive developments on Islamic Azad University, which has led on reduction of managerial flexibility. Therefore, these organizations concentrate on their strategic management via usage of the Balanced Model such as Balanced Score Card (BSC) to consider different organizational perspectives and it is important to have good description of organizational strategies and goals. The strategy map is a primary factor to assess the performance in different organizational activities. In this paper, the performance evaluation system of Islamic Azad University of Semnan is designed by the utilization of strategy map as a prominent part of BSC.

Information asymmetry arises when one of the parties to the contract or transaction, possesses more information than the other, provided that the former uses such information effectively when communicating with the latter. The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of information asymmetry on the value of companies. Two techniques i.e. standard deviations of returns (STDRET) and turnover (TURNOVER) were used to determine information asymmetry while the Tobin’s Q was employed to determine companies’ value. The population under study was all the listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange, of which a total of 72 companies were chosen as the research sample and were studied over the period 2004-2009. Panel analysis technique was used in this study to analyze the collected data. The results of the study indicate information asymmetry affect the value of the companies.