The long term operation and planning of power plant depend upon an effective availability analysis and assessment of various systems in the plant concerned. The plant is expected to remain operational in a continual manner to achieve the desired production targets. Hence, the availability analysis of the boiler air circulation system plays an important role in this direction. For this purpose, the concerned system mathematical model based on Markov Birth-Death process has been developed. The system consists of four subsystems. The transition diagram represents reduced capacity, full working and failed state of the system. The differential equations associated with the transition diagram based on probabilistic approach have been solved recursively in order to develop the system steady state availability. Availability matrices represented measures the performance of the system concerned. In addition, different combinations of failures and repair rates provide various availability levels of the system. Maintenance decisions are taken based upon these values for improving availability of the power plant as well as the power supply. The result shows that the failure of the primary air fan affects the system availability at most, while failure of air heater affect it at least for different failures and repair rate combination of subsystems under study.

Transmission Network Expansion Planning (TNEP) is a basic part of power network planning that determines where, when and how many new transmission lines should be added to the network. So, the TNEP is an optimization problem in which the expansion purposes are optimized. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), Tabu Search (TS) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are methods used for solving the TNEP problem. Today, by using the hybridization models of AI tools, we can solve the TNEP problem for large-scale systems, which shows the effectiveness of utilizing such models. In this paper, a new approach to the hybridization model of Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNNs) and Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) was used to solve the TNEP problem. Finally, by considering the uncertain role of the load based on a scenario technique, this proposed model was tested on the Garver’s 6-bus network.

Formulation and evaluation of strategy play important role in the strategy management. Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats (SWOT) is a famous approach to formulate strategy planning, which relies on external and internal factors. Identifying these factors precisely is very critical for any organization and manager. This study aims at providing a quantitative basis to analytically determine the ranking of the factors in SWOT analysis via Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach. This paper applies SWOT and Richard Rumelt & apos; s criteria to evaluate strategies in Evidential Reasoning approach. The ER approach has been developed to support MADA under uncertainty. It is based on Dempster’s rule for evidence combination and uses belief functions for dealing with probabilistic uncertainty and ignorance. This research is the first study in the ranking the factors of SWOT and Richard Rumelt approach. An illustrative example is also presented to show the efficiency of our model.

Capital structure plays an important role on market growth investigation. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between capital structure as dependent variable and seven independent variables including tax rate, firms & apos; growth rate, fixed assets, firms & apos; size, operating risk, profitability and industry type. The proposed study of this paper uses the financial information of 107 selected companies from 18 different industries listed on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period of 2004-2011 covering 40% of total number of companies listed in this stock exchange. We use ordinary least square technique to study the relationships. The results of the survey indicate that the there is a positive relationship between tax rate and firm & apos; s growth rate, and capital structure. The result of the survey also indicates there is a negative relationship between firm & apos; s profitability and capital structure. However, there is no evidence to believe that there was any relationship between fixed assets and capital structure. We have also concluded that there was a negative relationship between firm & apos; s profitability and capital structure but the results of our survey did not indicate that there was any difference between the mean of profitability in various sectors.

This research investigates the relationship between auditor’s opinion and stock return in the companies listed at Tehran stock exchange market. In this study, all required data are collected from aware shareholders and provide a sampling of 130 questionnaires, the data collected over the period 2010-2011 using test methods such as computer software, data analysis and statistical methods to answer research questions. According to research result through questionnaires and tests, there is a significant relationship between stock returns and the auditor & apos; s opinion, in fact, for aware shareholders of the company the auditor’s opinion has a special message. This message is based on the results of study hypothesis in comparison with previous research with regard to changes in the questionnaire and provides assumptions that are more detailed. The first finding is that unqualified audit report has a positive impact on stock returns of companies with a medium to low degree. Adverse audit report has a negative impact on stock returns of companies with medium to high degree. Disclaimer of audit report has a negative impact on stock returns of companies with medium to high degree. Finally, qualifying paragraphs, which modified the items of income statement items have more impact in comparison with qualifying paragraphs which modified the Balance Sheet items.

During the past few years, there have been different changes in global market due to fast development of science and technology. These changes have increased competition among all existing companies and it has made it difficult for new rivals to gain market share. This paper tries to identify the opportunities and threats of technology transfer in one of world’s fastest growing gas development regions called Pars Special Economic Energy Zone. The proposed model of this paper first identify important factors influencing both opportunities as well as threats and then uses analytical hierarchy process to rank all factors. The results show that the threats were more important than the existing opportunities and among the most important threats, embargo and sales of oil were the most important ones.

This paper presents a supply chain management by considering efficiency in the system. The proposed study considers two objective functions where the first one maximizes the efficiency of the supply chain and the second one minimizes the cost of facility layout as well as production of different products. In order to measure the relative efficiency, the study uses the method developed by Klimberg and Ratick (2008) [Klimberg, R. K., & Ratick, S. J. (2008). Modeling data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficient location/allocation decisions. Computers & Operations Research, 35(2), 457-474.]. The study has been formulated as a mixed integer programming and the implementation of the proposed model has been demonstrated using some numerical example. The preliminary results indicate that it was possible to increase the efficiency of supply chain without increase the supply chain expenses.

For many years, investors used some basic financial ratios to measure the relative performance of various active industries based on two-digit ISIC classification. However, direct implementation of basic financial figures may not be practical in today & apos; s business environment since investors face with different criteria. The proposed model of this paper uses Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to compare 37 various industries based on different financial figures. We gather the necessary data over the period of 2009-2010 from Tehran Stock Exchange and investigate the data in two stages. In the first stage, we perform fundamental analysis to select the most appropriate firms and the in the second stage, we use TOPSIS to rank selected firms based on different criteria. The results of the study confirm that information and communication technology, which is one of the biggest firms in this exchange is considered as the best option (relative ranking 0.88 in two years) followed by some Cement industry (with relative ranking of 0.26 in 2009 and 0.19 in 2010) and oil refinery units (with relative ranking of 0.23 in 2009 and 0.19 in 2010). The figure also shows that other firms maintain low ratios varied from 0.23 to 0.01. The lowest industry ranking belongs to marine industry.

Branding in food industry has been a major concern among food suppliers. During the past few years, there have been strong competitions among business developers to gain market share through increasing the value of their brand. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to learn more about the relationship between brand experiences on consumer purchase experiences. The study selects a sample of 206 people who are regular customers of two well-known suppliers, Shahrvand and Hyperstar, in city of Tehran, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study examines six hypotheses and the results confirm that an increase on brand loyalty, brand attribute, pricing factors, product performance attributes, brand associate and brand position will increase purchasing intention, significantly.

One of the major challenges facing all of individuals and organizations is decision-making based on the information. The issues of priority about cash flows and accruals data in decision-making process for different groups of financial statement users include investors, creditors, shareholders, directors, etc. one of the issues that has been controversial between accrual and cash accounting advocators for a long time. In this study, we survey the role of accruals and operating cash flows in decisions of financial statement users in listed companies on Tehran stock exchange, information content of operating cash flows and accruals in the connection with decision-making criteria used by different groups using financial statement has been examined. In this study, we use eliminating sampling and implied limitations and the sample size includes 203 companies to examine six hypotheses. The results of this research indicate that there is a significant different between accruals and operating cash flows information content in relation to various decision-making criteria but utilizing accruals and operating cash flows supplementary and simultaneously in profit frame depending on the selection criteria may or may not be include information value-added.