Marketing capabilities such as advertising and distribution, in the past, were considered as an intermediate level marketing activities but our focus in this study is on higher potentials of marketing, innovation and branding. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of marketing capabilities on the market of small and medium enterprises in the province of Isfahan, Iran. The research consisted of small and medium enterprises in the industrial towns of the province of Esfahan using random sampling technique to gather the necessary data. Out of the 62 industrial parks and industrial zones in the province, there were 4,326 industrial units, which were active and the study distributes 384 questionnaires and managed to collect 308 properly filled ones. Using some statistical tests, the study has confirmed that innovation and branding influence positively on SMEs in this province.

This paper presents an empirical investigation on urban planning and development of a region located between Galugah to Noor in province of Sari located in north region of Iran. The study uses structural-functional approach as a strategic method for organizing space, at different levels and scales. To examine the descriptive analysis of demographic, social and physical environmental variables are studied. The validity of the models are accomplished using various techniques such as the Shannon entropy, Holdern, standardized scores, Williamson, HDI, and Spearman correlation coefficients. The results indicate that there was a weak correlation between HDI index and population of different regions. The study presents some useful comments and suggestions for development of the city.

Accrual accounting is a technique for recognizing expenses when incurred and revenue when earned rather than when payment is made or received. In the cash method of accounting, on the other hand, cash receipts and disbursements technique of accounting or cash accounting records revenue when cash is earned, and expenses when they are paid in cash. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to study the effect of implementing accrual accounting in municipality of Amol, Iran. The survey investigates whether or not financial reporting based on accrual accounting compared with a cash basis could provide a better method for promoting accountability. Using, regression analysis, the study compares the performance of accrual accounting versus cash accounting and the results have indicated that accrual accounting could improve the performance of accounting in municipality system. In addition, the study has examined whether or not converting cash to accrual accounting basis in municipalities could improve qualitative characteristics of accounting information. To examine this hypothesis, the study has designed a questionnaire in Likert scale to measure the quality of information and, using some statistical tests, the survey has concluded accrual accounting indeed provided better quality characteristics information.

Accidents and unpredictable diseases in different parts of the world, especially in big cities influence many lives. Most of the accidents and/or sudden diseases require quick aid due to its relation to people’s life, and the least time might affect the result of the aid significantly. It is noteworthy that finding the appropriate solution is under influence of considering the financial and treatment limitations. Integration of decision making in relief logistics leads to establish a better condition. Also, with regards to the unpredictability of relief demand, uncertain conditions should be investigated in a more appropriate way of planning process. This paper investigates a comprehensive and multi-level emergency Location allocation routing emergency problem under uncertain conditions with stable response to the different situations. In the presented model, the demand is defined by the emergency stations in order to represent the actual situations in real world. On the other hand, by the increase in the rate of providing services by the ambulances, the length of the queue will decrease and the costs will reduce due to the increase in the efficiency of the ambulances. A simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is developed to solve the problem. The obtained results show that the proposed algorithm has good performance. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is done to consider the effect of different values and uncertainty taken by parameters in real world.

This paper presents an empirical investigation on the effect of product market competition on transactions with related parties and company performance. The study selects a sample of 250 randomly selected firms whose common shares were traded on Tehran Stock Exchange. The study uses Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure the market concentration and uses historical information over the period 2008-2012 to examine the hypotheses of the survey. Using simple regression analysis, the study has detected a positive relationship between HHI and related party transactions. In addition, the study has detected a negative relationship between competition and company performance measured by return on assets.

Tourism plays essential role in today’s economy and Iran has good position of tourism sources such as natural, historical, cultural, etc., although, these sources have not been utilized, properly. One of regions which have many potentiality and capabilities for developing Tourism in natural aspect is district and city of Galugah. The purpose of this study is to provide strategic assessment and optimization strategies for development of tourism industry to reach sustainable tourism development in this city. The study uses three techniques namely; Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) to determine necessary guidelines for development of tourism in the city of Galugah, Iran. The study first uses SWOT to categorize different factors and then QSPM is applied to prioritize various factors. The results of this study show that presenting methods in initial process and analyzing assessment matrix of T2 external and internal factors i.e. pollution of environment and river and extinction of plants species by result of pollution and O2 i.e. suitable climate for developing natural Tourism efforts in summer have been recognized as most priority factors among external factors. Intense cold of region in summer (W3) and existence of unique amusement places (S5) such as Amarg were recognized as effective and most priority factors among internal factors on Tourism development of Galugah city.

Enterprise architecture procedure contains some instructions for conversion of enterprise architecture from the current state to the desirable state. This procedure generally contains 3 phases each of which is the basis and prerequisite of the next phase. These phases are: Strategic information technology planning, enterprise architecture planning and enterprise architecture execution. As each phase is a prerequisite of the next one, any fault in each phase causes bigger faults in final results. Therefore, each phase should be double checked to make sure no fault has occurred. The second phase can greatly influence the final results. Therefore the preparation of an executable enterprise architecture model and checking it with functional and non-functional requirements can prevent many faults and lead to execution of a perfect model of the enterprise. The primary objective of this research is to check the accuracy of EA behavior in achieving an appropriate architecture. In this research, official models have been used to propose a solution to transform the products of C4ISR framework to executable Petri nets. Finally, a method is proposed to check the accuracy of the mentioned model. The proposed solution makes the EA semi-automatically check the correctness of the enterprise architecture behavior and increase its accuracy.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the state of the art on models and methods for reliability optimization problems (ROPs) including reliability allocation, redundancy allocation and reliability-redundancy allocation. There are literally few surveys for reviewing the literature of the ROPs. Tillman et al. (1980) classified the related papers by system structure, problem type, and solution methods, separately. In another work, Tzafestas (1980) reviewed system reliability optimization models and the optimization techniques. Yearout (1986) reviewed the literature related to standby redundancy. Kuo (2000) studied the system reliability optimization based on system structure and solution methods. Kuo and Prasad (2004) overviewed system reliability optimization methods. Later, Kuo (2007) reviewed recent advances in optimal reliability allocation problems. The present study adds to the previous literature surveys and focuses mainly on papers after year 2000 but with a quick review on the previous works so that the readers become familiar with the existing approaches. This research investigates the literature from system structure, system performance, uncertainty state and solution approach standpoints, simultaneously.

The present study endeavors to show an application of the multi objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis (MOORA) method and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method to select optimal process parameters in sheet hydroforming process. The right choice of the process parameters is critical to produce a final part with proper quality. In order to meet this characteristic, the important properties are the cup final thickness (FT), required forming force (FF) and radial stress (RS) at cup wall region. Nine alternatives for selecting the process parameters were taken into consideration based on Taguchi L9 orthogonal array. The limit drawing ratio (LDR), maximum pressure and prebulge pressure were selected as input variables. To solve the problem of process parameters’ selection, the two mentioned methods were used. A compromised weighting approach composed of Entropy and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methods were used to weight all criteria. The alternatives ranking were performed using MOORA and TOPSIS methods and then the results were compared. The results achieved in both of the assessment represent that the alternative number 3, leads to the best multi performance features of the process among the 9 experiments. In this experiment LDR is 1.81, maximum pressure and prebulge pressure are 37 MPa and 15 MPa, respectively.

This paper introduces a new comprehensive four-parameter distribution called the modified generalized linear failure rate (MGLFR) distribution. The method generalizes some well-known and most commonly used distributions in reliability such as exponential, Rayleigh, linear failure rate, generalized linear failure rate and modified Weibull distribution. The study also investigates some essential properties of this new distribution and considers the problem of the evaluation of system reliability by describing the lifetimes of components based on a fuzzy MGLFR distribution and by developing fuzzy reliability characteristics. The results can be applied to determine the reliability of real objects where parameters of lifetime variable are subject to uncertainty.