Ductile failure is investigated experimentally and theoretically in U-notched Al 7075- T6 thin sheets under mixed mode I/II loading. First, several U-notched rectangular sheets are subjected to mixed mode I/II failure tests and the load-carrying capacity of the sheets are experimentally recorded. Then, the Equivalent Material Concept (EMC) is employed in conjunction with the U-notch maximum tangential stress (UMTS) and U-notch mean stress (UMS) criteria to theoretically estimate the load-carrying capacity of the U-notched Al 7075-T6 sheets. It is shown that the experimental failure loads are well predicted by means of both the UMTS-EMC and UMS-EMC criteria. Moreover, the experimental observations and the elastic-plastic finite element analyses indicate that the U-notched aluminum sheets fail by the large-scale yielding (LSY) regime.

This paper presents a survey to identify and rank the supply chain management factors influencing the quality of the products for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in food industry. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 238 randomly selected managers of SMEs in food industry in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.851, which is well above the acceptable level. Using principle component with Varimax rotation, the study has determined four important factors including strategic management, product management, manufacturing process management, organizational resources, customer orientation, industry capacity, which influence the most on product quality improvement.

In recent decays, there has been an extensive improvement in technology and knowledge; hence, human societies have started to fortify their urban environment against the natural disasters in order to diminish the context of vulnerability. Local administrators as well as government officials are thinking about new options for disaster management programs within their territories. Planning to set up local disaster management facilities and stock pre-positioning of relief items can keep an urban area prepared for a natural disaster. In this paper, based on a real-world case study for a municipal district in Tehran, a multi-objective mathematical model is developed for the location-distribution problem. The proposed model considers the role of demand in an urban area, which might be affected by neighbor wards. Integrating decision-making process for a disaster helps to improve a better relief operation during response phase of disaster management cycle. In the proposed approach, a proactive damage estimation method is used to estimate demands for the district based on worst-case scenario of earthquake in Tehran. Since such model is designed for an entire urban district, it is considered to be a large-scale mixed integer problem and hence, a genetic algorithm is developed to solve the model.

Waste collection is an important municipal service that charges large expenditures to waste management (WM) system. In this study, a hierarchical structure is proposed in order to minimize total cost of waste collection routing problem. Moreover, in second stage destructive environmental effects of waste transportation are minimized concurrently through taking advantage of a road/rail transportation system. In the proposed multimodal transportation system, waste packs are transferred to final destination while travel time and risk of environmental threatening is minimized. The discussed problem is formulated mathematically in two stages. In the first stage, a household waste collection routing problem is formulated while, in second stage a multimodal transportation system is routed to transfer waste packs to final destination through roads and railroads. In order to solve the proposed NP hard models, an improved genetic algorithm is developed. Comparison of the obtained results with those of GAMS for small-size samples validates the proposed models.

This paper presents a numerical solution for vibration analysis of cantilevered non-uniform trapezoidal thick plates. Based on the first shear deformation theory, kinetic and strain energies of the plate are derived and using Hamilton's principle, governing equations and boundary conditions are derived. A transformation of coordinates is used to convert the equations and boundary conditions from the original coordinates into a new computational coordinates. Using Differential quadrature method (DQM), natural frequencies and corresponding modes are derived numerically. Convergence and accuracy of the proposed solution are confirmed using results presented by other authors and also results obtained based on the finite element method using ANSYS software. Finally, as the case studies, two cases for variation of thickness are considered and the effects of angles, aspect ratio and thickness of the plate on the natural frequencies are studied. It is concluded that two angles of the trapezoid have opposite effect on the natural frequencies. Also, it is shown that all frequencies rise as value of thickness increases or value of the aspect ratio of the plate decreases. The most advantage of the proposed solution is its applicability for plates with variable thickness.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of quality in supply chain management in development of brand equity. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring quality in supply chain adopted from Fynes et al. (2014) [Fynes, B., De Burca, S., & Marshall, D. (2004). Environmental uncertainty, supply chain relationship quality and performance. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 10(4), 179-190.] and the other for measuring the brand equity, which was adopted from Buil et al. (2013) [Buil, I., De Chernatony, L., & Martínez, E. (2013). Examining the role of advertising and sales promotions in brand equity creation. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 115-122.]. The survey has accomplished among auto part producers in Iran. The study selects 385 randomly selected people who were active in this industry. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as Stepwise regression techniques, the study has concluded that there were positive and meaningful relationships between three supply chain factors, namely relationship, commitment and compatibility, and brand equity.

Inventory management is considered as major concerns of every organization. In inventory holding, many steps are taken by managers that result a cost involved in this row. This cost may not be constant in nature during time horizon in which perishable stock is held. To investigate on such a case, this study proposes an optimization of inventory model where items deteriorate in stock conditions. To generalize the decaying conditions based on location of warehouse and conditions of storing, the rate of deterioration follows the Weibull distribution function. The demand of fresh item is declining with time exponentially (because no item can always sustain top place in the list of consumers’ choice practically e.g. FMCG). Shortages are allowed and backlogged, partially. Conditions for global optimality and uniqueness of the solutions are derived, separately. The results of some numerical instances are analyzed under various conditions.

This paper aims to examine the effects of technology adoption and quality of websites on customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty in banking industry. It also investigates the effect of electronic customer satisfaction on customer loyalty and the effect of electronic customer satisfaction on customer loyalty on e-CRM. The study is accomplished among managers of bank Sepah in city of Qom, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has confirmed that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between the effects of technology adoption and quality of web services on electronic customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The results also confirm the positive effect of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty, electronic customer satisfaction as well as electronic customer loyalty on e-CRM.

This research aims at examining effective factors on improvement of human forces & apos; productivity and determining degree of influence and importance of each group among factors including workshop equipment and arrangement in organization, system of control and supervision on employees, degree of employees training, occupational value of employees and at last, administrating meritocracy system on improvement of human forces & apos; productivity. Statistical population is composed of bureau of naval operations & apos; employees in oil terminals & apos; company in Khark, Iran. Statistical population has been 230, among which 135 people were determined as statistical sample size using Cochran formula. Survey instrument in this research has been questionnaire, according to which employees & apos; ideas about effective factors on employees & apos; productivity were evaluated. These questionnaires completed by people among statistical sample contain 16 close questions which were set up according to Likert 5-grade scale and were distributed as 135 numbers that after returning questionnaire, statistical analysis and data processing were accomplished. Analysis was performed in 2 descriptive and inferential statistics levels. Results of data analysis show that: A) 5-fold factors under review “workshop equipment and arrangement of organization, system of control and supervision on employees, degree of employees training, occupational value of employees and administrating meritocracy related to human resources by management” have had effects on improvement of employees & apos; productivity as average. B) degree of employees training and then occupational value of employees and administrating meritocracy system have had the most influence, and workshop equipment and arrangement of organization and system of control and supervision on employees have had the least influence.

In the recent years, issues like high competitive pressure, globalization, business difficulties, resources limits, technological complications and activities specialization, fast changes in environment, etc. have caused organizations to reconsider their management methods. As a result, they are looking forward to branding new strategies in order to achieve competitive advantages. Focusing on main competences and outsourcing most of the activities are some of these strategies. Assessment management and selecting the appropriate contractor who holds adequate efficiency is of critical importance for having a project accomplished in time and with foreseen resources. Various qualitative and quantitative factors of different importance are involved in contractors’ assessment and should be taken into account before decision making. In this paper, once the factors are identified using fuzzy screening method, they are prioritized according to their importance by means of fuzzy hierarchical analysis.