In recent years, clients often employ multiple contractors to implement different activities of the projects. Each contractor manages and implements a subset of activities according to the deter-mined schedule and payments. In this situation, time/cost trade-off problem becomes a distributed decision making problem in which the client, as leader, and the contractors, as followers, pursue their own objectives. We establish a multi-objective, bi-level distributed programming model based on fuzzy mathematical programming for this time/cost trade-off problem. The model is then developed for three common behaviors of client i.e. profit seeking, minimization of project time, as well as combination of profit seeking and minimization of project time behaviors. As the solution approaches, we propose transformation method based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condi-tions projects to transform bi-level programming problem to a single level one. Numerical results reveal that the client’s behaviors have measurable impact on time and cost of activities performed by contractors. Moreover, we found that when the client does not have complete information about the contractors’ financial situations, the client should make trade-off between his confidence level and his profit.

During the last decades, environmental crises through energy consumption and economic growth were noticed as a growing concern among researchers. The industrial sector is the main part of economic growth in each country using conservative energy and emitting carbon dioxide that causes global warming. The Paris agreement and Kyoto protocol were two agreements to prevent governments from emitting CO2 freely. Purpose of this research was to investigate the cement industry, steel industry, and automobile industry products’ effects on CO2 emissions in Iran and to rank them according to their measured effects on CO2 emissions. The methodology used in this study was to estimate equations with CO2 emissions as a dependent variable and cement, steel, and automobile industries’ products with ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized moment method (GMM) approaches. Stationary, Johansen cointegration, Durbin-Watson, Breusch-Godfrey, Chow breakpoint, and normal residual tests were checked. In-sample forecasting was implemented to check the precision of the estimation and an updated ranking was reported as a final result to consider which industry has affected CO2 emissions more than the others per unit of production cost. In conclusion, the cement industry, steel industry, and automobile industry had the most positive effects on CO2 emissions, respectively. This result is suitable to prioritize the industries for enhancing green technology and optimizing industrial production for a more sustainable economy.

Over the years, organizations have witnessed a transformational change at global market place. Integration of operations and partnership have become the key success factors for organizations. In order to achieve inclusive growth while operating in a dynamic uncertain environment, organizations irrespective of the scale of business need to stay connected across the entire value chain. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation process for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India to identify the key enablers. Exhaustive survey of existing literature as a part of secondary research work, has been conducted in order to identify the critical success factors and usefulness of ERP implementation in different industrial sectors initially and examines the impact of those factors in Indian SMEs. Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA) has been applied on survey response to recognize the key constructs related to Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and tangible benefits of ERP implementation. Intuitionistic Fuzzy set theory based Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is then used to rank the respective CSFs by mapping their contribution to the benefits realized through implementing ERP. Overall this work attempts to present a guideline for ERP adoption process in the said sector utilizing the framework built upon KPCA and Intuitionistic Fuzzy TOPSIS. Findings of this work can act as guidelines for monitoring the entire ERP implementation project.

A new flexible and adjustable model which is based on an Intuitionistic Fuzzy TOPSIS model with an exponential-related function and intuitionistic fuzzy entropy method has been presented and apply in this study. For supporting designers in determining design stakeholders’ preferences when finding the best compromise between new concepts design during early product develop-ment phase. The main advantage of the new model is that it is flexible and adjustable and affords the design stakeholders the option to a change of action in the event they receive new information or reason not to continue with a particular design or product. Finally, it uses both subjective and objective weights methods for the evaluation of the design concepts criteria, which makes the proposed model more realistic and more practical. The model has been applied for the design concept evaluation of seven forklift trucks with the view to improving the reliability of the machine.

Kinetics of the oxidation of primary aliphatic alcohols has been carried out using phase transferred monochromate in benzene. Tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) and tetrabutylphosphonium bromide (TBPB) are used as phase transfer catalysts (PT catalyst). The reaction shows first order dependence on both [alcohol] and [monochromate ion]. The oxidation leads to the formation of corresponding aldehyde and no traces of carboxylic acid has been detected. The reaction mixture failed to induce the polymerization of added acrylonitrile which rules out the presence radical intermediates in the reaction. Various thermodynamic parameters have been evaluated and a suitable mechanism has been proposed.

The present paper summarizes the results from uniaxial-tension stress-controlled fatigue tests performed at different temperatures up to 650°C on Cu-Be specimens. Two geometries are considered: hourglass shaped and plates weakened by a central hole (Cu-Be alloy). The motivation of the present work is that, at the best of authors’ knowledge, only a limited number of papers on these alloys under high-temperature fatigue are available in the literature and no results deal with notched components. The Cu-Be specimens fatigue data are re-analyzed in terms of the mean value of the Strain Energy Density (SED) averaged over a control volume. Thanks to the SED approach it is possible to summarize in a single scatter-band all the fatigue data, independently of the specimen geometry.

In recent years, there have been significant changes on governmental agencies than any other organizations. There is also an agreement that any improvement on economy requires an efficient government. Governments must be responsive against their people and society but there are evidences that many governmental agencies are not able to meet people’s needs despite access to financial resources because of lack of entrepreneurial approach. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of entrepreneurship governmental groups on macro-economic strategies. The study uses structural equation modeling, by designing a questionnaire in Likert scale, and distributes it among 384 randomly selected university professors in city of Tehran, Iran. The results confirm that technology-based economy, creative human resources and training, competition in the economic environment, knowledge creation, dissemination and application and promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship influence positively on entrepreneurship governmental groups. In addition, the positive effects of entrepreneurship governmental groups on national commitment and management are confirmed.

In this work, acidity constants protonated form of 4.4 & apos; -bis astilbene-2,2 & apos; -disulfonic-disodium salts (TRIAZ) have been determined spectrophotometrically and spectrofluorimetrically at 25?C and ionic strength of 0.1M KNO3. A program based on MCR-ALS applied for determination of acidity constants. The results show that the peak values of dye are influenced by the presence of anionic, cationic, and nonionic surfactants. The effects of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), Triton X-100 (TX-100) and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as a surface-active agent on the acidic and basic forms, and the spectral properties of dye were studied. Also, we determined the critical micelle concentration (CMC) for these surfactants by spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric triazine dye probes. In addition, by using of evolving factor analysis (EFA) and multivariate curve resolution alternative least squares (MCR-ALS) methods, acidity constants were acquired.

This paper deals with the development of an inventory model for Weibull deteriorating items with constant demand when delay in payments is allowed to the retailer to settle the account against the purchases made. Shortages are not allowed and the salvage value is associated with the deteriorated units. In this paper, we consider two cases; those are for the case payment within the permissible time and for payment after the expiry of permissible time with interest. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate our results. Sensitivity analysis are carried out to analyze the effect of changes in the optimal solution with respect to change in one parameter at a time.

This paper derives a semi-analytical solution to determine displacements and stresses in a thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness under uniform pressure based on disk form multilayers. The proposed study partitions the thick cylinder into disk-layer parts based on their thickness of the cylinder. According to the existence of shear stress in the thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness, the equations governing disk layers are acquired based on first shear deformation theory (FSDT), which are in the form of a set of general differential equations. In this study, the cylinder is partitioned into n different disks and n sets of differential equations are derived. The solution of these equations provides displacements and stresses based on the boundary conditions and continuity conditions between the layers. The results are compared with those obtained through the analytical solution and the numerical solution. For the purpose of the analytical solution, matched asymptotic method (MAM) and for the analytical solution, the finite element method (FEM are implemented.