Fashion and Apparel Supply Chains work in a very fast-changing environment and always demand better quality, higher availability of products, broader assortments and shorter delivery times. An efficient Supply Chain Management can make a difference between success and failure in the market. In this context, the main purposes of the presented work are: (i) to define the physical and informative flows, together with connected cost and revenue items, which characterize a Fashion Supply Chain working with a wide network of direct-operated or franchising mono-brand stores and (ii) to optimize Supply Chain performances through a responsive approach which, during the sales season, analyses actual market demand and adjusts operations plans accordingly. The framework aims at becoming a decision support system for the optimization of the performances of a process that starts from the development of the collection by the Styling Office and ends with the withdrawal of unsold items from the stores. In order to analyze the performances under different scenarios, a set of Key Performance indicators, partially selected from the SCOR Model, is defined.

Project scheduling models with resource constraints and multi-mode activities aims to create a schedule for carrying out activities considering precedence constraints and available resources in order to minimize the project duration. In the real world, we face uncertainty related to projects, where there are no historical data, hence, we should rely on the experts' judgements to estimate activity durations. For this purpose, in this paper, the 99-simulation method is used to deal with uncertainty. The exact mathematical programming model is presented in this paper and the hybrid algorithm based on Genetic Algorithm is used to solve this type of project scheduling problem which finds the near-optimal solution in a short computational time. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed model is examined with a numerical example.

During the past few years, there have been several studies for portfolio management. One of the primary concerns on any stock market is to detect the risk associated with various assets. One of the recognized methods in order to measure, to forecast, and to manage the existing risk is associated with Value at Risk (VaR), which draws much attention by financial institutions in recent years. VaR is a method for recognizing and evaluating of risk, which uses the standard statistical techniques and the method has been used in other fields, increasingly. The present study has measured the value at risk of 26 companies from chemical industry in Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2009-2011 using the simulation technique of Monte Carlo with 95% confidence level. The used variability in the present study has been the daily return resulted from the stock daily price change. Moreover, the weight of optimal investment has been determined using a hybrid model called Markowitz and Winker model in each determined stocks. The results showed that the maximum loss would not exceed from 1259432 Rials at 95% confidence level in future day.

The electricity generation policy is a strategic policy that drives development in a community. Energy policies are often analyzed with the aim of generating a reliable and affordable electricity for a community. There is a high probability of achieving this aim when energy policy is combined with a community social, technical, economic and environmental needs. This paper determines a hybrid renewable energy source (HRESs) for a rural community using technical, economic, and techno-economic criteria. The selection process combines Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) as a solution method. This approach applicability was tested using six HRESs under economic and technical criteria. Ten technical and nine economic criteria were simulated for the HRESs using HOMER. The results from the HOMER software show that A5(PV/wind/battery) and A6 (PV/battery) had a renewable fraction of 1. The results obtained from the CRITIC method showed that the most important technical and economic criteria were diesel generator and total fuel cost, respectively. From an economic perspective, the best HRES for the case study was A4 (diesel/batteries), while A3 (wind/diesel generator/batteries) was the best HRES from a technical and techno-economic perspectives.

As the world is getting overpopulated and over polluted the human being is seeking to utilize new sources of energy that are cleaner, cheaper, and more accessible. Wind is one of these clean energy sources that is accessible everywhere on the planet earth. This source of energy cannot be stored for later use; therefore, environmental circumstances and geographical location of wind plants are crucial matters. This study proposes a model to decide on the optimum location for a wind farm among the demand area. To tackle the uncertainty related to the geographical position of the nominated location such as wind speed; altitude; mean temperature; and humidity; a simulation method is applied on the problem. Other factors such as the time that a plant is out of service and demand fluctuations also have been considered in the simulation phase. Moreover, a probability distribution function is calculated for the turbine power. Then Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) performs the selection between all the nominated locations for wind farm. The proposed model takes into account several important elements of the problems. Elements such as land cost; average power received from the wind blowing; demand point population etc. are considered at the same time to select the optimum location of wind plants. Finally, the model is applied on a real case in order to demonstrate its reliability and applicability.

Loading and unloading operations for Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) in warehouses are critical to logistics management systems. However, these operations also have a significant impact on the environment, particularly in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. As such, warehouse management must consider not only operational efficiency but also environmental impact. The reduction of CO2 emissions in warehouses is becoming increasingly important, both for legal compliance and to meet sustainability targets. In this article, we will emphasize the environmental impact of warehouse operations, particularly on CO2 emissions, and explore ways to minimize them while still maximizing warehouse performance. We will review various optimization models proposed to address this issue and highlight the importance of considering environmental objectives when designing warehouse operations. We will also describe a simulation study conducted to determine the Pareto optimal frontier for a warehouse design, considering transportation, space utilization, and CO2 emissions. The outcomes of implementing this simulation's results include reduced CO2 emissions and increased space utilization, which demonstrate the potential benefits of considering environmental objectives in warehouse design and management.

In this paper a molecular dynamics simulation of nano-metric cutting of copper with a diamond tool is presented. MD simulations require the determination of the interaction of the involved atoms through a function of potential for the materials involved in the analysis and the accurate topography of the studied area, leading to high demand of computational time. The models presented are taking into account the cubic lattice of copper, test two different potential functions and at the same time control the computational cost by introducing small models at realistic cutting conditions. This is realized by a novel code developed and allows focusing on the influence of several processes and modeling parameters on the outcome of the simulations. Models with and without thermostat atoms are investigated and the influence of cutting conditions and cutting tool geometry on chip morphology, cutting forces and cutting temperatures are studied.

Manufacturing facilities are systems that require adequate designing, maintenance and reservations for improvement in the future. Layouts need to be effectively designed to reduce operating to the minimum. Computer simulation is a process of investigating and analyzing the behavior of production processes for effective decision-making using computers to generate solutions that will positively impact short, and long-term planning of the Plants and save costs of real-life implementation. This study investigated a 500Kg capacity shea nut processing plant using FlexSim©. The findings from the initial model were not effective and experienced bottlenecks in workstations (Roaster and Milling) sections, poor cycle and lead times coupled with manual labor, Plant efficiency was 35.7%. However, the Improvement Layout Model was able to address these bottlenecks, the results showed the Plant efficiency increased to 83.3%, shorter lead and cycle times, improved machine utilization, and throughput capacity of the Plant. The results were an indication of conformance to the layout design developed to aid in enhancing the traditional shea nut processing that is largely dominated by traditional processing practices.

Today, supply chains have been widely welcomed by industry researchers and the results of applying it may increase throughput, reduce cost, increase speed to meet customers’ needs and create competitive opportunities. This paper identifies a scientific method, which operates efficiently and effectively manages supply chain operations. In this paper, a computer simulation model is analyzed for analyzing the supply chain and the results are examined, accordingly. Using Taguchi design of experiment and running the proposed model under L27 scenarios, a two-objective optimization was performed on the estimated response surfaces, leading to a 60% increase in productivity and 40% reduction in waiting time.

Measuring liquidity risk plays an important role on any business unit especially financial organizations. Social security systems in most countries around the world are responsible to provide necessary requirements in many countries such as health care, pension plans, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce any risk associated with these systems as much as possible. In this paper, we study liquidity risk in Iranian social security using VaR technique. The proposed model of this paper uses historical information for a fiscal year of 2008-2011. We first divide the information of each year into two groups of first and second half and using VaR technique analyzed whether there was any trend change in these two groups. The results of our survey indicate that the mean of VaR in the second half of the year is greater than the first half of the year. Therefore, we can confirm that VaR maintains an increasing trend over the time horizon. We also study the trend in liquidity using regression analysis for each year, separately and the results of our survey confirm that there was an increasing trend in liquidity over time.