The objective of this study is to develop of an inventory policy for deteriorating items, in which demand for the products is stock dependent and the retailer invests in preservation technology to reduce the rate of product deterioration. In many real-life situations, for certain types of consumer goods, the consumption rate is sometimes influenced by the stock-level. It is usually observed that a large pile of goods on a shelf in a supermarket will lead the customer to buy more and then generate higher demand. The consumption rate may go up or down with the on-hand stock level. This paper is developed with the realistic conditions of demand, allowable credit period, partial backlogging and variable ordering cost. A solution procedure is given to find the optimal preservation technology cost and total cost of the system. A numerical example and sensitivity analysis are presented to illustrate the model.

Decision support system (DSS) normally consists of a set of related computer programs and the data required to help with analysis and decision-making within an organization. Many software vendors claim their decision support, analytics or business intelligence applications may provide a competitive advantage by providing different facilities such as business intelligence tools, business performance management software, data mining tools, etc. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine different DSS factors influencing on development of export activities on selected firms which are active in Tehran Stock Exchange. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 35 questions and distributes it among 211 randomly selected managers who were involved in export activities. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.817, which is well above the minimum desirable level. Using principle component analysis, the study has detected five factors including internal resources, management approach, quality of data, efficiency of data and organizational approach, which influence the most on export activities.

Free trade zones are important regions for development of business activities and detecting important factors for development of these regions plays essential role for development of economy. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine the factors influencing the performance of the incentive polities of free trade zones in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 34 questions. Cronbach alpha is equal to 0.809, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. In addition, Bartlett & apos; s Test of Sphericity yields a Chi-Square value of 2392.31 with Sig. = 0.000. Using principal component analysis with rotation, the study has detected six important factors influencing on development of free trade zones including government support, financial capability, development strategy, product competition, infrastructure and consultation services.

In today' s extremely competitive environment, customers are the most important asset of any business and success of any organization depends on loyal customer retention. Therefore, it is important to learn more about different groups of customers and propose appropriate plans to take care of them. Customer segmentation is one of the most common methods to analyze customer’s behavior. The market can be divided into several smaller homogeneous groups, which helps organizations deliver targeted marketing techniques and provides optimized techniques for resource allocation. This paper uses the information gathered from Point of Sales (POS) in one of Iranian private banks and using two methods of K-Means and Kohonen, customers are clustered into four segments to detect the most profitable customers.

Due to the emergent government regulations and stronger public awareness about environment today organizations simply cannot discard environmental concern if these companies want to stay alive in the international market. Environmental management is becoming more and more important for companies for sustainable development. If the industries of developing countries have to export to developed nations they have to match up with developed countries’ environmental standards. The emphasis on the environmental protection is not only due to organizational stakeholders but also governments, customers, employees, competitors and communities. Environmental issues in manufacturing sectors are not investigated appropriately in developing countries. The objectives of this paper are to review the literature on drivers and barriers for the implementation of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM). After providing a background on GSCM, categories and review the literature on various issues/ factors for the recent GSCM, the concluding remarks for this review is also presented.

Export plays an essential role for boosting the economy of developing countries. On the other hand, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are important part of any economy. Therefore, it is important to determine the effects of various factors influencing on development of export activities. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of customer segmentation factors on the performance of export activities of SMEs in Iranian food industry. The study selects a sample of 227 people who were involved in development of SMEs in city of Tehran, Iran. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 34 questions, Cronbach alpha and KMO are equal to 0.809 and 0.764, respectively, which are well above the desirable levels. Using principal component analysis, the study has determined that different factors including competitive structure, organizational strategy, customer’s studies and organizational factors influencing the most on promoting export activities.

Lean Manufacturing is being adopted by many Indian industries based on its capability of improving manufacturing performance. Lean Manufacturing supports the concept of delivering the low cost and good quality product to customer by focusing on elimination of waste. Lean Manufacturing employs various elements which aspire to involve the employees to create a customer centric organization. This paper is an attempt to examine the significance of various lean manufacturing elements in Indian industries. Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) approach is used to examine their inter-relationship and ranking based on their driving power and dependence powers through development of diagraph and structural model in the Indian industry context.

This paper considers the economic order quantity (EOQ) model over a finite horizon, in which demand rate follows a two-parameter Weibull time-dependent, shortages are allowed and completely backlogged. Mathematical formulations are derived under two different circumstances i.e. case I: The permissible delay is less than or equal time to finish positive inventory for settling the account, and case II: The permissible delay period is greater than time to finish positive inventory for settling the account. Based on the optimal solutions some important results are derived and numerical examples are provided to validate the proposed model. Finally, sensitivity analysis is provided to analyze the effect of changes with the variation in one parameter at a time on the optimal solution.

In this paper, an exploration investigation is presented to determine entrepreneurial marketing factors influencing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are active in Iranian food industry. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 27 questions in Likert scale and distributes it among 249 experts who were involved in in food industry. KMO Bartlett test Sphericity and Cronbach alpha are 0.811 and 0.892, respectively. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined five factors including innovative approach, flexible marketing, customer, product strategy and resources, which are influencing the most on entrepreneurial marketing factors.

In this paper, a supply chain inventory model is developed in inflationary environment by incorporating some realistic features such as ramp type demand, deterioration, partial backlogging, inflation, and trade credit. Here, rate of deterioration is linear and partial backlogging rate is variable and dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment. Depending on the trade credit period, three different situations arise. For each model the optimal replenishment policy is determined. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the proposed inventory model and sensitivity analyses of optimal solutions are given for each case of trapezoidal demand function.