Cost estimation of new products has always been difficult as only few design, manufacturing and operational features will be known. In these situations, parametric or non-parametric methods are commonly used to estimate the cost of a product given the corresponding cost drivers. The parametric models use priori determined cost function where the parameters of the function are evaluated from historical data. Non-parametric methods, on the other hand, attempt to fit curves to the historic data without predetermined function. In both methods, it is assumed that the historic data used in the analysis is a true representation of the relation between the cost drivers and the corresponding costs. However, because of efficiency variations of the manufacturers and suppliers, changes in supplier selections, market fluctuations, and several other reasons, certain costs in the historic data may be too high whereas other costs may represent better deals for their corresponding cost drivers. Thus, it may be important to rank the historic data and identify benchmarks and estimate the target costs of the product based on these benchmarks. In this paper, a novel adaptation of cost drivers and cost data is introduced in order to use data envelopment analysis for the purpose of ranking cost data and identify benchmarks, and then estimate the target costs of a new product based on these benchmarks. An illustrative case study has been presented for the cost estimation of landing gears of an aircraft manufactured by an aerospace company located in Montreal, CANADA.

In many real-world applications, the quality of a process or a particular product can be characterized by a functional relationship called profile. A profile builds the relationships between a response quality characteristic and one or more explanatory variables. Monitoring the quality of a profile is implemented to understand and to verify the stability of this functional relationship over time. In some real applications, a fuzzy linear regression model can represent the profile adequately where the response quality characteristic is fuzzy. The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach for monitoring process/product profiles in fuzzy environment. A model in fuzzy linear regression is developed to construct the quality profiles by using linear programming and then fuzzy individuals and moving-range (I-MR) control charts are developed to monitor both intercept and slope of fuzzy profiles to achieve an in-control process. A case study in customer satisfaction is presented to show the application of our approach and to express the sensitivity analysis of parameters for building a fuzzy profile.

Maximization of flow through the network is required in many practical applications such as water supply flow networks, Oil and Gas flow networks, and transportation networks etc. In this paper a new theorem is presented that has direct application on maximization of flow through the network. This theorem suggests that the maximization of network flow can be achieved by visiting only unbalanced nodes rather than the whole network. Therefore based on this theorem a method is developed that maximizes flow thorough the network by visiting only unbalanced nodes. Hence this method can achieve solution in a sub-linear time where network has fewer unbalanced nodes. However this method has worst case complexity of order O(m2-m), where m is the number of edges. Furthermore it is shown that this theorem has also potential to make optimization an easier task in a multi-commodity flow environment.

Mutual fund is one of the most popular techniques for many people to invest their funds where a professional fund manager invests people & apos; s funds based on some special predefined objectives; therefore, performance evaluation of mutual funds is an important problem. This paper proposes a multi-objective portfolio optimization to offer asset allocation. The proposed model clusters mutual funds with two methods based on six characteristics including rate of return, variance, semivariance, turnover rate, Treynor index and Sharpe index. Semivariance is used as a downside risk measure. The proposed model of this paper uses fuzzy variables for return rate and semivariance. A multi-objective fuzzy mean-semivariance portfolio optimization model is implemented and fuzzy programming technique is adopted to solve the resulted problem. The proposed model of this paper has gathered the information of mutual fund traded on Nasdaq from 2007 to 2009 and Pareto optimal solutions are obtained considering different weights for objective functions. The results of asset allocation, rate of return and risk of each cluster are also determined and they are compared with the results of two clustering methods.

The dynamics of human resource recruitment and training in an uncertain environment creates a challenge for many policy makers in various organisations. In the presence of fuzzy manpower demand and training capacity, many companies fear losing critical human resources when their employees leave. As such, the development of effective dynamic policies for recruitment and training in a fuzzy dynamic environment is imperative. In this frame of mind, a fuzzy systems dynamics modelling approach is proposed to enable the policy maker to develop reliable dynamic policies relating recruitment, training, and available skills, from a systems perspective. It is anticipated in this study that fuzzy system dynamics and optimization approach would help organizations to design effective manpower policies and strategies.

Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is well known process for generating intricate and complex profiles in hard metal matrix composites. But damaged surface layer with poor surface integrity is a major disadvantage of WEDM. Beside poor damaged surface layer, after rough/first cut in WEDM, some surface area remains unmachined on work surface during intricate machining such as in die cutting. This paper presents a study on unmachined surface area named as surface projection, in die cutting after rough cut in WEDM. Using scanning electron microscope images, length of unmachined surface projections have been determined. In order to minimize these surface projections from small cavities having complex geometries, trim cutting operation is the best alternative. Results show that using more than one trim cut with appropriate wire offset value, surface projections can be minimized, successfully.

Transportation of hazardous materials play an essential role on keeping a friendly environment. Every day, a substantial amount of hazardous materials (hazmats), such as flammable liquids and poisonous gases, need to be transferred prior to consumption or disposal. Such transportation may result in unsuitable events for people and environment. Emergency response network is designed for this reason where specialist responding teams resolve any issue as quickly as possible. This study proposes a new multi-objective model to locate emergency response centers for transporting the hazardous materials. Since many real-world applications are faced with uncertainty in input parameters, the proposed model of this paper also assumes that reference and demand to such centre is subject to uncertainty, where demand is fuzzy random. The resulted problem formulation is modelled as nonlinear non-convex mixed integer programming and we used NSGAII method to solve the resulted problem. The performance of the proposed model is examined with several examples using various probability distribution and they are compared with the performance of other existing method.

Process of handling equipment selection is one of the most important and basic parts in the project planning, particularly mining projects due to holding a high charge of the total project & apos; s cost. Different criteria impact on the handling equipment selection, while these criteria often are in conflicting with each other. Therefore, the process of handling equipment selection is a complex and multi criteria decision making problem. There are a variety of methods for selecting the most appropriate equipment among a set of alternatives. Likewise, according to the sophisticated structure of the problem, imprecise data, less of information, and inherent uncertainty, the usage of the fuzzy sets can be useful. In this study a new integrated model based on fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) is proposed, which uses group decision making to reduce individual errors. In order to calculate the weights of the evaluation criteria, FAHP is utilized in the process of handling equipment selection, and then these weights are inserted to the FTOPSIS computations to select the most appropriate handling system among a pool of alternatives. The results of this study demonstrate the potential application and effectiveness of the proposed model, which can be applied to different types of sophisticated problems in real problems.

This paper presents on experimental investigation of the machining characteristics of different grades of EN materials in CNC turning process using TiN coated cutting tools. In machining operation, the quality of surface finish is an important requirement for many turned work pieces. Thus, the choice of optimized cutting parameters is very important for controlling the required surface quality. The purpose of this research paper is focused on the analysis of optimum cutting conditions to get the lowest surface roughness and maximum material removal rate in CNC turning of different grades of EN materials by Taguchi method. Optimal cutting parameters for each performance measure were obtained employing Taguchi techniques. The orthogonal array, signal to noise ratio and analysis of variance were employed to study the performance characteristics in dry turning operation. ANOVA has shown that the depth of cut has significant role to play in producing higher MRR and insert has significant role to play for producing lower surface roughness. Thus, it is possible to increase machine utilization and decrease production cost in an automated manufacturing environment.

Construction projects are conventionally analyzed considering factors such as cost and completion time. The present paper focuses on the projects particularly dealing with the house or building. The paper aims at an objective of introducing a synergy between project and supply chain management. After a brief relevant literature review, major construction activities have been discussed and the associated synergy between project management and supply chain concepts has been explained. Applications of the supply chain concepts such as forward and reverse logistics along with the customer order decoupling point in the context of construction management are discussed as a result of the proposed development. For this purpose, a categorization of construction product is developed on the basis of land and building characteristics and it is the major contribution of the present paper. This is also expected to be useful for estimating lead time and availability of the product in the context of relevant supply chain, and an associated managerial implication.