Globalization, intensification of governmental and non-governmental organization & apos; s provisions and squeeze and the demand of clients about concerning environmental affairs have motivated many organizations to start considering Green Supply Chain management in order to facilitate environmental and economic functions. Administration of green supply chain management unifies the management of supply chain with environment requirements during the functioning of levels of supply chain. This paper aims to identify green supply change management & apos; s factors in order to facilitate implementation of green supply chain management in rail industry. Thus, the effective factors of green supply chain management establishment are extracted and the method of interactions between sub-scales is studied by DEMATEL technique. The result specifies that reduction of production loss sub-scale is the most effective factor on other agents. In addition, the effective elements peered out by fuzzy TOPSIS that the scale of loss management stands on the first ranking and improvement of production process and interior environment management scales stand on the second and the third level and other scales follow them.

Laser forming is a modern metal forming method in which no mechanical force is needed. In this paper, numerical and experimental approaches to this phenomenon on were conducted. Numerical method comprised of couple heat-displacement. In it, heat flux distribution of laser beam was applied on the steel layer in Gaussian form and by using subroutine code writing procedure. Experimental tests were conducted by using Nd: YAG laser with maximum power of 300 watts and on a bi-layer Fe/Al work piece. The result of bending angle at different laser power ranges indicated that bending angle increases occur as this parameter is increased.

In this paper, an analytical method is proposed for calculation of natural frequencies of a delaminated composite beam from both free and constrained mode frequencies. In previous studies, the frequencies of a delaminated composite beam were computed with assumption of occurring open or close delamination during the vibration. According to this assumption, two separated modes, i.e., “free mode” and “constrained mode”, are occurred in vibration of the delaminated beam. In fact, a delamination may breathe (open and close) during the vibration and the assumptions of the free or constrained mode models are not completely correct in the whole of the vibration period. For this reason, a new formulation is proposed for calculation of natural frequencies based on the breathing of delamination. The obtained results are compared with various theoretical and experimental results available in the literature. Thus, the effects of location and size of delamination can be investigated on the natural frequencies of delaminated beams.

In this paper, a simplified method is proposed for deriving equilibrium equations in continuous systems. The new method is indeed the direct applying of Newton’s laws on free body diagram of point. First, by describing the concept of equilibrium equations and investigating the differences between concentrated masses and continuous systems, the physical basis of new method is introduced. It is shown that, using intensive properties simplifies the analysis of continuous systems. For verifying the new method, the governing equations in Cartesian, polar and spherical coordinates systems are derived. We have to consider nonlinear terms due to developing large slopes in system. Hence, nonlinear governing equations in Cartesian system are derived too. Finally by noting to the simplicity of new method and its independency from complicated differential and vector analysis in other methods such as Hamiltonian and classic methods, the interests of new method are emphasized. By knowing concept of physical point, a united process is accessible which is extendable to other governing equations of continuous systems.

Outsourcing is a common practice among the organizations and it is a major element in business strategy. It has recognized as an area of strategic importance. This article represents the application of the DMAIC Six Sigma approach to improve outsourcing management process with an emphasis to reduce delay of delivery time for a manufacturing company. The paper identifies each stage of the DMAIC cycle and the Six Sigma tools that were applied. The improvement project has been implemented in seven months.

Over the past three decades, the unified approach of the optimization of the logistic systems has become one of the most important aspects of optimizing the supply chain so that in recent decades it has had a large application in practice and has been used to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the logistic fleet. The inter-urban transport networks by the terminals play an important role in logistic fleet and the goods distribution. In some cases, numbers of terminals face with an overload and others encounter with additional vehicles, which result delay in the load post and unnecessary car downtime. The present paper aims at modeling, scheduling and routing of the vehicles network and minimizing delays in order to create an optimal balance between the number of vehicles and the capacity of the car terminals to use the maximal capacity of vehicles. So that the multi-objective mathematical model is presented to quantify the regular transportation costs and to minimize the car downtime. The proposed model has two conflicting objectives where on tried to increase costs and the other decreases unused cars. Due to the high complexity of the problem, the multi-objective differential evolutionary algorithm (MODE) has been used. To prove the proposed algorithm, it has compared with the NSGA-II algorithm using four comparing indexes. The computational results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm.

A crucial issue in humanitarian relief operations is vehicle routing because there are many difficulties in roads that people face when a disaster is occurred. In such circumstances, selecting more reliable routes could help rescue team act more efficacious. Therefore, we propose a mathematical model that maximizes the reliability of selected routes in disaster relief routing process using a multiple attribute decision making (MADM) technique. Furthermore, the proposed model minimizes the total cost that imposed to system. For this reason, the model is a multi-objective vehicle routing problem (VRP). The problem considered here is NP-hard and its objective is to find near optimal solutions, rather than optimal ones, using the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm.

Silicon/glass bi-materials are used in micro-assembly and packaging of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and micro-electronics devices. In this paper, maximum tangential stress (MTS) concept is used for determination of the fracture initiation angles of silicon/ glass bi-material notches. First, the MTS criterion is analytically formulated for a bi-material notch problem. Then, the criterion used for prediction of fracture initiation angles of some experimental data given in literature for silicon/ glass bi-material notches. In addition, the modified MTS (MMTS) criterion, which considers the effect of I-stress, was compared with the MTS criterion and the experimental data. It was shown that MMTS criterion provides more accurate results than the MTS criterion for estimation of the fracture initiation angle.

Stroke is one of the main causes of disability. It affects millions of people worldwide. One symptom of stroke is disabled arm function. Restoration of arm function is necessary to resuming activities of daily living (ADL). Along with traditional rehabilitation techniques, robot-aided therapy has emerged recently. The control schemes of rehabilitation robots are designed for two reasons. First they are designed for passive rehabilitation in which the robot guides the patient & apos; s limb through a predefined path and second for active rehabilitation in which the patient initiates the movement and is partially assisted or resisted by the robotic device. This paper introduces a new robot for shoulder rehabilitation. The Shoulder Rehabilitation System (SRS) has three degrees of freedom (DOFs) for three rotational DOFs of the shoulder but additional translational DOFs of the shoulder are also allowed to avoid discomfort to the patient. A new open circular mechanism is proposed for the third joint that solves the known issues for rehabilitation robots such as long wiring and discomfort associated with closed mechanisms. Lyapunov-based controller with integral action is proposed to guide the robot through a predefined trajectory. Simulation results proved that the proposed controller can track the desired trajectory; reject constant bounded disturbance to the system and is robust due to its nonlinear nature. The proposed controller is designed to be used in passive rehabilitation.

These days, one of primary concerns for residence of big cities is associated with the access on shopping centers. People prefer to live in places, which are close to their works, shopping centers and schools. Local governments also prefer to find the most appropriate places in an attempt to reduce unnecessary travels and traffic jams. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to determine the most important factors influencing facility location for fruit and vegetable market in city of Tehran, Iran. The study has implemented two methods of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and factor analysis for the investigation. The implementation of AHP has considered two main criteria including Geographic location of market and market, amenities and existing infrastructures. In terms of Geographic location of market, cost saving and public infrastructure are found to be the most important factors while in terms of market based factors, Space and availability of parking are the most important factors. We also use factor analysis and the results of our survey have indicated that Space and Ease of access were two most important factors, which must be considered for facility location.