Given the competitive environment in the global market in recent years, organizations need to plan for increased profitability and optimize their performance. Planning for an appropriate product mix plays essential role for the success of most production units. This paper applies analytical network process (ANP) approach for product mix planning for a part supplier in Iran. The proposed method uses four criteria including cost of production, sales figures, supply of raw materials and quality of products. In addition, the study proposes different set of products as alternatives for production planning. The preliminary results have indicated that that the proposed study of this paper could increase productivity, significantly.

Modeling the simple assembly line balancing (SALB) problem has covered a wide range of real-world applications. The recent advances in optimization problems have created the opportunities to tackle more challenging problems. This paper presents a multi-objective decision making problem to consider two objectives, cost and cycle time, for simple assembly line balancing. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear optimization and the proposed study of this paper uses two metaheuristics to solve the resulted problem on some benchmark problems. The preliminary results have indicated that multi objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) has provided better quality solutions while the hybrid method based on MOPSO and simulated annealing has yielded more non-dominated Pareto solutions.

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of Kiasar cement factory based on EFQM model. The study performs a survey among 26 managers and expertise and the required information is gathered in terms of five perspectives based on 23 questions arranged in Likert spectrum. Cronbakh’s ? coefficient for enabling and results criteria are 0.924 and 0.950, respectively, which confirms the reliability of the questionnaire. In evaluating the data, it is revealed that employees’ scale, maintained the most difference (70.61%) and processes scale, retained the least difference (52.42%) from the ideal circumstances. Next, employees’ performance has maintained the most difference (90.79%) and customer performance, and the customer results’ scale have kept the least difference (58.27%) from the ideal situation. Kiasar cement factory has acquired 198.06 points out of 500 points of empowering scale and 164.08 points out of 500 total points of result scales. Also empowerment scales in Kiasar cement factory have acquired 39.61% of optimal score and differs from ideal circumstances around 60.39%. The results scales has acquired 32.82% of optimal score and approximately is different from ideal situation around 67.18%. The research results show that Kiasar cement factory has acquired 361.9 points out of 500 scores of EFQM.