In this article, the application of the Multi-Skilled Resource-Constrained Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (MSRC-FSSP) in preventive maintenance as a case study has been investigated. In other words, to complete each maintenance order at each stage, in addition to the machine, a set of required human resources with different skills must be available. According to human resources skills, each of them can perform at least one order or at most N orders, and each maintenance order must be done by a set of human resources with different skills. To carry out a maintenance order, different human resources must be in communication and cooperation so that a preventive maintenance order can be completed. In this article, these resources are considered as technical supervisors, repairmen and maintenance managers who complete all maintenance orders in a flow shop environment as a job. For this problem, a new Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model has been formulated with the two-objective functions, minimizing total orders completion time and the human resources idle time. To solve the model on a small scale, CPLEX is used, and to solve it on a large scale, due to the fact that this problem is NP-Hard, a meta-heuristic algorithm named Genetic Algorithm (GA) is presented. Finally, the computational results have been done to validate the model, along with the analysis of the human resources idle time.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the set of approaches used for the appropriate integration and utilization of suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses and retailers to ensure the production and delivery of products to end users in the right quantities and at the right time. Integration of the stages in the supply chain can make it more effective and profitable as a whole. In the present study, an integrated production and distribution problem in a two-stage supply chain is considered. The supply chain consists of m manufacturers with different locations and rates of production, and a distributer that delivers the ordered products to customers in different locations. Here, products are seasonal and perishable and must be delivered before a specified time. To characterize the problem, a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model is proposed and to solve the proposed model, a Hybrid Simulated Annealing (HSA) and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with mixed repair and penalize strategies are introduced. Computational results of HSA are compared with those of the GA algorithm as the current best algorithm for solving similar problems in the literature.

In an environment where markets go through a volatile process, and rapid fundamental changes occur due to technological advances, it is important to ensure and maintain a good performance measurement. Organizations, in their performance evaluation, should consider different types of financial and non-financial indicators. In systems like direct sales stores in which decision units have multiple inputs and outputs, all criteria influencing on performance must be combined and examined in a system, simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of different products through direct sales of a firm named Shirin Asal with a combination of Balanced Scorecard, fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS so that the weaknesses of subjectivity and selective consideration of evaluators in evaluating the performance indicators are reduced and evaluation integration is provided by considering the contribution of each indicator and each indicator group of balanced scorecard. The research method of this case study is applied. The data collection method is a questionnaire from the previous studies, the use of experts' opinions and the study of documents in the organization. MATLAB and SPSS were used to analyze the data. During this study, the customer and financial perspectives are of the utmost importance to assess the company branches. Among the sub-criteria, the rate of new customer acquisition in the customer dimension and the net income to sales ratio in financial dimension are of the utmost importance.

Inspired by the industries such as food and beverage, metal and steel, as well as petroleum and petrochemical ones, the current study addresses a joint order acceptance and scheduling, lot streaming in a flexible flow shop and batch delivery problem. For maximizing a profit objective function with trading off between the revenue of the accepted orders and the costs incurred, a novel mixed integer linear programming is proposed. This paper develops a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm based on the Genetic Algorithm. In the developed algorithm, (1) a heuristic, (2) a local search, and (3) a restart phase is proposed. To set the appropriate parameters of the algorithms, Taguchi experimental design was applied. The obtained results reveal the appropriate performance of the hybrid genetic algorithm.

This paper analyzes a supply chain, which consists of a manufacturer, a retailer and several suppliers in which the retailer orders jobs to the manufacturer and the suppliers provide the requiring parts. The manufacturer schedules and processes the orders and dispatches them to the retailer either individually or collectively in batches. The manufacturer incurs a penalty cost for each tardy job and a transportation cost for every delivered batch and therefore, searches for a schedule that yields minimum number of tardy jobs and batches. Moreover, the manufacturer tries to optimize its supplying cost through locating the suppliers that offer appropriate release times and costs for manufacturing parts. Since the release times of parts directly affect scheduling of orders, in this research, we develop an integrated mathematical model for the manufacturer that incorporates suppliers & apos; selection issue into the scheduling and batching decisions. Furthermore, we present a heuristic algorithm (greedy algorithm) and also a local search to quickly determine the optimal or near-optimal solutions. The computational analysis shows the importance of the integrated model and also the superiority and effectiveness of the heuristic algorithms.

Technology transfer, from research and technology organizations (RTOs) toward local industries, is considered as one of important and significant strategies for countries & apos; industrial development. In addition to recover the enormous costs of research and development for RTOs, successful technology transfer from RTOs toward local firms forms technological foundations and develops the ability to enhance the competitiveness of firms. Better understanding of factors influencing process of technology transfer helps RTOs and local firms prioritize and manage their resources in an effective and efficient way to maximize the success of technology transfer. This paper aims to identify important effective factors in technology transfer from Iranian RTOs and provides a comprehensive model, which indicate the interactions of these factors. In this regard, first, research background is reviewed and Cummings and Teng’s model (2003) [Cummings, J. L., & Teng, B.-S. (2003). Transferring R & D knowledge: The key factors affecting knowledge transfer success. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 20(1-2), 39-68.] was selected as the basic model in this study and it was modified through suggesting new factors identified from literature of inter-organizational knowledge and technology transfer and finally a Delphi method was applied for validation of modified model. Then, research conducted used Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to evaluate the relationship between the factors of final proposed model. Results indicate that there were twelve factors influencing on technology transfer process from Iranian RTOs to local firms and also the intensity of absorption capability in transferee could influence on the intensity of desorption capability in transferor.

In this paper, the problem of lot sizing for the case of a single item is considered along with supplier selection in a two-stage supply chain. The suppliers are able to offer quantity discounts, which can be either all-unit or incremental discount policies. A mathematical modeling formulation for the proposed problem is presented and a dynamic programming methodology is provided to solve it. Computational experiments are performed in order to examine the accuracy and the performance of the proposed method in terms of running time. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed algorithm is capable of providing optimal solutions within low computational times, high accuracy solutions.

This paper addresses scheduling a set of weighted jobs on a single machine in presence of release date for delivery in batches to customers or to other machines for further processing. The problem is a natural extension of minimizing the sum of weighted flow times by considering the possibility of delivering jobs in batches and introducing batch delivery costs. The classical problem is NP-hard and then the extended version of the problem is NP-hard. The objective function is that of minimizing the sum of weighted flow times and delivery costs. The extended problem arises in a real supply chain network by cooperation between two layers of chain. Structural properties of the problem are investigated and used to devise a branch-and-bound solution scheme. Computational experiments show the efficiency of suggested algorithm for solving instances up to 40 jobs.

During the past few years, despite tremendous contribution on deterministic flow shop problem, there are only limited number of works dedicated on stochastic cases. This paper examines stochastic scheduling problems in two-machine flow shop environment for expected makespan minimization where processing times of jobs are normally distributed. Since jobs have stochastic processing times, to minimize the expected makespan, the expected sum of the second machine’s free times is minimized. In other words, by minimization waiting times for the second machine, it is possible to reach the minimum of the objective function. A mathematical method is proposed which utilizes the properties of the normal distributions. Furthermore, this method can be used as a heuristic method for other distributions, as long as the means and variances are available. The performance of the proposed method is explored using some numerical examples.

During the past two decades, there have been growing interests on reducing different activities using outsourcing activities. Outsourcing allows us to focus only on value added activities, which helps reduce the size of organizations. In this paper, we present a new framework based on PMBOK, which determines and ranks important activities for outsourcing. The proposed model of this paper is implemented for a real-world case study in educational system. We have distributed a questionnaire among some decision makers and asked them about their opinions on outsourcing activities on Likert scale. We have compared the relative importance of four major activities including educational activities, research and development, administration and services. The results indicate that general services are the most important activities, which are suitable for partnership followed by administration activities. Educational and research activities and development are in lower important activities.