Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are believed the most important components of today’s businesses and they can boost the growth of economy. This paper presents an empirical investigation to identify and rank important factors influencing on entrepreneurial marketing to facilitate exports of SMEs. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 387 randomly selected entrepreneurs who act as managers of some SMEs in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.873, which is well above the acceptable level. Using principle component analysis, the study has determined four factors including competitive intelligence, competitive advantage, external factors and internal factors to facilitate the export of SMEs.

Moment frame connections have high share to withstand deformation caused by earthquakes. Hence, connections of reinforced concrete structures must have sufficient plasticity in addition to resistance. Observations after earthquakes and the results of tests prove that structural damages have been more observed in the connections area. Implementation of reinforcement in limited volume of connection area is difficult and hence improving the behavior of the connection areas has been among the major issues discussed in structural engineering. In addition, corrosion in the bad environmental conditions is one of the main difficulties in implementing steels in concrete arming. Among alternative materials, FRP rebars that have higher durability, were given attention in recent years. In this study, the behavior of the element has been compared in these conditions by modeling the connection area with steel and FRP rebars.

Study of behavior of building structures under blast loads is an important issue for design of high reliable structures made of concrete material. Hence, in previous studies the enclosed wall under blast loads, open-air explosion has been investigated through experiments. In this study, the experimental results reported in the literature for dynamic performance of a masonry wall subjected to high strain dynamic loads (i.e. contact blast and air burst test) are simulated numerically using finite element method (FEM) by utilizing soft particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Comparison of simulated numerical results with the experimental data demonstrates the ability and accuracy of FEM analyses in predicting the response of confined masonry walls subjected to dynamic loads.

Today, urban areas have been considerably expanded, which has caused numerous problems due to the large population in metropolitan areas. City logistics models can be effective in solving complicated problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution, accidents, and high energy consumption rate. The present paper proposes a bi-objective mathematical model for designing a city logistics distribution network in order to minimize the economic and environmental costs as well as the response time. The proposed model would make decisions on the location and allocation problems in the city logistics distribution network. In fact, the objective of the problem is to select some fixed sites in order to construct the city distribution centers. The demand for commodities is considered probabilistic and the network is modeled based on the queuing theory. Furthermore, in the proposed model, the policy of putting tax on carbon and applying the low-carbon emission resources are used for establishment at the city distribution centers. Afterwards, in order to validate the proposed model, a numerical example is generated and, then, the results obtained from solving the model via epsilon constraint method are presented. Analysis of the results in the present study indicates that the proposed model was highly efficient in achieving its objectives. Finally, there are some suggestions for future studies that can be taken into account.

Tower cranes, on today’s typical building construction sites, are the centerpiece of production, hoisting and transporting of a variety of loads. Due to a simple crane limited capacity; there is an urgent need to use high capacity cranes such as tower cranes. However, we have to select an appropriate type of cranes to be utilized to reduce the associated coste as much as possible. In this research, we propose a method to select the suitable type of crane and locate the best place for crane erection based on a minimum radius for requested crane and minimum cost. To fulfill the target, a computer program is designed to numerate these problems, demonstrating an example explaining how to apply the program and the results are discussed.

This paper examines the spoke and hub location decisions in a routing problem. To minimize the total cost, the study analyzes on how to locate the spokes, hubs and the allocation of spoke nodes to hub nodes, the routing among the nodes and the number of vehicles assigned to each hub thoroughly. As there might be no facility assigned to some points, unsatisfied demands must be distributed to other nodes with available facilities. Furthermore, the realized demand is determined by considering the perceived utility of each path, using The Gravity rule. For this purpose, the proposed nonlinear model is transformed into a linear programming model, where some tightening rules and preprocessing procedures are applied, and also the sequential and integrated approaches are developed to solve the problem. In the sequential method, spokes are allocated, and hubs are selected based on the location of the spokes, after which the routing in the local tour is determined. Meanwhile, in the integrated approach, the aggregated model is solved. A heuristic is presented to address the integrated model. Numerical experiments are run on both approaches, to compare both, and obtain insights from the model.

It is very important to manage and control projects with the consideration of the triple constraints; namely time, cost and scope. It is also extremely important to manage the scope and all the procurements needed to complete any project. During the project’s lifecycle many changes take place, either positively or negatively, which should be controlled. If the changes are not controlled we may have scope creep that has negative effect on the project. It is commonly considered a negative incident, and thus, should be kept away from the project. By considering this concept, in this paper, we discuss scope change and managing scope and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process is used in selecting the best strategy to manage scope change in projects.

Research Project Supply Chain is one of the most complex supply networks. The management of this complex system has created new challenges for industry managers and engineers. The optimization of supply chain networks is, therefore, essential within the context of the research projects. The aims of this paper is to design the network of Supply Chain Management for research projects in an Iranian project-based organization. This model integrates strategic decisions in the whole life cycle for research projects using a mathematical approach. This model is a guideline for managers in research projects that will enable them to identify the strategic decisions of PSCM in their own organizations in order to resolve and improve them. It also serves as a useful base for researchers to further expand research concerning PSCM in research projects.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to analyze interrelationships among sustainability criteria, weight them, and then evaluate suppliers according to these criteria. Data were collected through interviewing with seven experts who are involved in the procurement department of the case. Interpretive structural modelling (ISM), and pairwise comparison questionnaire are used to elicit the existence, strength of relationships among criteria and then weight them by using Fuzzy (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (FDEMATEL), Fuzzy Preference Programming (FPP), and Analytical Network Process (ANP). Then, Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) is employed to evaluate suppliers based on identified and analyzed sustainability criteria. This study provides several implications for practitioners and scholars. First, the results show the efficiency of the proposed approach in practice. Second, respondents state that the proposed approach was very useful in decision making based on interrelationships among criteria, alternatives and policies. Third, findings validate the significant difference in rankings with or without considering interdependencies among criteria.

The theory of constraints is an approach for production planning and control, which emphasizes on the constraints in the system to increase throughput. The theory of constraints is often referred to as Drum-Buffer-Rope developed originally by Goldratt. Drum-Buffer-Rope uses the drum or constraint to create a schedule based on the finite capacity of the first bottleneck. Because of complexity of the job shop environment, Drum-Buffer-Rope material flow management has very little attention to job shop environment. The objective of this paper is to apply the Drum-Buffer-Rope technique in the job shop environment using a Markov chain analysis to compare traditional method with Drum-Buffer-Rope. Four measurement parameters were considered and the result showed the advantage of Drum-Buffer-Rope approach compared with traditional one.