The aim of this paper is to present mathematical models optimizing all materials flows in supply chain. In this research a fuzzy multi-objective nonlinear mixed- integer programming model with piecewise linear membership function is applied to design a multi echelon supply chain network (SCN) by considering total transportation costs and capacities of all echelons with fuzzy objectives. The model that is proposed in this study has 4 fuzzy functions. The first function is minimizing the total transportation costs between all echelons (suppliers, factories, distribution centers (DCs) and customers). The second one is minimizing holding and ordering cost on DCs. The third objective is minimizing the unnecessary and unused capacity of factories and DCs via decreasing variance of transported amounts between echelons. The forth is minimizing the number of total vehicles that ship the materials and products along with SCN. For solving such a problem, as nodes increases in SCN, the traditional method does not have ability to solve large scale problem. So, we applied a Meta heuristic method called Genetic Algorithm. The numerical example is real world applied and compared the results with each other demonstrate the feasibility of applying the proposed model to given problem, and also its advantages are discussed.

The anthropometric data of student in selected tertiary institutions in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria was investigated and this was compared with some selected foreign countries. The study was to determine whether design improvement and further study is required in order to improve the conditions in Nigeria tertiary institutions. The anthropometrics measurements data were collected from 720 students of selected institutions. The data indicate a substantial degree of variability between the Nigerian tertiary students’ body and the foreign counterparts. Since most of the furniture in use in our tertiary institutions in Abeokuta, Nigeria were designed and constructed using the anthropometric data of students in foreign countries, there is need for anthropometric data of Nigerian students in the tertiary institution for the design and construction of furniture to suit them. The result is of great concern which could affect students in other institutions throughout Nigeria and could also pose a great risk of having back problem among students in Nigeria.
Statement of Relevancy: The chair and table used in Nigeria were designed with reference to the measurement of other countries. The database of the Nigerian students will be very useful parameter in guiding principle for the designing of future equipment to be used in classrooms, laboratories and lecture theaters of the institutions.

In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to measure the effects of various factors on operating loss in one of major Iranian banks called Bank Mellat. The proposed study of this paper uses a standard questionnaire and distributes it among 57 people who are mainly in top management levels. The questions are categorized into five groups including events related to the processes and methods, events outside the organization, related events within the organization and business disruptions and system failure. The results of our survey confirm that the loss associated with events related to the processes and methods increases operating risk meaningfully, the loss associated with business disruptions and system failure increases operating risk meaningfully and the loss associated with related events within the organization increases operating risk meaningfully. However, our survey do not confirm that the loss associated with events outside the organization increase operating, risk meaningfully. Finally, the preliminary survey of our analysis shows that there is not enough evidence to believe that the effects of business disruption and internal affairs are significantly different from the other event.

Knowledge management (KM) plays an important role on increasing organizational performance especially governmental agencies where there are different skills and knowledge within the organization. In this study, we present a study to investigate the effect of KM on having more customer oriented organizations. We use a standard questionnaire among 146 randomly selected employees out of 170 people who work for four governmental organizations in city of Chahbahar, Iran. The collected information is analyzed using structural equation modeling and by validating the results using Cronbach alphas of more than the minimum desired level of 0.70, we determine the positive relationships between KM and three other variables including customer absorption, customer retention and customer relationship management. The results of this survey reveal that an increase of one unit in KM yields almost the same increase in three mentioned variables accordingly. In addition, an increase of one percent in KM will increase customer orientation by almost one percent.

Social networks are online gathering places for people who would like to share their interests and activities. In this context, advertising through social networks is one of the most important topics in the field of marketing and brand that has been considered only in few studies. This study examines the impact of advertising on brand equity through social networks in the beverage industry (PepsiCo). This research study was to survey and collect data from the a standard questionnaire. PepsiCo brand, which is a well known beverage industry worldwide is selected for the proposed study of this paper. Thus, all customers of Pepsi products in city of Tehran are considered as statistical research community and a sample size of 385 people is selected for the proposed study. In order to analyze the data, we use structural equations method and certified factor analysis. The results of our survey indicate that advertisement on social networks has a positive impact in this industry. Based on the results of our survey, we realize that there are some positive relationship between social network advertisement and quality perception, brand loyalty, brand awareness and brand association when the level of significance is one percent.

In the changing world with various customers’ demands the businesses tend to improve their advantages to beat their rivals by means of better quality, lower prices and so. For Iranian polyester market quality is of crucial importance and is achieved through changing and updating technologies. According to highly regarded model of CAPTECH, which is recommended by UNIDO, technology parameters are defined in each phase and not generally as a whole. In the end the biggest gaps are defined. The main goal is to prioritize the main parameters affecting Iranian polyester company & apos; s quality. In order to fulfill our goal, 20 high and medium managers were questioned for this paper. The questions were gathered according to UNIDO samples. After a qualitative and quantitative test we concluded that the biggest gap is for supply chain(56.91) and the lowest gap is for combination phase(43.97).

The application of strategic knowledge management requires specific organization structure due to unique and particular characteristics of knowledge. In other words, by passing through industry age toward knowledge age, strategic knowledge management is considered by organizations dramatically and by considering this new competitive edge, universities should prepare an appropriate background for strategic knowledge management (encoding strategy and personalizing strategy). The primary purpose of this research is to find out whether there is a meaningful relationship between organizational structure (recognition, focus and complexity) and strategic knowledge management (codification strategy and personalization strategy) in Azad University, Kermanshah. Organizational structure is considered as independent variables and strategic knowledge management is dependent variables. When it comes to the purpose, present research is an applicable research and based on its nature and method, it is descriptive and survey research. Statistical society consists of university president, vise-president and dean of faculties of Azad University, Kermanshah; during a period of the first half of the year of 2011. Therefore, the sampling method is stratified sampling. Statistical society contains 60 people who are adjusted to 52 sample people by the use of Morgan table. Data collection tool is questionnaire structure questionnaire of Robbins and strategic knowledge management questionnaire of Carolina & ?ngelL. The results of the research show that there is a meaningful relationship between organizational structure and strategic knowledge management in Azad University, Kermanshah, according to codification and personalization strategy. Some suggestions are offered at the end of this research.

In global market, factors such as precedence of competitors extending shave on market, promoting quality of services and identifying customers & apos; needs are important. This paper attempts to identify strategic services in one of the biggest governmental banks in Iran called Melli bank for getting competition merit using Kano and SERVQUAL compound models and to extend operation quality and to provide suitable strategies. The primary question of this paper is on how to introduce high quality services in this bank. The proposed model of this paper uses a hybrid of three quality-based methods including SERVQUAL, QFD and Kano models. Statistical society in this article is all clients and customers of Melli bank who use this banks & apos; services and based on random sampling method, 170 customers were selected. The study was held in one of provinces located in west part of Iran called Semnan. Research findings show that Melli banks & apos; customers are dissatisfied from the quality of services and to solve this problem the bank should do some restructuring to place some special characteristics to reach better operation at the heed of its affairs. The characteristics include, in terms of their priorities, possibility of transferring money by sale terminal, possibility of creating wireless pos, accelerating in doing bank works, getting special merits to customers who use electronic services, eliminating such bank commission, solving problems in least time as disconnecting system, possibility of receiving foreign exchange by ATM and suitable parking in city.

In this paper, we perform an empirical study to investigate the impact of economical stability on the amount of investment coming from the private sector. We calculate macroeconomics instability index (MII) using the existing methods in the literature. We have also used Glezakos (1973) method [Glezakos,C.(1973). Export instability and economic growth: A statistical verification. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 21(3), 670-678.], which considers long-term deviation of real values as instability index. Therefore, we use four variables of inflation rate (TINF), the ratio of budget deficit on growth domestic product (GDP) (TBD), foreign debt on GDP (TFD) and the ratio of actual currency rate on nominate currency (TRO). The preliminary results show that the short-term changes on logarithm of investment from private sector (LNIP) with one lag and logarithm of value added (LNIV) have positive impact on LNIP. In addition, any short term changes on logarithm of MII (LNMII) has negative and meaningful impact on LNIP and approximately 0.67 percent of difference between the actual and long term are discounted in each period. The results indicate that instability index has negative effect even in short term on Iran & apos; s industry. This shows the relevant importance of instability on economy.

This paper introduces a tool named EB-QFD used for electronic business planning in strategic issues. Nowadays, the challenges of manufacturing sectors for achieving global competition will depend on their speed to change from domestic to world class manufacturing organizations, also the rapid global deployment of electronic business, information technology and their benefits have required managers to make decision, which look for a balance world class manufacturing factors with strategic business goals. To ensure that selected e-business strategies meet world class manufacturing requirements, organizations should simultaneously explore and communicate the relationship between world class manufacturing and electronic business. Electronic business planners can achieve competitive advantages through the implementation of an integration of quality function deployment (QFD) with electronic business (EB) called EB-QFD. This study is based on data collected from an Iranian auto parts manufacturing company and the implementation of EB-QFD. In this research, EB-QFD contains two parts named EB-WHATs as needs of Electronic Business and EB-HOWs as resources for EB-WHATs. Statistical analysis points that there are positive relationships between using EB-WHATs and EB-HOW and world class manufacturing factors as competitive advantages. We used electronic business systems for EB-WHATs and resource based view (RBV) for EB-HOWs.