Impact of exchange rate volatility has received a great attention from the last century, its importance is certain in all sectors of the economy and it affects welfare as well as social life of the economy. Exchange rate between two currencies tells the value of one currency in terms of others one. Depreciation/Appreciation of exchange rate affects economic growth in terms of trade and shifts income to/from exporting countries from/to importing countries. The factors affecting exchange rate are inflation, interest rate, foreign direct investment, government consumption expenditure and balance of trade. This research study examines the impact of oil prices and exchange rate volatility on economic growth in Germany based on 40-year annual data. Cointegration technique is applied to check the impact of macroeconomic variables on exchange rate in the long run and short run. It is estimated that imports, exports, inflation, interest rate, government consumption expenditure and foreign direct investment had significant impacts on real effective exchange rate in the long run and short run. Sin addition, Engle Granger results indicate that relationship was significant for the long run and its error correction adjustment mechanism (ECM) in short a run is significant and correctly signed for Germany.

Mixed mode I/II stress intensity factors of an edge slant-cracked plate under tensile loading were assessed. A two-dimensional finite element analysis was employed using ABAQUS. Various crack lengths and angles were analyzed. The effect of the crack location at the plate edge was also examined. Crack initiation angles were calculated. In general, modes I and II stress intensity factor increase with increasing crack length. However, the rate of increase in mode I SIF decreases with increasing the main crack angle. The results showed that stress intensity factors decreased ad the crack mouth approaches the edge mid line. The crack location becomes more significant as the crack length increases. The angle of first cracking depends on crack length, location, and angle.

Waste collection is an important municipal service that charges large expenditures to waste management (WM) system. In this study, a hierarchical structure is proposed in order to minimize total cost of waste collection routing problem. Moreover, in second stage destructive environmental effects of waste transportation are minimized concurrently through taking advantage of a road/rail transportation system. In the proposed multimodal transportation system, waste packs are transferred to final destination while travel time and risk of environmental threatening is minimized. The discussed problem is formulated mathematically in two stages. In the first stage, a household waste collection routing problem is formulated while, in second stage a multimodal transportation system is routed to transfer waste packs to final destination through roads and railroads. In order to solve the proposed NP hard models, an improved genetic algorithm is developed. Comparison of the obtained results with those of GAMS for small-size samples validates the proposed models.

Although there is a significant influence of implementing the electronic health records (EHR) system in Qatar, there are very limited studies reviewed and analyzed the influence of implementing the EHR system on healthcare professionals in Qatar. This research aims to assess, summarize, and analyze the influence of the EHR system in healthcare settings in Qatar. The outcome of assessing the implementation of the EHR system may have advantages and disadvantages, which can impact healthcare professionals in healthcare settings in Qatar. The main objective is to evaluate EHR on healthcare professionals in healthcare. A total number of 210 participants were selected randomly from three private hospitals in Qatar. A validated survey distributed to physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and dietitians who work in these healthcare hospitals in Qatar. The purpose is to identify whether the outcome of using the EHR system improved healthcare professionals’ work after it has shifted from using files and hand-writing paperwork to the EHR system. By applying online survey, results indicate that most healthcare professionals positively perceive the use of the EHR system as a valuable system.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India are currently facing the challenges of increased competitions. In such environment, labor retention is very important factor for competition and survival. In this context, appropriate leadership styles and Quality of Work Life (QWL) are very important factors for survival. Literature on QWL is limited to SMEs and several studies commonly correlated with only QWL dimensions but no study on QWL has association with Leadership styles. This empirical study is accomplished to predict QWL in relation to Transformational and Transactional leadership styles. The sample consists of 240 Mechanical Manufacturing SMEs in Bangalore, India. To draw the inference chi-square test, Pearson correlation and regression analysis was carried out for the collected data using Mini Tab14. The results indicate that 25% of SMEs have implemented good QWL, in 56.6% of SMEs have implemented Transformational leadership styles; QWL of SMEs has significant association with Leadership styles. QWL and Leadership styles of SMEs are independent of demographical factors of SMEs like age of the firms, size of the firms, and cost of the project. QWL dimensions like work environment, relation and cooperation, autonomy of work has a significant association with leadership style. For both transformational and transactional leadership style job satisfaction and job security has highest correlation coefficient.

This paper presents a numerical solution for vibration analysis of cantilevered non-uniform trapezoidal thick plates. Based on the first shear deformation theory, kinetic and strain energies of the plate are derived and using Hamilton's principle, governing equations and boundary conditions are derived. A transformation of coordinates is used to convert the equations and boundary conditions from the original coordinates into a new computational coordinates. Using Differential quadrature method (DQM), natural frequencies and corresponding modes are derived numerically. Convergence and accuracy of the proposed solution are confirmed using results presented by other authors and also results obtained based on the finite element method using ANSYS software. Finally, as the case studies, two cases for variation of thickness are considered and the effects of angles, aspect ratio and thickness of the plate on the natural frequencies are studied. It is concluded that two angles of the trapezoid have opposite effect on the natural frequencies. Also, it is shown that all frequencies rise as value of thickness increases or value of the aspect ratio of the plate decreases. The most advantage of the proposed solution is its applicability for plates with variable thickness.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of quality in supply chain management in development of brand equity. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring quality in supply chain adopted from Fynes et al. (2014) [Fynes, B., De Burca, S., & Marshall, D. (2004). Environmental uncertainty, supply chain relationship quality and performance. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 10(4), 179-190.] and the other for measuring the brand equity, which was adopted from Buil et al. (2013) [Buil, I., De Chernatony, L., & Martínez, E. (2013). Examining the role of advertising and sales promotions in brand equity creation. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 115-122.]. The survey has accomplished among auto part producers in Iran. The study selects 385 randomly selected people who were active in this industry. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as Stepwise regression techniques, the study has concluded that there were positive and meaningful relationships between three supply chain factors, namely relationship, commitment and compatibility, and brand equity.

Inventory management is considered as major concerns of every organization. In inventory holding, many steps are taken by managers that result a cost involved in this row. This cost may not be constant in nature during time horizon in which perishable stock is held. To investigate on such a case, this study proposes an optimization of inventory model where items deteriorate in stock conditions. To generalize the decaying conditions based on location of warehouse and conditions of storing, the rate of deterioration follows the Weibull distribution function. The demand of fresh item is declining with time exponentially (because no item can always sustain top place in the list of consumers’ choice practically e.g. FMCG). Shortages are allowed and backlogged, partially. Conditions for global optimality and uniqueness of the solutions are derived, separately. The results of some numerical instances are analyzed under various conditions.

This paper aims to examine the effects of technology adoption and quality of websites on customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty in banking industry. It also investigates the effect of electronic customer satisfaction on customer loyalty and the effect of electronic customer satisfaction on customer loyalty on e-CRM. The study is accomplished among managers of bank Sepah in city of Qom, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has confirmed that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between the effects of technology adoption and quality of web services on electronic customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The results also confirm the positive effect of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty, electronic customer satisfaction as well as electronic customer loyalty on e-CRM.

In the global critical economic scenario, inflation plays a vital role in deciding optimal pricing of goods in any business entity. This article presents two single-vendor single-buyer integrated supply chain inventory models with inflation and time value of money. Shortage is allowed during the lead time and it is partially backlogged. Lead time is controllable and can be reduced using crashing cost. In the first model, we consider the demand of lead time follows a normal distribution, and in the second model, it is considered distribution-free. For both cases, our objective is to minimize the integrated system cost by simultaneously optimizing the order quantity, safety factor, lead time and number of lots. The discounted cash flow and classical optimization technique are used to derive the optimal solution for both cases. Numerical examples including the sensitivity analysis of system parameters is provided to validate the results of the supply chain models.