This paper presents a survey on relationship between supply chain management and innovation in an Iranian holding firm in auto industry named Iran Khodro. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and using random sampling technique, distributes 250 questionnaires among some managers of this holding firm. The study consists of three parts including supply chain management, innovation and organizational performance. The study uses regression technique as well as structural equation modeling and it has detected that there were some strong and positive relationship between supply chain management and innovation. In addition, the result of the survey indicates that there was some positive and meaningful relationship between supply chain management and organizational performance.

One of the most important issues in production planning is to reduce waste materials as much as possible. This helps reduce all necessary expenses and increase productivity and efficiency. This paper presents an empirical investigation to find important factors for reaching lean production planning. The proposed study determines nine different factors including information technology, organization and leadership, human resources development, inventory management, total quality management, process management, equipment management, maintenance engineering. In order to find out the effects of these factors, the study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some managers in producer of radiator in Iran. Cronbach alpha is equal to 0.86, which validates the questionnaire. Using some statistical observations, the study has confirmed that all mentioned factors influences production planning, positively.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the impacts of personal entrepreneurial characteristics including “Need to succeed”, “Idea fluency” and “Pragmatism” among students who were enrolled in different fields at Islamic Azad University of Zanjan, Iran. Using a standard questionnaire, which is modified for Iranian culture, the study measures the effects of three factors. The results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov indicate that all three variables of the survey were normally distributed. The results of t-student test for “Need to succeed” is equal to 28.623 with df = 349 and Sig. = 0.000, which is statistically significant. In addition, t-student test for “Idea fluency” is equal to 16.124 with df = 349 and Sig. = 0.000, which is also statistically significant. Finally, the results of t-student test for “Pragmatism” is equal to 31.255 with df = 349 and Sig. = 0.000, which is statistically significant. The findings indicate that the participants hold relatively high level of personal entrepreneurial characteristics.

In this paper, we present a Bayesian analysis of a data set selected from a Brazilian food company. This data set represents the times taken for different quality control analysts to test manufactured products arriving at the company’s quality control department. The samples selected from each batch contain mixtures of different products, which may be submitted to quality testing taking different times. From preliminary analysis of the data, it was observed that the histograms presented two clusters, indicating a mixture of distributions. A mixture of parametrical distributions was thus assumed in the presence of a covariate in order to analyze the data set and to establish standards to be used by the company for the times taken by the analysts. Inferences and predictions are obtained using a Bayesian approach with standard existing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods.

A number of factors, e.g. cutting speed and feed rate, affect the surface roughness in machining process. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network model was used to forecast surface roughness with related inputs, including cutting speed and feed rate. The output of the ANN model input parameters related to the machined surface roughness parameters. In this research, twelve samples of experimental data were used to train the network. Moreover, four other experimental tests were implemented to test the network. The study concludes that ANN was a reliable and accurate method for predicting machining parameters in CNC turning operation of Particulate Reinforced Aluminum Matrix Composites (PAMCs) specimens with 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% filler. The aim of this work is to decrease the production cost and consequently increase the production rate of these materials for industry without any trial and error method procedure.

During the past two decades, there have been significant damages on environment such as ozone layer depletion, global warming effects, etc. and people are getting more concerned about taking necessary actions to help environment. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of green marketing on consumers’ purchasing intention in dairy industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 154 randomly selected people who purchase dairy products in four different regions of city of Babol, located in north region of Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has detected that green marketing influences on consumers’ purchasing intention, positively.

This paper presents a new search methodology for different sizes of 0-1 Knapsack Problem (KP). The proposed methodology uses a modified scatter search as a meta-heuristic algorithm. Moreover, rough set theory is implemented to improve the initial features of scatter search. Thereby, the preliminary results of applying the proposed approach on some benchmark dataset appear that the proposed method was capable of providing better results in terms of time and quality of solutions.

This paper presents an empirical study to investigate the effect of conflict management strategies on development of cooperative culture in one of Iranian auto industries. The proposed study adopts a Putnam and Wilson’s questionnaire (1982) [Putnam, L. L., & Wilson, C. E. (1982). Communication strategies in organizational conflicts: Reliability and validity of a measurement scale. Communication Yearbook, 6, 629-652.] for measuring different components of conflict management. In addition, the study also designs a questionnaire for measuring cooperative culture. Cronbach alphas are calculated for conflict management and cooperative cultures as 0.76 and 0.79, respectively. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as regression technique, the study has determined that three components of conflict management strategies including cooperation, competition and compromise could significantly contribute of development of cooperative culture.

The present work deals with the cutting forces and cutting temperature produced during turning of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V with PVD TiN coated tungsten carbide inserts under dry environment. The 1st order mathematical models are developed using multiple regression analysis and optimized the process parameters using contour plots. The model presented high determination coefficient (R2 = 0.964 and 0.989 explaining 96.4 % and 98.9 % of the variability in the cutting force and cutting temperature, which indicates the goodness of fit for the model and high significance of the model. The developed mathematical model correlates the relationship of the cutting force and temperature with the process parameters with good degree of approximation. From the contour plots, the optimal parametric combination for lowest cutting force is v 3 (75 m/min) – f 1 (0.25 mm/rev). Similarly, the optimal parametric combination for minimum temperature is v 1 (45 m/min) – f 1 (0.25 mm/rev). Cutting speed is found to be the most significance parameter on cutting forces followed by feed. Similarly, for cutting temperature, feed is found to be the most influencing parameter followed by cutting speed.

The primary objective of this paper is to detect factors influencing the alignment of accounting information systems for firms in manufacturing sector listed on Tehran Stock Exchange. The concept of alignment has been investigated for many years, and strategic alignment plays essential role in increasing company performance. This paper investigates different levels of alignment and studies the factors, which influence alignment. More specifically, the work concentrates on the alignment between the requirements for accounting information (AIS requirements) and the capacity of accounting systems (AIS capacity) to build the information, in the specific context of manufacturing in Iran. The research sample consists of 216 companies over the period 2011-2007. The fit between these two sets was explored based on the moderation method and evidences indicate that AIS alignment in some firms was high. In addition, the relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables through multiple regressions yields a positive relationship between these variables.