This paper presents an analytical and a numerical thermomechanical investigation of a thick-walled cylinder made of the functionally graded materials (FGMs). The hollow cylinder is subjected to a pressure and a thermal load and the properties of this material are varying across the thickness from the inner face that is a ceramic to the outer one which is a metal. After validating the current results by the analytical results, the thermomechanical behavior of the cylinder in the transient condition is investigated and the hoop and radial stresses and also temperature distribution are reported. The results reveal that the use of FG material causes a decrease in the stress; thus, it significantly improves thermomechanical behavior of the domain, thanks to using FG materials.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to find the important factors influencing implementation of knowledge management in revenue agencies in Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some experts and, using principal component analysis, the study detects important barriers for knowledge management implications. The study selects 170 people from 880 regular employees who work for revenue agency and distributes the questionnaire designed in Likert scale. Cronbach alpha has been determined as 0.70, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. In terms of knowledge management, the study determines six factors including support for creativity and innovation, knowledge sharing, trust, employee promotion plan, mission and training programs and they represent 66.57% of the described factors. In addition, in terms of barriers, job security, cultural issues, individual differences, infrastructure, organizational structure and lack of vision are the most important issues representing 61.98% of the factors.

The main objective of this research article is to select the best mobile model among various alternatives available on the market. For this analysis 10 alternative models from different brands are selected from different online shopping website having different specifications and ranging from low budget to medium budget in terms of price. For this selection purposes two multiple criteria decision making tools (MCDM) has been adopted i.e. Complex Propor-tional Assessment (COPRAS) and Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS). The selection process is done based on four important criteria i.e. price, internal storage, RAM and brand. The weightages of the criteria are calculated by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and these weightages are further used in COPRAS and ARAS methods. Individual COPRAS and ARAS method is applied for the selection of the best mobile and the preference ranking order of the models are also proposed by each process. The proposed ranking order by both the methods are compared and it is found that the outcome results are more or less the same using both techniques but there is a slight change in ranking of the middle-order alternatives. Both processes give model 1 and model 4 as the best and the worst models respectively among 10 alternatives.

Oxidation of alcohols to carbonyl compounds has become an important issue in the process industry as well as many other applications. In this method, various benzylic alcohols were successfully converted to corresponding aldehydes and ketones under transition metal-free condition using hydrogen peroxide in the presence of some amount of catalytic acidic silica gel. Silica gel is inexpensive and available. One of the most important features of this method is its short reaction time.

This paper studies the channel coordination between a supplier and a retailer with price and sales effort dependent demand. By means of game theory, we analyze price and sales effort decisions of the centralized supply chain. Then we consider three different contracts under decentralized model, i.e., wholesale price contract, cost-sharing contract and a two-part tariff contract, in which the supplier offers a contract comprising a wholesale price and a lump-sum fee to the retailer to coordinate the supply chain. Finally, we analyze the results to compare the equilibrium decisions under different contract scenarios. Our results show that both the wholesale price contract and the cost-sharing contract cannot coordinate the supply chain while the two-part tariff contract can effectively coordinate the supply chain.

Accounting information provides past and current financial information of an economic unit for business managers, potential investors, and other interested parties. Internally generated accounting information helps business managers with planning, controlling, and making decisions referred to as managerial accounting information. However, if the companies, which have adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) globally, cannot generate the same information then the accounting practices need to be improved. For this purpose, the current study was performed with the objectives of measuring relationship between profitability and market capitalization and to analyze the challenges faced by listed firms of various countries in association with the implementation of IFRS. For this purpose, 15 companies were selected from 5 countries including India, China, Germany, Russia and Kenya. The secondary data regarding the correlation between profitability and market capitalization were analyzed to calculate the correlations. The primary data regarding the managers perception were analyzed with multiple regression method using SPSS-19 software to find out the company related variables, investors’ related variables and government agency related variables responsible for problems in the current adoption of IFRS.

The objective of this study is to develop of an inventory policy for deteriorating items, in which demand for the products is stock dependent and the retailer invests in preservation technology to reduce the rate of product deterioration. In many real-life situations, for certain types of consumer goods, the consumption rate is sometimes influenced by the stock-level. It is usually observed that a large pile of goods on a shelf in a supermarket will lead the customer to buy more and then generate higher demand. The consumption rate may go up or down with the on-hand stock level. This paper is developed with the realistic conditions of demand, allowable credit period, partial backlogging and variable ordering cost. A solution procedure is given to find the optimal preservation technology cost and total cost of the system. A numerical example and sensitivity analysis are presented to illustrate the model.

Teaching-Learning-based optimization (TLBO) is a recently proposed population based algorithm, which simulates the teaching-learning process of the class room. This algorithm requires only the common control parameters and does not require any algorithm-specific control parameters. In this paper, the effect of elitism on the performance of the TLBO algorithm is investigated while solving unconstrained benchmark problems. The effects of common control parameters such as the population size and the number of generations on the performance of the algorithm are also investigated. The proposed algorithm is tested on 76 unconstrained benchmark functions with different characteristics and the performance of the algorithm is compared with that of other well known optimization algorithms. A statistical test is also performed to investigate the results obtained using different algorithms. The results have proved the effectiveness of the proposed elitist TLBO algorithm.

This paper presents a review of human resource planning methods, related techniques, and their effects on cellular manufacturing systems (CMS). In-depth analysis has been conducted through a review of 43 dominant research papers available in the literature. The advantages, limitations, and drawbacks of material transferring methods have been discussed as well. The domains of the examined studies include some of the important problems in staff planning, such as worker assigning, hiring and firing, optimum number of workers, skilled workers, cross-functional experts, worker satisfaction and outsourcing. The results of this study can fill research gaps and clarify many related questions in CMS problems.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between employee performance and TQM. The proposed study of this paper designs two questionnaires for TQM and performance measurement and distributes them among some employees who worked for one of Iranian banks in city of Semnan, Iran. The result of Kolmogorov–Smirnov test confirms that all data are normally distributed and the study uses Pearson correlation to investigate the relationship between various components of the survey. The result of the implementation of Pearson correlation ratio indicates that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between employee performance and TQM components (r=4.6223, P-value=0.000). In addition, there are some positive and meaningful relationships between TQM components and employee performance. The highest correlation belongs to relationship between employee performance and feedback (r=4.6223, P-value=0.000) followed by training and development (r = 0.441, P-value = 0.000) and communication (r = 4.2861, P-value = 0.000).