One of the primary concerns in most financial institutions to have an appropriate method for ranking customers. Bank customers are the primary sources of creating income and the success of banking industry depends on how to select good customers for allocation of loans. This paper uses Decision Tree, K-nearest neighbor (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes, and Logistic Regression for data categorization to estimate credit ranking of bank customers in one of major banks in Middle East. The results indicate that Logistic Regression was considered as the best method for ranking customers with the precision of 76.17% while Decision Tree was considered as the weakest technique with the precision of 73.30%.

The main objective of this paper is to study the effects of haversinse and triangular loading waveforms on the fatigue life of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) specimens. Effects of load duration, rest period and stress level are also studied for the asphalt mixtures at 25oC. An indirect tensile test with strain control was performed to determine the fatigue life of asphalt. The fatigue tests were performed at two stress levels (170 and 250 kPa), two waveforms (haversine and triangle), three load duration (100, 200, 400 ms), and two rest period to load duration ratios (4 and 9). The obtained results showed that fatigue life of haversine waveform is less than fatigue life of triangle waveform. As the area under the loading curve is increased (stress level is increased or deformed), effect of rest period on the fatigue life decreases. On the other hand, as the tire contact area is increased, the induced tire pressure reduction decreases its destructive effects on the asphalt layer. As the load duration is decreased, fatigue life will increase. This effect is more pronounced for lower stress levels than the higher stress levels.

This paper develops an economic production quantity (EPQ) inventory model with rework process for a single stage production system with one machine. The existence of a unique machine results in limited production capacity. The aim of this research is to determine both the optimal cycle length and the optimal production quantity for each product to minimize the expected total cost (holding, production, setup, rework costs). The convexity of the inventory model is derived. Also the objective function is proved to be convex. The proposed inventory model is validated with illustrating numerical examples and the optimal period length and the total system cost are analyzed.

During the past two decades, there has been growing trend in Iranian banking industry due to change in banking regulations. Private sector has grown rapidly and there have been several new banks on the market, which has created very competitive market. Therefore, customer loyalty is the key factor for running a successful banking business and customer relationship management (CRM) appears to be important for the success in this industry. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between CRM and customer loyalty in one of the oldest Iranian banks named Bank Melli Iran. The proposed study prepares a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among some regular customers of this bank. The preliminary results of this survey have indicated that consumer’s gender, age and educational background had no meaningful impact on quality of services. In other words, people with different personal characteristics expect the same quality of services from banking industry and there is a positive and meaningful relationship between quality of services and customer loyalty.

The world is increasingly witnessing food insecurity and deteriorating individual and global livelihoods. This study sought to assess the effectiveness of contract farming in the form of command farming in achieving sustainability of maize supply chain in Zimbabwe. A descriptive approach was adopted where a sample of 35 agricultural experts were randomly selected to respond to questionnaires. The researchers also relied on interviews with farmers, the results of which were triangulated with quantitative data to improve the dependability of results. The study shows a positive and significant relationship between command farming and sustainability of the maize supply chain in Mazowe district of Zimbabwe. The study, therefore, recommends the government to invest more in command agriculture to improve productivity and sustainability in the maize sector. It further recommends investment in joint contract farming with agricultural firms and government to improve farming business to sustain the country’s agricultural sector.

The essence of moving the organizations and companies toward the implementation of the Business Intelligence (BI) in the current competitive and complex atmosphere is not unfamiliar for any manager. By online analytic processing, the Business Intelligence analyzes the business data and creates a suitable context for making accurate and smart decisions. Neither as a product nor as a system but as the architecture and a new approach, the Business Intelligence has contained a set of analytic and applied programs. Since the managers have to identify the required infrastructures in creating the mentioned architecture before any applicable measures, the probable failures must be also considered and then solved by the managers. This study has been carried out in the Mellat Bank, meanwhile, the infrastructures for creating the BI has been identified and evaluated and subsequently, the findings has been discussed as well.

A simple and efficient procedure for the synthesis of 3, 4-dihydropyrimidin-2(1H)-ones under solvent-free condition using non-toxic and mild acid mesoporous SBA-15 nanoparticles as a catalyst has been investigated. This method has the advantages of the excellent yield, short reaction time, environmentally friendly conditions and simple experimental procedure.

This paper examines the relationship between trade credit and bank loan during the financial crisis using annual data on Tunisian exporting companies over the period 2005- 2011. Results based on 2SLS regression have shown that trade credit and bank credit were simultaneously determined and maintained a complementary effect before 2008 financial crisis. On the other side, the substitution effect has been detected between the two sources of short term financing during 2008 financial crisis. Finally, companies rely more on bank loan after the financial crisis because bankers are able to cover financial need of their customers.

Magnetic abrasives are important parts of Magnetic Assisted Abrasive Finishing (MAF). Magnetic abrasives are prepared by many processes, but sintering is the one of the best processes to prepare magnetic abrasives. The objective of this paper is to optimize the sintering process parameters. To do that, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is used for the optimization of process parameters, Abrasive concentration in ferromagnetic particles (AC)%, Compacting Pressure (CP) N/mm2 and Sintering Time(ST)min. To check the performance of magnetic abrasives Percentage Improvement in Surface finish (PISF) is considered as a response variable. Optimization and prediction are executed through RSM and Central Composite Design (CCD) is used to conduct the experiments. The optimized values of process parameters obtained are AC (19.29%), ST (15min) and CP (6.9 N/mm2) and also predicted values for the response variable are obtained.

This paper presents an approach of linking finite element method with artificial neural network to predict J-Integral parameter in desirable airfoil condition. Finite Element (FE) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) have been employed for the purpose. In other words, a prediction of finite element results has been done using ANN. Ultimately results of two methods have been compared for different cases. Wing fracture is a well-known problem of the planes which depends on various parameters. The J-integral is a vital parameter in evaluations of structure fracture phenomena. On the other hand residual stresses play an influential role in fracture formation. In the current work, effect of residual stresses and crack depth on J-Integral has been investigated in a standard NACA0012-34 airfoil. As will be seen, residual stresses and crack depth influence J-Integral values. It also will be shown that predictions of ANN method are in a good agreement with those obtained by finite element method.