In this work, acidity constants protonated form of 4.4 & apos; -bis astilbene-2,2 & apos; -disulfonic-disodium salts (TRIAZ) have been determined spectrophotometrically and spectrofluorimetrically at 25?C and ionic strength of 0.1M KNO3. A program based on MCR-ALS applied for determination of acidity constants. The results show that the peak values of dye are influenced by the presence of anionic, cationic, and nonionic surfactants. The effects of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), Triton X-100 (TX-100) and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as a surface-active agent on the acidic and basic forms, and the spectral properties of dye were studied. Also, we determined the critical micelle concentration (CMC) for these surfactants by spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric triazine dye probes. In addition, by using of evolving factor analysis (EFA) and multivariate curve resolution alternative least squares (MCR-ALS) methods, acidity constants were acquired.

This paper deals with the development of an inventory model for Weibull deteriorating items with constant demand when delay in payments is allowed to the retailer to settle the account against the purchases made. Shortages are not allowed and the salvage value is associated with the deteriorated units. In this paper, we consider two cases; those are for the case payment within the permissible time and for payment after the expiry of permissible time with interest. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate our results. Sensitivity analysis are carried out to analyze the effect of changes in the optimal solution with respect to change in one parameter at a time.

This paper derives a semi-analytical solution to determine displacements and stresses in a thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness under uniform pressure based on disk form multilayers. The proposed study partitions the thick cylinder into disk-layer parts based on their thickness of the cylinder. According to the existence of shear stress in the thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness, the equations governing disk layers are acquired based on first shear deformation theory (FSDT), which are in the form of a set of general differential equations. In this study, the cylinder is partitioned into n different disks and n sets of differential equations are derived. The solution of these equations provides displacements and stresses based on the boundary conditions and continuity conditions between the layers. The results are compared with those obtained through the analytical solution and the numerical solution. For the purpose of the analytical solution, matched asymptotic method (MAM) and for the analytical solution, the finite element method (FEM are implemented.

Consumer perception plays essential role for market development. Consumer perception can be defined as a marketing concept, which includes a customer & apos; s impression, awareness and/or consciousness about a firm or its offerings. This paper investigates the effect of customer relationship management factors on consumer perception in Iranian banking industry. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 300 randomly selected managers who worked for Bank Saderat Iran. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.788, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. Using principal component analysis, the study has determined that six factors influences the most on consumer perception; namely: Customer oriented, Organizational strategy, Organizational resources, Organizational structure and Organizational culture.

Flexibility has been cited as a key factor to enhance the performance of flexible manufacturing sys-tem (FMS). The main aim of this paper is to rank the flexibility of FMS. The ranking decisions are complex in the manufacturing field to analyze a number of alternatives based on a set of some attributes. In this research, two MADM methods i.e. MOORA (i.e. multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis) and weighted Euclidean distance based approach (WEDBA) are used for ranking of flexibility in FMS for new part development. MOORA approach can give de-cision with or without considering relative importance of attributes i.e. attribute weights. While in WEDBA, integrated attribute weights are used for evaluation which included the subjective and objective weights of attributes. Objective weights are calculated by entropy method and subjective weights are calculated by analytic hierarchy process. MOORA is applied in two ways i.e. ratio based and reference point analysis. Ranking of fifteen flexibility of FMS done on the basis fifteen variables which effect flexibility of FMS. The results of MOORA and WEDBA approach shows that product flexibility has the top most flexibility in fifteen flexibilities and programme flexibility has the least impact in fifteen flexibilities.

This paper investigates the impact of corporate governance on firm value measured by Tobin’s Q. Different corporate governance proxies i.e. board size, board independence, audit committee and CEO duality are interacted with firm value. A sample of 91 nonfinancial firms listed on KSE was selected over the period 2010-2014. The findings of the study show that board size and CEO duality had negative impacts on firm value. Moreover, board size, non-executive directors and audit committee had positive and significant impacts on firm value.

Risk management plays an important role on the success of the any project. There are several techniques, which are available to help different phases of risk management process. This paper presents a survey to identify the necessary tools, which are mostly implemented and related to the success of any project management, and more specifically with effective project risk management. The survey is based on a questionnaire designed to a sample of project managers from the construction industries. The response data was studied to determine which tools are more used in the organizations, which could yield a better project management performance.

A value chain is a chain of necessary activities that a company operating in a specific industry executes in order to deliver a valuable product or service for the market. Value chain plays essential role for development of a successful business unit. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of value chain on capabilities of knowledge production, implementation and distribution. The impact is also studied for effective knowledge implementation for economic development. Using historical economic data of World Bank database gathered from member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the study has detected positive and meaningful effects of Value Chain Presence on Knowledge Economy Index and Knowledge Index.

A systematic approach to the inventory control and classification may have a significant influence on company competitiveness. In practice, all inventories cannot be controlled with equal attention. In order to efficiently control the inventory items and to determine the suitable ordering policies for them, multi-criteria inventory classification is used. In this paper, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process for multiple criteria ABC inventory classification has been proposed. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy process (Fuzzy AHP) is used to determine the relative weights of the attributes or criteria, and to classify inventories into different categories. To accredit the proposed model, it is implemented for the 351 raw materials of switch gear section of Energypac Engineering Limited (EEL), a large power engineering company of Bangladesh. In this approach, at first, related criteria have been selected (Unit price, last year consumption or annual demand, last use date, supplier, criticality, durability) and the weights of these criteria was determined using Fuzzy AHP. Then a score to each item was assigned for each criterion as triangular fuzzy number and the final normalized weighted score of each item using fuzzy set theory is calculate. Finally, Chang’s extent analysis was used for the comparison of fuzzy numbers and the final scores are compared with each other. Then all items were classified into three classes according to their final score.

Selection of an appropriate contractor plays an important role for the success of the accomplish-ment of any construction project. This paper presents a multi-criteria decision making method for contractor selection. The proposed study uses six criteria, namely; Experience, Financial stability, Quality performance, Manpower resources, Equipment resources and Current workload for evaluating different contractors. Using analytical hierarchy process, the study ranks these criteria and finds the relative importance of them. Next, The technique for Order of Preference by Simi-larity to ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to rank the alternative contractors according to these criteria.