In this paper, we study a supply chain problem where a whole seller/producer distributes goods among different retailers. The proposed model of this paper is formulated as a more general and realistic form of traditional vehicle routing problem (VRP). The main advantages of the new proposed model are twofold. First, the time window does not consider any lower bound and second, it treats setup time as separate cost components. The resulted problem is solved using a hybrid of particle swarm optimization and simulated annealing (PSO-SA). The results are compared with other hybrid method, which is a combination of Ant colony and Tabu search. We use some well-known benchmark problems to compare the results of our proposed model with other method. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed model of this paper performs reasonably well.

In the contexture of a customer-driven goods or service design process, a well-timed update of customer’s requirements may not only serve as a necessity indicator to observe how things change over time, but also it incorporates the firms a better ground to interoperate different strategies to meet the future needs of its customer. This paper proposes a systematic methodology to deal with the customer needs’ dynamics, in terms of their relative weights, in the QFD. Compared with previous research, the contribution of this paper is fourfold. First, it applies some linguistic variables to get preferences of customers and experts to determine the relative importance of customer requirements (CRs) and the relationships between customer requirements and engineering characteristics (ECs). Second, it proposes the implementation of a forecasting technique. Third, it describes more comprehensively on how future uncertainty in the weights of customer’s needs could be estimated and transmitted into the design attributes. Fourth, it proposes the implementation of a quantitative approach, which takes into account the decision maker’s attitude towards risk to optimize the QFD decision making analysis. Finally, a real-world application of QFD is provided to demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed methodology.

This paper presents a mathematical model for the problem of minimizing the maximum lateness on a single machine when the deteriorated jobs are delivered to each customer in various size batches. In reality, this issue may happen within a supply chain in which delivering goods to customers entails cost. Under such situation, keeping completed jobs to deliver in batches may result in reducing delivery costs. In literature review of batch scheduling, minimizing the maximum lateness is known as NP-Hard problem; therefore the present issue aiming at minimizing the costs of delivering, in addition to the aforementioned objective function, remains an NP-Hard problem. In order to solve the proposed model, a Simulation annealing meta-heuristic is used, where the parameters are calibrated by Taguchi approach and the results are compared to the global optimal values generated by Lingo 10 software. Furthermore, in order to check the efficiency of proposed method to solve larger scales of problem, a lower bound is generated. The results are also analyzed based on the effective factors of the problem. Computational study validates the efficiency and the accuracy of the presented model.

This research aims to present how choosing a suitable layout can improve the performance of virtual cellular manufacturing systems (VCMSs), especially minimizing the material flow between machines required by each family group. To present the efficacy of basic layouts on performances of VCMSs, a multi-objective mathematical model with a goal programming (GP) approach is developed to generate VCMSs based on resource-elements (REs). The formulated model is coded in Lingo software and is run over functional and distributed arrangements of the same machines. The performance and the validity of the developed model are checked by a numerical example taken from the literature. The objective function of the mathematical model is measured for that example over two mentioned layout to compare the performance of the generated systems. Moreover, because of the material handling costs importance, material flows are measured to find the best option as a basic layout for VCMSs. To compare the performance of the generated system with the classical cellular manufacturing system (CMS), cell capacity utilization (CCU) is employed as an independent criterion to evaluate each system. The result illustrates the priority of distributed layouts for generating RE-based VCMSs because of its flexibility, minimizing the objective function for the mathematical model, and smaller material flow by the components. In addition, the generated VCMSs outperforms the classical CMS from the CCU point of view.

Recently, the economic lot scheduling problem (ELSP) with common cycle time and shelf life restrictions has attracted the attention of several researchers. In this paper, a comparative study of solutions given by Xu and Sarker (2003) [Computers & Operations Research 30 (6), 925-938] with the results given by Viswanathan and Goyal (2000) [International Journal of Production Research, 38 (4), 829-836] are presented. Additionally, the paper makes some observations about two mathematical expressions, which contain a technical shortcoming.

This paper aims to investigate shoppers’ motivations for visiting the mall in respect of their demographic characteristics. The study was Cross-sectional and adopted the quantitative method. Structure questionnaire was used to collect data through a mall intercept approach. Factor analysis was conducted to determine the mall visitation motivations of shoppers and Chi-square test and regression analysis used to help answer the research questions. The paper found eight (8) key mall visitation motivations attract Ghanaian shoppers. Escapism influences the shoppers most, followed by pleasure flow, safety, aesthetic and architectural leisure, respectively. The least motivational factor is exploration. The result suggests that shoppers in Ghana are most likely to see the mall as an escape route from their daily hectic conditions and a place for relaxation.

Several industrial engineering and psychological studies have shown that noise affects the important aspects of communication for both adults and children. For speech understanding by hearing aids users and language development in children, an accurate hearing is very important. A metric has been developed for measuring an individual & apos; s acceptance of noise while listening to speech in quiet. This metric is known as Acceptable Noise Levels (ANLs). Studies have shown large inter-subject variability in acceptance of background noise. An argument has been made that an acceptance of background noise is a “means” that will help to solve the puzzle and monumental problem of hearing aid rejection. Meanwhile, within subject age dependency has not been investigated. This study is conducted to determine if ANL inter and intra-subject variability under music signal depends on age. Twenty subjects participated in the study (average age = 29; SD = 3.7; range 23-35 years). All participants had hearing level not worse than 25dB HL at octave frequencies from 250Hz to 4000Hz. Listeners’ task was to adjust the level of music played in quiet to their most comfortable listening level and then to adjust the level of background noise to the maximum level that they still consider acceptable while listening to music. Further, music is not a speech signal that many researchers have used to determine the significance of age on ANL inter-subject variability. Results of this study supported the findings of others on age dependency, which shows that ANL inter and intra-subject variability is independent of age.

The Indigenous Ghanaian woman entrepreneur, this study found exhibits many similarities with their counterparts in other countries in terms of their personality traits. However, they differed in other aspects such as their educational backgrounds and modes of entrepreneurial skills acquisition. Through their entrepreneurial activities the women have made substantial contributions to the economic growth of Ghana in terms of innovation, job creation, and reduction in poverty and unemployment. Using a survey methodology, this study concludes that to succeed as a female entrepreneur in Ghana, one requires some specific knowledge, skills and attitudes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors promoting knowledge sharing and knowledge creation in banking sector of Pakistan. With the help of literature review, we identified most important factors in knowledge sharing and knowledge creation including organizational culture, trust, motivation, employee’s attitude and socialization. The populations selected for analysis consist of (250) male and female employees of banking sector of Pakistan and response have been received from 225 respondents. The collection of data was a very difficult task and it has taken almost four months. The data were collected from the five cities of Pakistan including Islamabad, Faisalabad, Multan, Peshawar and Lahore. The results show that all the factors have significant impact on knowledge creation and Knowledge sharing. The findings of the study also show that these factors are necessary for the promotion of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing culture in an organization. The knowledge sharing and knowledge creation are the keys for the success of an organization. A firm or an organization can sustain its competitive edge in market with the help of Knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. The final results of this study conclude that socialization factor is at top, trust factor is at second and motivational factor is at third according to the respondents’ point of view.

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is a new area of research, which is considered in different areas including banking industry. In this paper, we design a questionnaire in Likert scale and measure CQ in banking industry. The proposed study of this paper distributes 53 questionnaires among 60 employees of bank Sarmyeh, which is one of the private banks in Iran. The study also distributes a standard questionnaire among them to measure the performance of the same employees. Cronbach alpha are calculated for both questionnaires as 0.8155 and 0.9421, respectively. The study calculates Pearson correlation ratio between these two items and the result indicates that there is a positive (0.41) and meaningful relationship between CQ and performance measurement. In addition, there is a positive and meaningful relationship between motivational CQ and performance measurement (0.378). However, the survey does not find any meaningful relationship between cognitive CQ, metacognitive CQ and behavioral CQ on one side and performance measurement.