Product selection is always one of the troubles that decision makers are facing with it. Correct selection requires having suitable method for this important issue. In this article, we concern to introduce an approach of fuzzy decision making for selection to decision makers. The nature of decision making is usually complex and without structure. Totally, most of qualitative and quantitative factors such as quality, price, and flexibility should be concerned for determining a suitable product. In this study, it is attempted to use recent advances in ranking methods for product selection. The proposed study uses oral preferences language shown in terms of triangular and trapezoid fuzzy numbers. Then, a multi criteria hierarchical decision making is suggested on the basis of fuzzy collection theory for product selection where the proposed fuzzy VIKOR uses different qualitative and quantitative criteria.

Many supply chain problems are involved with different parameters, which are under uncertainties. One of the primary concerns on supplier selection is to handle the uncertainty under different circumstances. The primary objective of this paper is to design a model to select suppliers and to determine the amount of purchase from any supplier in the supply chain system. For this purpose, we select the most important criteria using fuzzy questionnaires where the questionnaire uses experts’ opinions in terms of linguistic values. Then, a hierarchy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model based on fuzzy-sets theory is proposed to rank different suppliers and using a goal programming approach, we determine the amount of order product from each supplier. The implementation of the proposed model is demonstrated using a real-world case study.

Experiences and studies, results and documentations review show that the impress and the stra-tegic level of Project Management (PM) have been increased. Different organizations have in-troduced various standards for PM. Indeed, the main criterion to select and apply PM standards relies on the standard, depending on the project type and the experiences of PM managers. The primary objective of PM standards is to direct a project into a systematic and regular framework. Application of PM standards makes project easier and gives accurate analysis that provide bene-fits for executives and gives some managerial approach. The main purpose of this research is to compare and evaluate two most popular and versions of PM standards; namely PMBOK and ISO 21500.

The aim of the present work was to develop a guideline for approving the railway axles made of C35 steel and containing surface and/or in-body defects after manufacturing. First, several through and part-through circular cracks were modeled on the surface and in the body of the axle at its critical cross-section. Then, the permissible size of such cracks was determined by using the fracture mechanics. To verify the validity of the guideline, the theoretical result for the semi-circular surface crack was compared with the allowable size prescribed by the international railway standard. A very good agreement was found to exist between the predicted and the standard values.

A simple and economic synthesis of 3,4-dihydropyrimidin-2(1H)-ones using pyridinium triflate as catalyst under microwave condition was attempted with an easy work-up protocol. Further tetrazolo [1,5-a] pyrimidine-6-carboxylates were synthesized by three-component coupling reaction of B-ketoesters with a mixture of aromatic aldehyde and 5-aminotetrazole. The products were well characterized with IR, NMR (1H and 13C NMR) and mass spectrometry.

This paper investigates the relation between stock liquidity and firm performance. Liquidity plays an important role on performance of firms listed in Stock Exchange. When there is a good flow of trading stocks, people could expect more financing through absorbing investors on the market. This study examines the relationship between stock market liquidity and firm performance. The sample of the study was the continuously NSE listed top ten indices over the period 2005-2014. To check the relationship between stock market liquidity and firm performance, the ordinary least sequence and general linear models were applied on Gretl and SPSS, respectively. The results of this study showed positive relationship between independent variables, return and age on dependent variable Tobin’s Q. Further relationship between stock market liquidity and firm performance was also check and it was found that stock market liquidity was correlated with higher firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q.

One of the most important activities of tour and travel agencies is to select the appropriate tour configuration. There are normally two primary objectives of season and time period to set a group of cities called designing tour scenarios. The success of tour scenarios is deeply related to the experiments and wisdom of the experts and planners in travel agencies. This paper presents a fuzzy rule decision making to find the suitable set of cities where different possible criteria are ranked using analytical hierarchy procedure. The proposed model of this paper is applied for a real-world case study of Iranian tour agency and the results are analyzed under different.

Reverse logistics plays a very critical role in the overall strategy of a business and hence need to be very effective in meeting its objectives. Studies have come up with various insights to optimize reverse logistics arrangements within a specific industry or a sector, but presently there is no study which provides an approach to share knowledge drawn out of reverse logistics arrangements, across dissimilar industries and sectors. Such a study is significant because the response to a reverse logistics arrangement is not uniform in an industry or sector in all the countries, due to different market maturity levels, dissimilar consumer behaviour, and the state of the economy itself. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a guide for logistics planners through which they can utilize the learning outcomes that emerge from dissimilar industries or sectors within the same economy also. The research findings show that the reverse logistics arrangements can be categorised into various types on the basis of origin and reason for return. It is shown that the products with dissimilar characteristics can be grouped together into six types depending on the common supply chain member interests. Further, the reverse logistics arrangements change from one type to another as a product moves across its life stages. It highlights an approach using which the knowledge drawn from a reverse logistics type in one sector/industry can be applied to the same type in another sector/industry, by focusing on the product types, whose return share similar supply chain member interests. Logistics network planners can apply the insights that have emerged from this analysis to effectively design reverse logistics channels.

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is one of the effective techniques for managing the inventory in supply chain. VMI models have been proven to reduce the cost of inventory compared with traditional ones under some conditions such as constant demand and production expenditure. However, the modeling of the VMI problem has never been studied under some realistic assumptions such as price dependent demand. In this paper, three problem formulations are proposed. In the first problem formulation, we study a VMI problem with one buyer and one supplier when demand is considered to be a function of price and price elasticity to demand, and production cost is also a function of demand. The proposed model is formulated and solved in a form of geometric programming. For the second and the third models, we consider VMI problem with two buyers and two suppliers assuming that each buyer centre is relatively close to the other buyer centre. Each supplier has only one product which is different from the product of the other supplier. Two suppliers cooperate in customer relationship management and two buyers cooperate in supplier relationship management as well, so the suppliers send the orders of two buyers by one vehicle, simultaneously. For the third model, an additional assumption which is practically applicable and reasonable is considered. For all the proposed models, the optimal solution is compared with the traditional one. We demonstrate the implementation of our proposed models using some numerical examples.

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is one of the effective techniques for managing the inventory in supply chain. VMI models have been proven to reduce the cost of inventory compared with traditional ones under some conditions such as constant demand and production expenditure. However, the modeling of the VMI problem has never been studied under some realistic assumptions such as price dependent demand. In this paper, three problem formulations are proposed. In the first problem formulation, we study a VMI problem with one buyer and one supplier when demand is considered to be a function of price and price elasticity to demand, and production cost is also a function of demand. The proposed model is formulated and solved in a form of geometric programming. For the second and the third models, we consider VMI problem with two buyers and two suppliers assuming that each buyer centre is relatively close to the other buyer centre. Each supplier has only one product which is different from the product of the other supplier. Two suppliers cooperate in customer relationship management and two buyers cooperate in supplier relationship management as well, so the suppliers send the orders of two buyers by one vehicle, simultaneously. For the third model, an additional assumption which is practically applicable and reasonable is considered. For all the proposed models, the optimal solution is compared with the traditional one. We demonstrate the implementation of our proposed models using some numerical examples.