Critical path method plays an important role on managing medium to large-scale problems. It is often difficult to determine the critical path for different reasons such as the existing uncertainties in processing tasks. One alternative to handle the uncertainty associated with the processing time is to use fuzzy techniques. We present a new method to calculate the critical path method when the processing times follow trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. The proposed model of this paper does not use any defuzzification technique to find the final processing time. The implementation of the proposed model is compared with other techniques using a well-known example from the literature.

Technical analysis has been one of the most popular methods for stock market predictions for the past few decades. There have been enormous technical analysis methods to study the behavior of stock market for different kinds of trading markets such as currency, commodity or stock. In this paper, we propose two different methods based on volume adjusted moving average and ease of movement for stock trading. These methods are used with and without generalized regression neural network methods and the results are compared with each other. The preliminary results on historical stock price of 20 firms indicate that there is no meaningful difference between various proposed models of this paper.

In this paper, we propose a multi criteria decision making technique to determine an efficient solution for quadratic assignment problem. The proposed method of this paper considers transportation cost, adjacency and separation as the most important criteria to find the efficient layout. A tabu search is used to generate a set of feasible solutions and for each solution, we evaluate various criteria. The proposed model of the paper uses DEA technique to choose the most efficient units among the feasible solutions. The implementation of the proposed method is demonstrated using some benchmark problems and the results are discussed in details.

Nowadays electronic commerce plays an important role in many business activities, operations, and transaction processing. The recent advances on e-businesses have created tremendous opportunities to increase profitability. This paper presents a multi-objective marketing planning model which simultaneously determines efficient marketing expenditure, service cost and product & apos; s selling price in two competitive markets. To solve the proposed model, we discuss a multi-objective geometric programming (GP) approach based on compromise programming method. Since our proposed model is a signomial GP and global optimality is not guaranteed for the problem, we transform the model to posynomial form. Finally, the solution procedure is illustrated via a numerical example and a sensitivity analysis is presented.

This paper presents a new mathematical model to select an optimal combination of productivity improvement techniques. The proposed model of this paper considers four-stage cycle productivity and the productivity is assumed to be a linear function of fifty four improvement techniques. The proposed model of this paper is implemented for a real-world case study of manufacturing plant. The resulted problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming which can be solved for optimality using traditional methods. The preliminary results of the implementation of the proposed model of this paper indicate that the productivity can be improved through a change on equipments and it can be easily applied for both manufacturing and service industries.

One of the most important issues on educational systems is to measure the relative efficiency of similar units based on non-financial factors. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has become popular among many who wish to rank educational systems using different factors such as the rate of educational success or the number of employees, etc. However, one of the main concerns on implementing DEA methods is the uncertainty involved in input/output parameters. In this paper, a robust data envelopment analysis (RDEA) is developed to measure the efficiency of high schools considering uncertainty on output parameters. We present an empirical study on a set of high schools located in Tehran, which is the capital city of Iran. The study uses uncertain data for input/output information and the results are compared with an existing parametric stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). The preliminary results indicate that the robust DEA approach is relatively a reliable method for efficiency estimating.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is essentially a commercial software package that enables the integration of transaction - oriented data and business processes throughout an organization. In order to remain competitive in this global business scenario, the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) are opting for ERP implementation. In Indian SME sector, the adoption of ERP is rapidly increasing. Literature shows many instances where organizations, even after implementing such novel information systems like ERP, are unable to derive the benefits of integration. It is, therefore, not surprising that implementation of enterprise information systems in general is quite difficult due to their size, scope and complexity. Therefore, there is a need to identify some issues that would lead to positive outcome for the implementation of ERP systems in the context of Indian SME sector. This paper thus attempts to identify and to prioritize the factors influencing proper implementation of ERP systems in a business organization particularly for Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs). The research presented here is specifically targeted the Indian SMEs, which have already completed the process of implementing ERP system.

During the past few decades, many organizations have attempted to increase their productivity
through outsourcing parts of their responsibilities. Outsourcing helps firms reduce their low
value added activities and focus on their high value added activities. It also helps organization
save their time and energy which leads to more efficient units. The idea of outsourcing is more
important for project based organizations where the nature of works is different from a
particular project to another one. This paper presents an integrated balanced score card system
with an adaptation of ELECTRE III method to select suitable resources for outsourcing. The
proposed model of the paper is implemented for a case study of subway system in Iran and the
results are discussed.

This paper proposes the social network analysis (SNA), to study interaction among various
activities in a product development process (PDP). The implementation of SNA helps to
measure the properties of information flow and identifies PDP activities and limitations. The
findings of an exploratory research project which explores the potential of SNA, as an improve
tool for visually mapping and analyzing the stakeholders relationships found across the IC
substrates design/manufacturing’s PDP of the Unimicron Technology Corp. From the findings,
the authors prescribe the necessary SNA recommendations to improve the social conditions
within the PDP.

In this paper, a bi-objective mathematical model for emergency services location-allocation
problem on a tree network considering maximum distance constraint is presented. The first
objective function called centdian is a weighted mean of a minisum and a minimax criterion
and the second one is a maximal covering criterion. For the solution of the bi-objective
optimization problem, the problem is split in two sub problems: the selection of the best set of
locations, and a demand assignment problem to evaluate each selection of locations. We
propose a heuristic algorithm to characterize the efficient location point set on the network.
Finally, some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed
algorithm.