Leagile supply chain management has emerged as a proactive approach for improving business value of companies. The companies that face volatile and unpredictable market demand of their products must pioneer in leagile supply chain strategy for competition and various demands of customers. There are literally many approaches for performance metrics of supply chain in general, yet little investigation has identified the reliability and validity of such approaches particularly in leagile supply chains. This study examines the consistency approaches by confirmatory factor analysis that determines the adoption of performance dimensions. The prioritization of performance enablers under these dimensions of leagile supply chain in small and medium enterprises are determined through fuzzy logarithmic least square method (LLSM). The study developed a generic hierarchy model for decision-makers who can prioritize the supply chain metrics under performance dimensions of leagile supply chain.

In this study the degradation of an azo dye, Methyl Red, which is used in textile industry, using Fenton reaction was studied and optimized by a chemometrics method. Fenton oxidation is one of the Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs), in which hydroxyl radicals are generated from Fenton’s reagents (Fe2+, H2O2). The effects of various experimental parameters in this reaction were investigated using Central Composite Design (CCD) method. The experimental design was done at five levels of operating parameters. 28 experiments, with 4 factors and 5 levels for each factor were designed. These factors (or variables) include [Fe2+], [H2O2], [oxalate] and the reaction time. A full-quadratic polynomial equation between the percentage of dye degradation (as the response) and the studied parameters was established. After removing the non-significant terms from the model, response surface method was used to obtain the optimum conditions. The optimum ranges of variables were: 0.1 - 0.4 mM for [Fe2+], 13.5-22 mM for [H2O2], 1.5-2 mM for [Oxalate], and 115-125 min for the reaction time. Also the results of extra experiments showed that these optimized values can be used for real samples and yield to high values for the response.

Many supplier selection problems are involved with various criteria such as quality of supplier, price, delivery time, etc. This paper presents a survey on the implementation of using different multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods for supplier selection problems. The reviews covers recent advances of MCDM techniques such as data envelopment analysis (DEA), analytical hierarchy process, etc. over the period 2000-2012. The review also reveals that nearly 60% of the applications are associated with business unit, 15% is related to economy, 9% is devoted to service and development and 8% is dedicated to research and development. In our survey, DEA has become the most popular technique for supplier selection problem followed by Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).

In traditional spectrophotometric determination of stability constants of complexation, it is necessary to find a wavelength at which only one of the components has absorbance without any spectroscopic interference of the other reaction components. In the present work, a simple multi-wavelength model-based method has been developed to determine stability constants for complexation reaction regardless of the spectra overlapping of components. Also, pure spectra and concentration profiles of all components are extracted using multi-wavelength model based method. In the present work spectrophotometric titration of several cationic metal ions with new synthetic ligand were studied in order to calculate the formation constant(s). In order to estimate the formation constants a chemometrics method, model based analysis was applied.

Safety is one of the main reasons for choosing railway to other transportation modes and improvement of transportation safety has attracted many researchers in recent years. In this paper, we aim to investigate the influence of safety measures on railways performance evaluation, empirically. The proposed model of this paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate the railways efficiency scores in the presence of safety measure. According to three proposed factors, the most appropriate model is selected to compare its result with output-oriented DEA model. The results of the survey are surprising since inefficient railroads become efficient through adding undesirable outputs in evaluation model.

Silver indium sulfide (AgInS2) nanoparticles were synthesized by microwave method. These nanopartricles were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, DRS, SEM and TEM techniques. The band gap energy of 1.96 eV was determined by UV-Vis diffuse reflection spectrum (DRS). The photocatalytic activity was studied by photodegradation reaction of 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) under visible light irradiation. The influence of initial concentration, initial solution pH on the degradation percentage of 2,4-DCP and also, the kinetics of photodegradation were investigated. The removal efficiency up to 95% proved the superior capability of AgInS2 (AIS) nanoparticles for water purification.

This paper presents a strategic multi segment, multi period and multi-product supply chain management to meet reliable networks for handling disruptions strike. We present a mixed-integer programming model whose objective is to minimize the expected cost composed of probability and cost of occurrence in each scenario. The proposed model of this paper considers time value of money for each operation and transportation cost. We attempt to minimize expected costs by considering the levels of inventory, back-ordering, the available machine capacity and labor levels for each source, transportation capacity at each transshipment node and available warehouse space at each destination. The problem is generalized by taking into account backup supplier with reserved capacity and backup transshipment node that, which satisfies demands at higher price without disruption facility. We use a priority-based genetic algorithms encoding to solve the proposed problem under multi period and multi product conditions. The performance of the proposed model is examined using some instances.

A green and efficient method for the preparation of 5-aryl-4-hydroxy-2-methyl-1H-pyrrole-3-carboxylic acid esters and 6-aryl-3-methylpyridazine-4-carboxylic acid esters via three-component reaction of arylglyoxal hydrates with B-dicarbonyl compounds in the presence of ammonium acetate and hydrazine hydrate using water as solvent under ultrasonic irradiation was reported. The reactions proceeded rapidly and afforded the corresponding pyrroles and pyridazines in good to high yields in very short reaction time.

In this paper, a technique has been developed to determine the optimum mix of logistic service providers of a make-to-order (MTO) supply chain. A serial MTO supply chain with different stages/ processes has been considered. For each stage different logistic service providers with different mean processing lead times, but same lead time variances are available. A realistic assumption that for each stage, the logistic service provider who charges more for his service consumes less processing lead time and vice-versa has been made in our study. Thus for each stage, for each service provider, a combination of cost and mean processing lead time is available. Using these combinations, for each stage, a polynomial curve, expressing cost of that stage as a function of mean processing lead time is fit. Cumulating all such expressions of cost for the different stages along with incorporation of suitable constraints arising out of timely delivery, results in the formulation of a constrained nonlinear cost optimization problem. On solving the problem using mathematica, optimum processing lead time for each stage is obtained. Using these optimum processing lead times and by employing a simple technique the optimum logistic service provider mix of the supply chain along with the corresponding total cost of processing is determined. Finally to examine the effect of changes in different parameters on the optimum total processing cost of the supply chain, sensitivity analysis has been carried out graphically.

Kinetic studies were made of the reactions between triphenylphosphine 1 and dialkyl acetylenedicarboxylates 2, in the presence of NH-acids, such as benzotriazole, 5-methylbenzotriazole or 5-chlorobenzotriazole 3 (as a protic/nucleophilic reagent). To determine the kinetic parameters of the reactions, they were monitored by UV spectrophotometry. Useful information was obtained from studies of the effect of solvent, structure of reactants (dialkyl acetylenedicarboxylates and NH-acids) and also concentration of reactants on the reaction rates. First and third steps (k2, k3) of all reactions were recognized as a rate determining and fast steps, respectively. Proposed mechanism was confirmed on the basis of experimental data.