This paper studies the issue of channel coordination for a decentralized supply chain consisting of one vendor and one buyer in multi-period setting. Considering the allowance of the backorder at the buyer side distinguishes this work in the literature. The credit option contract as an incentive scheme is pursued to encourage the buyer to participate in the coordination model. Order quantity, credit time and backordered demand in each period as decision variables are determined jointly in order to encourage the chain’s member to participate in the coordinating contract. The proposed model shows that the credit option contract for the case of backorder allowance is able to realize the channel coordination in the studied supply chain. A wide range of numerical examples are studied to analyze the sensitivity of the contract efficiency to the inventory system’s parameters such as order cost, holding cost and shortage cost.

Cultural heritage and properties in collections are the most important organizational resources of museums, which can be deteriorated under improper environmental conditions. Identifying the climate deteriorating agents, and assessing and prioritizing their risk levels are among the most recent issues studied by museum conservators and researchers. Creating risk management programs leads to enhancing service life of cultural properties. Temperature and relative humidity are two important factors related directly to objects permanence; Thus, using methods which combine and quantify the conservation effects of temperature and relative humidity, could yield to useful and reliable insights for proposition of effective preventive conservation solutions. This research tries to explain the role and importance of risk management programs in the museums -as one of the main pillars of the country & apos; s cultural heritage; therefore, by using a multidisciplinary approach and existing experiments, proposes a method to examine and assess risks of temperature and relative humidity on museum objects. Such quantitative analysis could help estimate objects & apos; service life and provide solutions in order to enhance it. In order to examine the proposed research method, temperature and relative humidity data were gathered from textile storage room of the Cultural Institute of Bonyad Museums in a period of 18 months.

During the past few years, new methods of advertisements such as internet, email services, etc. have created new opportunities to promote products and services. The cost of an email message is normally negligible but the outcome could be significant. This paper presents an empirical investigation to find the effect of new advertisement techniques on export based product development in a case study of mobile devices. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 29 questions, distributes it among 150 exporters of mobile devices in Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.826. In addition, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.790 and 1023.3, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived five factors including emotional effects, brand promises, pricing strategy, modern advertisements and detected promotions.

Reverse Logistics has become buzzword in today’s industrial word and big differentiating factor in quest of success for any organization word wide. Whole world is suffering from scarcity of resources and we have finite area available for the waste disposal. One of the sustainable solutions is to design product in such a way so that we can maximize its reuse through reverse logistics. Reverse logistics is fast becoming industrial design standard for majority of organizations worldwide. Reverse logistics has become a need of an hour. Some of the organization do it voluntarily and some because of the environmental rules and legislations. In order to achieve total customer satisfaction, one has to take care of product for its entire life cycle through activities of reverse logistics. In this research I tried to investigate the factors affecting performance of reverse logistics in relation to customer satisfaction. I have used interpretive structural modelling technique to understand the complex pattern of contextual relationship amongst the most important factors through diagraph, which explain performance of reverse logistics in relation to customer satisfaction. I have also used MICMAC analysis to classify these factors according to their driving power and dependency power. MICMAC analysis facilitate in identification of most important factors in explaining performance of reverse logistics in relation to customer satisfaction. Further this research may helpful in reverse logistics design process planning, driven by customer requirement.

Marketing the network of organizations, including manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers, that distributes goods or services to consumers is one of the most important decisions for marketing managers and producers. In this study, we identify and prioritize the factors, which affect marketing strategy in selecting distribution channels by using fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making (FMCDM). The proposed study uses Fuzzy Delphi Analytic Hierarchy Process to determine the weights of the criteria by decision makers and marketing strategies is ranked by Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). Finally, the case study within a Kaleh Company (Dairy products) is performed and the results indicate that the “diversifying product” is the most important marketing strategies considered by experts.

The amount of damage induced by brittle fracture of cracked bodies depends considerably on the path of fractures. Therefore, prediction of the trajectory of fracture using suitable theoretical fracture criteria is very important for cracked structures. In this paper, using higher-order terms of Williams’s series expansion and the maximum tangential stress criterion, the mixed mode I/II crack growth path of an angled crack plate subjected to biaxial far field loading is investigated theoretically. To evaluate the accuracy of the theoretical results, they are compared with the experimentally reported trajectories for the angled crack plate specimen. It is shown that by taking into account the higher order terms of the Williams series expansion a very good agreement is observed between the experimental and theoretical mixed mode fracture paths in the angled crack problem. It was also observed that the theoretically determined initial angle of crack growth is consistent with the experimental results.

Plain and nanofiber-interleaved glass/epoxy laminates clamped according to ASTM D7136 tested under impact loading to assess the improvement in impact resistance of composite laminates that have been interleaved by electrospun polyvinylidene ?uoride (PVDF) nanofibers with two different thicknesses. Composite specimens with stacking sequence [0/90/0/90]S were impacted at impact energy of 5J. Variation of the impact characteristics such as maximum contact load, maximum de?ection, maximum contact time, absorbed energy are depicted in the ?gures. The results showed that PVDF nanofibers are not a good choice for toughening epoxy and improving impact damage resistance of GFRP.

Generation of residual stress and structure deformation are the most important problems in the process of structure welding. Residual stresses inside and around the welded joints are harmful for integrity and proper functioning of the welded part. Tensile residual stresses near the weld zone may cause in developing brittle fracture, reduction of fatigue life or crack propagation caused by corrosion stresses. Welding residual stresses may even reach the yield stress of the part and can affect the thermal or mechanical working properties of it. Different thermal and mechanical approaches have been developed in the past in order to reduce these residual effects. Thus, both radiative and convective heat transfer methods have important roles in distribution of residual stresses during the welding process. In this study, convection and radiation effects on distribution of residual stress inside a welded part have been investigated for three different cases. In the first case, convection heat transfer was ignored and only effect of radiation on residual stress distribution was considered. In the second case, just the convection heat transfer applied on the model during the welding process. In another case, effects of radiation and convection heat transfer methods were investigated, simultaneously. Results of the current study showed that both radiative and convective heat transfer mechanisms have a significant share on distribution of residual stresses inside the welded part. It was also shown that the share of convection is greater than that of radiation heat transfer method.

Numerous failure curves are presented in this manuscript to predict the onset of sudden fracture in V-notched brittle materials under combined tension-shear loading conditions. The curves were developed in a computational manner in terms of the notch stress intensity factors and based on the suitable failure concept of the maximum tangential stress (MTS) utilized frequently in the past by the author and his co-researchers for predicting mixed mode brittle fracture in extensive notched specimens. Three extensively used notch angles and various notch tip radii were considered in the computations. A wide range of brittle materials were also taken into account by defining and using the material critical distance. Through predicting load-bearing capacity and notch bifurcation angle utilizing only the two basic material properties namely the ultimate tensile strength and the plane-strain fracture toughness, engineers can design more rapidly and conveniently the V-notched brittle components with the aim to withstand reliably against sudden fracture.

Retail atmospherics have been well studied to have both functional and emotional impact on the behavioural intent of shoppers. The usage of well-orchestrated retail servicescape with its expanding canvas, both inside and outside the retail premise, has been targeted to induce subliminal perception of comfort and convenience in the mind of shoppers. Modern retail practice has incorporated customer relationship management (CRM), a pivotal business analytical process, to strengthen their interaction with shoppers. This paper attempts to gather empirical evidence on the possible mediating effects of CRM dimensional performance on the emotional orientation of shoppers, apprehended to be antecedent to favourable shopping behaviour. Appropriate statistical applications, following adequate literature survey, were deployed to test the hypotheses and the robustness of the default model. The results were indicative of strong moderating impact of CRM dimensional performance in augmenting emotional behaviour of customers to induce a fovourable behavioural intent. The default model also holds good confirming the causal convergence of constructs.