With the development of faster means of communication, better quality computers and rapid transportation systems, manufacturing is no longer restricted at local level, but has become global in character. As a manufacturing company has to become competitive for its survival, it has to supply products of consistent high quality at reliable and reduced delivery time. Market also demands more product variants that means reduced lot size and high flexibility in operations. Manpower cost has also risen. All these factors tend to increase the product cost. However, the industry has to maintain the cost at a reasonable level. Confronting these challenges, companies world-wide are forced to find ways to reduce costs, improve quality, and meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. One successful solution has been the adoption of Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing strategy in which many functional areas of a company such as manufacturing, engineering, marketing, purchasing etc. are involved. In this paper, literature review on research works based on JIT was carried out and presented. The introductory section deals with the philosophy of JIT, and the concept involved in Kanban optimization and later this paper reviews literature on optimization Technique in JIT implementation.

Functionally Graded Steels (FGSs) are possible solutions to improve the properties of steels made by Martensite and Bainite brittle phases. These phases are usually present in the interface between the carbon ferritic steel and the stainless austenitic steel. FGSs materials are widely investigated in the recent literature but only few works have been devoted to investigate the impact energy in the case of crack arresters. To partially fill this gap, the effect of the distance between the notch tip and the position of the median phase on the Charpy impact energy is investigated in the present paper. The results show that when the notch apex is close to the median layer the impact energy reaches its maximum value due to the increment of the absorbed energy by plastic deformation ahead of the notch tip. On the other hand, when the notch apex is far from the median layer, the impact energy strongly decreases. Keeping into account the relationship between the Charpy impact energy and the plastic volume size, a new theoretical model has been developed to link the composite impact energy with the distance from the notch apex to the median phase. The results of the new model show a sound agreement with previous results taken from the literature.

During the past few years, there have been growing competition among business owners and they mostly have no choice but to decrease their prices in an attempt to survive on the market. In some cases, suppliers offer goods and services for less than the cost of production to gain more market share. In this paper, we study different factors influencing pricing strategy in food industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 36 questions, distributes it among 311 Iranian experts in food industry and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.72 and 3614, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived seven factors including supply management, environmental factors, product management, distribution structure, standardization strategies, market leadership and market organization.

This paper deals with exact solution for free vibration analysis of simply supported rectangular plates on elastic foundation. The solution is on the basis of three dimensional elasticity theory. The foundation is described by the Pasternak (two-parameter) model. First, the Navier equations of motion are replaced by three decoupled equations in terms of displacement components. Then, these equations are solved in a semi-inverse method. The obtained displacement field satisfies all the boundary conditions of the problem in a point wise manner. The solution is in the form of a double Fourier sine series. Then free-vibration characteristics of rectangular plates resting on elastic foundations for different thickness/span ratios and foundation parameters are studied. The numerical results are compared with the available results in the literature. Important parameters on the accuracy of plate theories and free-vibration characteristics of rectangular plates resting on elastic foundations are discussed.

Information technology plays an important role on the success of different organizations. In today’s competitive environment, there is a need to reduce the cost of products by increasing productivity and quality of products and services. Bullwhip effect is one of the most important issues influencing production planning reducing the efficiency of production planning by increasing unwanted materials, etc. Bullwhip effect occurs for many reasons such as lack of good demand estimation, poor communication between vendors and suppliers, etc. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation based on DEMATEL technique to find the effect of information technology on reducing the bad consequences of bullwhip effect. The study first uses systems dynamic to build a cause-and- effect relationship between different factors influencing bullwhip effect and then using fuzzy DEMATEL, the effect of information technology on bullwhip effect has been confirmed.

A land-based gas turbine may operate at the different environment including corrosive and dusty environments. These conditions can cause early damages in the “cold” parts as well as in the “hot” parts of the gas turbine. In this research, fatigue life of a compressor blade is predicted with and without damages. Damage is considered as a notch at the blade and is classified as three types of short, medium and long notches. These are numerically simulated in the compressor blade and fatigue crack initiation life is calculated. Stress analysis is carried out using finite element analysis followed by fatigue life calculations. Furthermore, the influence of blade tip displacement on life of the undamaged and damaged blade is investigated. Moreover, the effect of damage & apos; s size and location on blade’s life is reported. This procedure can be tuned with corrosion damages observed during the minor inspection where the gas turbines are operating in the unusual environments.

Information plays an important role on having crystal clear image about market. A good awareness about products, vendors, new rivals, etc. always helps us offer better prices and reach better agreements. This paper presents an investigation on the role of industrial market information on the success of negotiations. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 22 questions, distributes it among 228 Iranian experts and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the numbers of questions are reduced to 17. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.773 and 745.8, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived six factors including human resource management, integrated strategy, organizational software packages, communication factors, penetration factors, past perception and assessment process.

During the past few years, electronic marketing has gained significant portion of market share in the world. People become familiar with various products and services through the magic of internet and they could make their purchase with an ease of a click of a button. This paper presents an investigation on important factors influencing e-marketing in banking industry in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 19 questions, distributes it among 250 Iranian experts and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the number of questions are reduced to 16. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.90 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.939 and 2938, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived two factors including environmental factors as well as information technology.

This piece of work aims at the modeling and using the finite element method approach (FEM) to analyze the fatigue behavior of bolted beam to column end-plate connection in the structural steel framework subjected to static loading. A detailed three dimensional (3D) simulation model of the bolted beam to column end-plate connection is constructed in PRO-E wildfire and it is analyzed in the ANSYS workbench to obtain its behavior. The bolted end-plate connection is chosen as an important type of beam to column joint. The end-plate connection is chosen for its complexity in the analysis and behavior due to the number of connection components and their inheritable behavior. The solid elements, bonded contact and the bolt pretension are included to obtain the behavior of the structure. The FEA results of the structure with or without bolt pretension are compared with the available literature. At last the fatigue behavior of connections under over tensioning is presented in this work.

This paper presents an investigation on the role of human resource management on enterprise resource planning in one of higher educational systems in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 30 questions, distributes it among some Iranian experts and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the number of questions are reduced to 20. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.716 and 1169, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived five factors including environment analysis, infrastructure components, managerial decisions, integrated information systems and control components.