This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important business intelligence factors influencing on development of export activities. The study selects a sample of business developers who were involved in export activities in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha based on standardized items was calculated as 0.882, which is well above the minimum desirable level. In addition, Bartlett & apos; s test of Sphericity yields a Chi-Square value of 3242.82 (df = 861, Sig. = 0.000). Using principle component analysis, the study has determined four factors including competitive position, organizational resources, efficient system and customer orientation influencing on development of export activities.

Having a supply chain is an unavoidable fact and all companies should focus on if they wish to survive in the competitive business world. This paper ranks criteria influencing on behavior of a medicine manufacturer agent when its goal is to select the supplier agents to interact with across a pharmaceutical agent based supply chain. The pharmaceutical industry is important for countries due to the distinguished role of health in societies and Iran is not an exception too. Besides, the industry in this country is encountered with some limitations because of the situation imposed by sanctions. In this study, first, ten criteria were selected based on expert’s opinions, two categories of quantitative as well as qualitative criteria were chosen for ranking the criteria and then TOPSIS and PROMETHEE ? methods were applied to rank the criteria. According to the results of this survey, qualitative criteria were determined as important factors influencing on supplier selection.

In supply chain management, supplier performance is evaluated based on several criteria. In this paper, a fuzzy multi-objective mathematical programming model is presented to consider different qualitative and quantitative factors to choose appropriate suppliers and the optimal order quantity allocated to them. The proposed study uses analytical hierarchy process to rank different suppliers and a fuzzy multi-objective mathematical programming is presented to choose the best suppliers. The study uses NSGAII to solve the resulted problem and the model is analysed using some sample results under various circumstances. The study considers different Pareto solution set obtained by TOPSIS ranking algorithm, and eventually determines the best possible solutions.

Inventory planning for the pre- and post-disaster phases of disaster relief lifecycle is a challenging problem associated with the humanitarian relief supply chains. In this work, two mathematical models are presented encompassing the whole disaster relief lifecycle. By accounting for holding costs of perishable supplies, a two-stage stochastic programming model is first developed by which the inventory prepositioning locations, inventory levels, and short-term distribution quantities are determined. For the recovery phase, this research adapts the well-known continuous review (Q, r) inventory model for relief warehouses while accounting for the inherent epistemic uncertainty in the required data by using the fuzzy programming. A case study of Iranian Red Cross is also provided to illustrate the applicability of the first model and to demonstrate how it supports the two first phases of disaster lifecycle. Additionally, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the (Q, r) model for the recovery phase. Lastly, the impact of penalty costs on the solutions is discussed.

Mining is one of the most important sectors in most countries. It produces raw material for other sectors such as industry, agriculture, etc. Therefore, governments always seek the solutions to prevent or at least reduce the risk of mining industry to minimize the waste of time and resource. One of the most popular risk in mining industry that should be clearly assessed is supply chain. There is a variety of methods to evaluate and classify risks. Fuzzy set is one of the most appropriate methods to categorize and evaluate risks, because this method is able to take into account the uncertainty involved in the process of risk assessment. In this article, fuzzy inference system is applied to evaluate and assess the supply chain risk of the Iranian mining industry. This research shows that the proposed model had a high accuracy and efficiency for assessing the risk of mining industry.

Today, due to rapid changes in the world, the infrastructure should be designed to produce goods in world class. Dynamic layout planning increases flexibility and reduces the cost of new products. Investigating the essential factors to achieve world-class shows that dynamic layout planning plays essential role on flexibility, cost reduction, implementation of world-class producing techniques, reduction of product delivery time, customer satisfaction, and management in multiple and worldwide locations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of dynamic layout planning on production of world class products in some firms located in province of Zanjan, Iran. Using Spearman correlation test, the study indicated that dynamic layout planning played an important role in delivering the products to the world-class level.

Energy crisis in recent decades has demonstrated strong interdependence between national security and energy security. We are also witness of sever conflicts in oil-rich zones such as Middle-East and West of Suez. This study is the first attempt to provide a flexible multi-objective mathematical model which not only mitigates catastrophic risks by filtering and taking plausible oil-supply disruption scenarios into account, but also reduces oil-supply disruption probability by considering and optimizing political, economic and financial dimensions of oil procurement. Mentioned model determines a resilient portfolio of oil suppliers under each scenario and decides which ports or pipelines must be prepared for receiving oil. Furthermore, the proposed model in the second phase enhances oil-availability in crisis time by storing strategic oil stocks in appropriate geographic points. Also regarding to complexity of the second phase model, a meta-heuristic algorithm has been provided to solve the mentioned model. Finally validity of proposed model is checked by solving it for Greece case problem; sensitivity analysis shows that provided model significantly mitigates catastrophic risks threating energy security by balancing political affairs and reinforcing infrastructural facilities with the least possible cost.

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a supply chains (SCs) under uncertainty with different components such as direct costs, operational costs, transaction expenses, order lead time, product flexibility and net profit. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) can be used for measuring the performance of supply chain problems. On the other hand, robust optimization approach is a powerful technique for handling problems faced with various environmental uncertainties. This paper combines these two concepts and proposes a method to evaluate SCs performance. The results of the proposed method, under any different environmental situation, show which ranking of SC’s performance is better in a network. The preliminary results of the implementation of a real-world case study indicates that the method could be successfully used for performance measurement.

In this research, the influences of modal properties of a micro cubic satellite on equivalent static loads (due to combination of quasi-static and dynamic loads during launch time) have been studied. The study shows that the magnitude of equivalent static loads can be affected by satellite effective modes and effective mass distribution along natural frequencies. Besides, when to distinct launchers with different dynamic environments candidate for launch, analytical results illustrate that sometimes the equivalent static combined load value can be higher for the launcher with smaller quasi-static loads. This phenomenon is due to effective modal mass distribution of the satellite. Consequently, a higher combined load may be occurred during launch for smaller quasi-static conditions. Furthermore, in separation phase of satellite from the launcher, the satellite modal parameters influence the magnitude of applied shock load in both axial (launch) and lateral directions, importantly. Thus the present study yields reliable input values for separation shock test which considers dynamic properties of the satellite in comparison with some standards and launcher manuals, suggest a rough estimation of shock load, neglecting the satellite structure dynamic behavior.

Parabolic leaf spring is one of the vital components in vehicle suspension system, and it is commonly used in heavy vehicles. It needs to have an excellent static load bearing capacity and fatigue life too. The purpose of this work is to make computer aided engineering (CAE) analysis of mono parabolic leaf spring and to see the effect of change of material in the optimized leaf. A mono steel leaf spring and a mono leaf spring made of composite material have been selected for this comparative analysis. The material of the mono steel leaf spring is EN45A and Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) as composite material which is having high strength to weight ratio. The mono leaf spring model is having one full length leave with eyes at both ends, two pins in each eye end and a rubber pad on the upper face of leave center. The CAD modelling of parabolic leaf spring has been done in CATIA and for analysis the model is imported in ANSYS workbench. It was shown that the use of composite material instead of steel resulted into large deflection, small variation in stresses and also a large amount of weight reduction.