Tourism industry is one of the most important parts of economic development. It can create job either directly or through stimulating other economic sectors. Therefore, it is important for policy makers to determine the best places with good potentials for tourism development. Fars province has been the center of civilization and the origin of the Iranian literature and mysticism celebrities and could be a potential investment of tourism. However, this province does not have the infrastructure required to accommodate tourists, especially during holiday seasons. This study ranks different cities located in the Fras province having the necessary potential for investment in the tourism sector by using the numerical taxonomy in terms of 12 indicators. The research population includes 29 cities in this province based on the devision of 2016. The necessary data are collected from Directorate General of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism in Fars province. It is found that the cities of Shiraz, Marvdasht, Firouzabad, Sepidan, and Kazerun were the best cities for tourism investment, respectively.

The growth in renewable energy study has resulted in the expansion of mini-grids projects across different communities in developing countries. However, there is a need to ensure that a suitable business model is selected during the provision of mini-grid services in developing countries. This study presents a framework for ranking mini-grid business models. The proposed framework is a multi-criteria multi-decision (MCMD) making tool. The framework combines Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC), TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and WASPAS (weighted aggregated sum product assessment) methods. An interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) is used to convert the responses from decision-makers into crisp values. The applicability of the proposed framework was tested using Nigeria as a case study. Four potential mini-grid (private, government, community-based and public-private) business models for the case study were ranked using twelve criteria. The average values for the subjective and objective weight methods showed that electricity traffic and energy demand were the least and the most important criteria, respectively, for selecting a mini-grid business model. The results obtained showed that the best mini-grid model was a private model using a TOPSIS framework. A WASPAS framework ranked the community-based business model as the best model. This study results showed mini-grid business models in developing countries should be either private or community-based business models.

Created opportunities are refered as the opportunities in which none of the supply and demand parties exists clearly and obviously one or both of them must be created. Therefore, several economic inventions should take place in marketing, franchising, etc. so that opportunity can be created. This perception of opportunity deals with the creation of new markets. In the meantime, identifying some entrepreneurial actions influencing on the creation of entrepreneurial opportunities can provide backgrounds for the formation and empowering the opportunity creation. In this paper, some basic ideas about the creation of entrepreneurial opportunities and the evolution of opportunity creation theories are examined. Then effective actions on the opportunity creation are identified. Finally, the structure of the investigated actions is examined using the DEMATLE Method. The results which were according to the opinions of 15 experts of entrepreneurship showed that leadership, decision making, and strategy actions influence other entrepreneurial actions.

The present study aimed at identifying and evaluating the factors affecting the service experience at the touch points of banking services. These factors were prioritized to help the managers understand the most important factors for achieving the favorable service experience. In this study, the theoretical foundations and interviews with customers were used to identify the factors forming the service experience at touch points. Then, the Best-Worst method (BMW) was used to evaluate and determine the significance of each identified factor. Sixteen customers participated in the interview and ten customers participated in the study by the BMW method. Six touch points and 34 factors forming the service experience were created at these points of interview analysis. The research findings showed that ‘service process’ and ‘interaction customer-employees’ for creating a favorable experience are significant in banking services. In addition, the findings showed that bank managers should allocate their resources for improving them to achieve the competitive advantage.

In today's competitive world, Six Sigma can serve as a corporate strategy to improve quality and reduce costs. Six Sigma is a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, maintaining and maximizing organizational success, through an improved performance of processes. However, this tool can only be successful in organizations which are already prepared for Six Sigma implementation. This study investigated the readiness of an Iranian company, Tabarestan Steel Co., in terms of Six Sigma projects. In doing so, the study proposed a model designed for assessing the readiness of Six Sigma in organizations. To this end, primarily Six Sigma readiness indicators were identified through Fuzzy Delphi, by recourse to the experts’ opinions. Next the interrelationships between the indicators were examined through the Fuzzy DEMATEL method. The internal links between the indicators were determined after the examination, and the degree of importance and the weights of the indicators were decided. Ultimately, three highly important dimensions were discovered that had a significant function in Six Sigma implementation (leadership and perspective, corporate strategy, and focus on the customer).

The international strategic alliance is an inevitable solution for making competitive advantage and reducing the risk in today’s business environment. Partner selection is an important part in success of partnerships, and meanwhile it is a complicated decision because of various dimensions of the problem and inherent conflicts of stockholders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical approach to the problem of partner selection in international strategic alliances, which fulfills the gap between theories of inter-organizational relationships and quantitative models. Thus, a novel Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic AHP approach is proposed for combining the benefits of two complementary theories of inter-organizational relationships named, (1) Resource-based view, and (2) Transaction-cost theory and considering Fit theory as the perquisite of alliance success. The Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic AHP approach is a novel development of Interval-AHP technique employing robust formulation; aimed at handling the ambiguity of the problem and let the use of intervals as pairwise judgments. The proposed approach was compared with existing approaches, and the results show that it provides the best quality solutions in terms of minimum error degree. Moreover, the framework implemented in a case study and its applicability were discussed.

Coordination improves the profit of all the members in a supply chain. In this paper, a novel coordination mechanism is introduced in a retailer-manufacturer supply chain in which the retailer can adopt either an American option mechanism or a wholesale mechanism to satisfy the market demand throughout a multi-period horizon. The manufacturer follows a make-to-order production policy. This mechanism gives the retailer the right to select the more beneficial mechanism in each period. The retailer as the leader of the chain decides how many options should be purchased at the beginning of the horizon through a mixed-integer mathematical model. This model addresses the uncertainties in the market demand and the market price, simultaneously. A scenario planning approach is used to treat the random variables within the model. Also, an optimal scenario reduction model is adapted to reduce the computational complexity of the problem. Finally, a numerical experiment is designed to validate the performance of the model. The results demonstrate a remarkable improvement in the profit of both members. Moreover, a number of experiments are performed to show how the option price, the exercise price and the interest rate affect the performance of the contract.

Given the high costs of construction and maintenance, an optimum design methodology is one of the most important steps towards the development of transportation infrastructure, especially freeways. However, the effects of different variables on the decision-making process to find an optimal variant have caused the choice to become a very difficult and professional task for decision makers. So, the current paper aims to determine the optimal variant route for Isfahan-Shiraz freeway through MADM approaches. First, evaluation indices for an optimal route variant are derived through literature review and expert panel assessment. Then, a dynamic fuzzy GRA method is used for weightings and optimal route selection. Bases on the results, the road longevity, views of NGOs and route integration are identified as the highest-weighted criteria in route variant prioritization. Further, Route 3 is defined as the priority for the optimal variant for Isfahan–Shiraz freeway, which is the main basis in practice.

Abrasive Water Jet Machining is one of the novel nontraditional cutting processes found diverse applications in machining different kinds of difficult-to-machine materials. Process parameters play an important role in finding the economics of machining process at good quality. This research focused on the predictive models for explaining the functional relationship between input and output parameters of AWJ machining process. No single set of parametric combination of machining variables can suggest the better responses concurrently, due to its conflicting nature. Hence, an approach of Multi-objective has been attempted for the best combination of process parameters by modelling AWJM process using of ANN. It served a set of optimal process parameters to AWJ machining process, which shows a development with an enhanced productivity. Wide set of trail experiments have been considered with a broader range of machining parameters for modelling and, then, for validating. The model is capable of predicting optimized responses.

Today, with the advancement of technology in the production process of various products, the achievement of sustainable production and development has become one of the main concerns of factories and manufacturing organizations. In the same vein, many manufacturers try to select suppliers in their upstream supply chains that have the best performance in terms of sustainable development criteria. In this research, a new multi-criteria decision-making model for selecting suppliers and assigning orders in the green supply chain is presented with a fuzzy optimization approach. Due to uncertainty in supplier capacity as well as customer demand, the problem is formulated as a fuzzy multi-objective linear programming (FMOLP). The proposed model for the selection of suppliers of SAPCO Corporation is evaluated. Firstly, in order to select and rank suppliers in a green supply chain, a network structure of criteria has defined with five main criteria of cost, quality, delivery, technology and environmental benefits. Subsequently, using incomplete fuzzy linguistic relationships, pair-wise comparisons between the criteria and sub-criteria as well as the operation of the options will be assessed. The results of these comparisons rank the existing suppliers in terms of performance and determine the utility of them. The output of these calculations (utility index) is used in the optimization model. Subsequently, in the order allocation process, the two functions of the target cost of purchase and purchase value are optimized simultaneously. Finally, the order quantity is determined for each supplier in each period.