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Multi-objective scheduling in an agent based Holonic manufacturing system
, Pages 1-16 T. K. Jana B. Bairagi, S. Paul, Sk. Sahnawaj, B. Sarkar, J. Saha PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: The present paper is aimed at multi-objective scheduling in an agent based holonic manufacturing system to satisfy the goal of several communities namely the product, the resource, and the organization simultaneously. In this attempt, first a multi criteria based priority rule is developed following Simple Additive Weight (SAW) method under Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) environment to rank the products. Accordingly, the products are allowed to select a particular resource for execution by negotiation considering minimum time as criterion. The interests of different communities are accomplished by allocating the ordered rank of products to the ordered rank of resources. Conflict, if arises between products and resources, are resolved by introducing the concept of Early Finish Time (EFT) as criterion for task allocation. A scheduling algorithm is proposed for execution of the rule. In view of machine failure, a cooperation strategy is evolved that also optimizes reallocation of the incomplete task. It is concluded that the proposed scheduling algorithm together with the disturbance handling algorithm are poised to satisfy the agent’s local objective as well as organization’s global objective concurrently and are commensurable with multi agent paradigm. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.003 Keywords: Multi-objective scheduling; Holonic manufacturing system; Multi agent system; Multi criteria decision making; Priority rule; Scheduling rule |
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An application of fuzzy TOPSIS to improve the process of supply chain management in the food industries: A case study of protein products manufacturing company
, Pages 17-26 Emad Roghanian, Abbas Sheykhan and Ehsan Sayyad Abendankashi PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Food industries as one of the most important industries in country, needs appropriate planning at both macro and micro levels. One of the important parts, which need to be discussed is the supply chain management in this industry. In this study, the importance of supply chain in food industries is studied. The proposed study determines different suppliers and using various criteria, the study applies Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank different alternatives. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed model of this paper is capable of determining appropriate suppliers in food industry. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.10.001 Keywords: Fuzzy TOPSIS; Supply chain management; Food supply chain |
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A fuzzy AHP approach for employee recruitment
, Pages 27-36 Mohsen Varmazyar and Behrouz Nouri PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Human resource management plays an essential role on development of any business organization. Selection of employee normally depends on various criteria such as employee commitment, necessary skills, etc. Therefore, a good strategy to hire appropriate employee is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) specially the ones, which could handle uncertainty, properly. In this paper, we present a method to use MCDM techniques for hiring employees. In fact, the present work proposes a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) as one of the most popular multi-criteria decision making techniques. A computer application is developed where it receives the configuration of the employee selection problem, evaluates the candidates and ranks them using the appropriate voting system. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.08.006 Keywords: Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process; MCDM; AHP |
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An exploration study on influential factors on information and communication technology
, Pages: 37-42 Naser Azad, Mehdi Nikanpour and Somayeh Hozouri PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: During the past few years, information and communication technology (ICT) has revolutionized banking industry in the world. People are now able to do their business banking activities such as bill payments, transfer funds, etc. through the art of ICT features such as automatic teller machines, internet or telephone banking services. This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing ICT implementation in Iranian banking industry. The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 26 variables. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.901, which validates the questionnaire. The survey detects six factors influencing ICT including efficiency approach, new advanced technological achievements, human resource management, service strategy, growth strategy and supporting systems. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.08.005 Keywords: Information and communication technology; ICT; Factor analysis; Banking industry |
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An application of fuzzy TOPSIS on ranking products: A case study of faucet devices
, Pages: 43-48 Seyed Hasan Kia, Abolfazl Danaei and Mehrdad Oroei PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: During the past two decades, there have been some concerns on application of multiple criteria decision making on prioritizing production planning. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to use Technique of ranking by similarity by positive ideal solution (TOPSIS) for ranking various alternatives productions in an Iranian firm in Faucet industry named Irandoosh. The proposed study uses fuzzy numbers to handle uncertainty and using five criteria of profitability, life cycle, quality, social issues and production capacity, analytical hierarchy process is employed to rank various alternatives and then rank different products based on TOPSIS technique. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.08.004 Keywords: Fuzzy TOPSIS; Ranking method; Faucet |
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An exploration study on influential factors on customer relationship management
, Pages: 49-56 Naser Azad, Amir Hassanjani Roshan and Somayeh Hozouri PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: These days, we see an increasing competition among different business owners and they strive for customer retention. Customer relationship management plays an important role to increase business performance and attracting new customers in an attempt to have more market shares. One primary concern is to find more about important factors influencing customers being satisfied with different services they may receive. This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing customer relationship management (CRM) in information and communication firm is city of Tehran, Iran. The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 27 variables. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.861, which validates the questionnaire. The survey detects six factors influencing CRM learning performance attributes, enterprise resource planning, perception attributes, structure oriented, perception image and organizational resources. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.08.003 Keywords: Customer relationship management; Factor analysis; CRM |
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A study to determine influential factors on data security
, Pages: 57-64 Naser Azad, Neda Abbasi and Seyed Foad Zarifi PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: During the past few years, there has been increasing interest in making online transaction. As people become more interested in using internet for their daily business activities such as regular communications, financial transactions, etc., there will be more concerns on security of available data. In fact, data security is the primary concern in today’s online activities. This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing data security in Municipality is city of Tehran, Iran. The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 29 variables, which were reduced to 22 questions after considering skewness statistics. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86, which validates the questionnaire. The survey detects six factors influencing feasibility study, organizational learning, management strategy, enterprise resource management, process approach and the acceptance. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.08.002 Keywords: Data security; Factor analysis; Municipality |
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Availability analysis of thermal power plant boiler air circulation system using Markov approach
, Pages: 65-72 Ravinder Kumar PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: The long term operation and planning of power plant depend upon an effective availability analysis and assessment of various systems in the plant concerned. The plant is expected to remain operational in a continual manner to achieve the desired production targets. Hence, the availability analysis of the boiler air circulation system plays an important role in this direction. For this purpose, the concerned system mathematical model based on Markov Birth-Death process has been developed. The system consists of four subsystems. The transition diagram represents reduced capacity, full working and failed state of the system. The differential equations associated with the transition diagram based on probabilistic approach have been solved recursively in order to develop the system steady state availability. Availability matrices represented measures the performance of the system concerned. In addition, different combinations of failures and repair rates provide various availability levels of the system. Maintenance decisions are taken based upon these values for improving availability of the power plant as well as the power supply. The result shows that the failure of the primary air fan affects the system availability at most, while failure of air heater affect it at least for different failures and repair rate combination of subsystems under study. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.08.001 Keywords: Markov Birth-Death process; Steady state availability; Probabilistic approach; Thermal power plant |
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An improved SWOT evidential reasoning based approach for strategy evaluation under uncertainty
, Pages: 73-84 K. Ramooshjan, M. A. Sobhanallahi and Alireza Arshadi Khamseh PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Formulation and evaluation of strategy play important role in the strategy management. Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats (SWOT) is a famous approach to formulate strategy planning, which relies on external and internal factors. Identifying these factors precisely is very critical for any organization and manager. This study aims at providing a quantitative basis to analytically determine the ranking of the factors in SWOT analysis via Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach. This paper applies SWOT and Richard Rumelt's criteria to evaluate strategies in Evidential Reasoning approach. The ER approach has been developed to support MADA under uncertainty. It is based on Dempster’s rule for evidence combination and uses belief functions for dealing with probabilistic uncertainty and ignorance. This research is the first study in the ranking the factors of SWOT and Richard Rumelt approach. An illustrative example is also presented to show the efficiency of our model. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.010 Keywords: Strategic management; SWOT approach; Richard Rumelt criteria; Evidential reasoning approach |
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An ANP application for identifying and prioritizing opportunities and threatens for technology transfer
, Pages: 85-92 Reza Attaran, Hassan Mehrmanesh and Hamid Jafarieh PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: During the past few years, there have been different changes in global market due to fast development of science and technology. These changes have increased competition among all existing companies and it has made it difficult for new rivals to gain market share. This paper tries to identify the opportunities and threats of technology transfer in one of world’s fastest growing gas development regions called Pars Special Economic Energy Zone. The proposed model of this paper first identify important factors influencing both opportunities as well as threats and then uses analytical hierarchy process to rank all factors. The results show that the threats were more important than the existing opportunities and among the most important threats, embargo and sales of oil were the most important ones. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.009 Keywords: Technology transfer; Analyzing the opportunities and threatens; Pars Special Economic Energy Zone; Analytical Network Process |
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A study on the effect of brand experience on consumer purchase experiences: A case study of food industry
, Pages: 93-102 Arash Hosseinzadeh, Naser Azad and Seyed Mohsen Seyed Ali Akbar PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Branding in food industry has been a major concern among food suppliers. During the past few years, there have been strong competitions among business developers to gain market share through increasing the value of their brand. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to learn more about the relationship between brand experiences on consumer purchase experiences. The study selects a sample of 206 people who are regular customers of two well-known suppliers, Shahrvand and Hyperstar, in city of Tehran, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study examines six hypotheses and the results confirm that an increase on brand loyalty, brand attribute, pricing factors, product performance attributes, brand associate and brand position will increase purchasing intention, significantly. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.008 Keywords: Food chain; Branding; Purchasing intention |
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Performance evaluation of enterprise architecture using fuzzy sequence diagram
, Pages: 103-108 Mohammad Atasheneh, Ali Harounabadi and Seyyed Javad Mirabedini PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Developing an Enterprise Architecture is a complex task and to control the complexity of the regulatory framework we need to measure the relative performance of one system against other available systems. On the other hand, enterprise architecture cannot be organized without the use of a logical structure. The framework provides a logical structure for classifying architectural output. Among the common architectural framework, the C4ISR framework and methodology of the product is one of the most popular techniques. In this paper, given the existing uncertainties in system development and information systems, a new version of UML called Fuzzy-UML is proposed for enterprise architecture development based on fuzzy Petri nets. In addition, the performance of the system is also evaluated based on Fuzzy sequence diagram. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.007 Keywords: Enterprise Architecture; Fuzzy UML; Fuzzy petri nets; C4ISR framework; Performance Evaluation |
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A study to detect factors influencing the formation of loyal customers’ mental image
, Pages: 109-116 Erfan Sobhaninia, Naser Azad and Mahmoud Samiei Nasr PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Understanding customers’ behavior normally helps planning better marketing strategies, which could lead to an increase in market share and profitability. Loyal customers are always considered as the most important assets for any firm. This paper presents a survey to detect factors influencing the formation of loyal customers’ mental image. The proposed study uses factor analysis to determine these factors by designing a questionnaire and distributing among some loyal customers who do banking business in Bank Melli Iran located in city of Tehran, Iran. The results indicate that there were eight important factors influencing customer loyalty including social status, business identity, brand strength, the contract role, organizational benefit, consumer rights, organizational image and supporting power. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.006 Keywords: Banking industry; Brand loyalty; Mental image |
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An exploration study on detecting important factors influencing brand loyalty in retail stores
, Pages: 117-120 Naser Azad Hanieh Kasehchi, Hamed Asgari and Hamid Bagheri PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: Brand loyalty is one of the most important factors influencing on the success of retail stores. Many retail stores in the field of sport shoes in city of Tehran, Iran are facing tight competition and there seems to be that only stores with loyal customers could survive. In this paper, we present an exploration study to find out important factors influencing retail stores selling one of well-known sport shows such as Adidas, Nike, etc. in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes among 265 regular customers of these stores and analyze them using factor analysis. The results indicate that there were four important factors influencing customer loyalty including brand identification, brand promotion, brand loyalty and characterization of stores. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.005 Keywords: Retail stores; Brand loyalty; Factor analysis |
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A new effective algorithm for on-line robot motion planning
, Pages: 121-130 Hassan Jafarzadeh Saiedeh Gholami and Reza Bashirzadeh PDF (318 K) |
Abstract: A very challenging issue in robot navigation or path planning in an unknown environment is to find a globally optimal path from the start to the target point at the same time avoid collisions. This paper presents a new sensor-based online method for generating collision-free optimal path for mobile robots to take a target amidst static obstacles. It is assumed that, target is static and the location of obstacles is completely unknown for robot and all of these materials will be calculated online. Although the area that is under vision of robot’s sensor is confined, we have to consider an inevitable assumption that target is detectable by robot in everywhere. Proposed algorithm to avoid colliding the obstacles in its way toward target, detects a short and feasible paths by utilizing an innovative and effective method. Following that, shortest of them to will be chosen for navigation. There are different important factors which are considered in robot motion planning problems. First, required time for robot’s action in unpredicted circumstances that the running time of the used algorithm plays a major role in this term. Second, the length of traveled path from start point to target point that represents the efficiency of exploited algorithm for leading the robot. The presented algorithm of this paper has proved its efficiency in both of mentioned issues. Simulation results show that traveled path has the least length and the running time is remarkably less than other presented algorithms until now. In addition, the effectiveness of presented algorithm in complex situation is discernible. These results prove that the presented novel and effective robot navigation algorithm is very suitable for real-time navigation in complex environments. DOI: 10.5267/j.dsl.2013.07.004 Keywords: Mobile robot; Optimal path planning; SPP algorithm; Unknown environment; |
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