1. |
Lean manufacturing in Indian context: A survey
, Pages: 321-330 Rakesh Kumar and Vikas Kumar PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: This paper is an attempt to examine the implementation of Lean Manufacturing system in the Indian industries. Predominant elements of Lean Manufacturing, benefits gained after its implementation and obstacles observed by Indian Industry have been recognized. The results of this survey support the opinion that Lean Manufacturing had potential to improve the organizational performance of Indian industries. Nevertheless, Indian industries are required to be passionate to transform their manufacturing by adopting Lean manufacturing to gain the full benefits. A large numbers of literature papers are available on the better side of Lean manufacturing approach and its benefits gained by manufacturing organizations after implementation. But the adverse impacts of Lean manufacturing are not discussed to a great extent. Some drawbacks of Lean manufacturing are also highlighted in this paper. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.009 Keywords: Lean manufacturing, Lean manufacturing Elements, Lean manufacturing Benefits, Lean manufacturing obstacles, Drawbacks of Lean manufacturing system |
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2. |
An empirical DEA investigation for development of new bank’s branches
, Pages: 331-336 Mousa Azarbad, Amir Reza Soltani and Amir Abbas Shojaie PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: During the past few years, there have been tremendous efforts on development of Iranian banking industry in an attempt to fight against monopoly of banking system. Bank Pasargad is one of the biggest Iranian banks established for offering retail, commercial as well as investment banking services. The firm was established in 2005 as part of the government's privatization of the banking system. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine the most efficient locations for development of this bank. The study uses three main criteria, customer services (C1), Equipment (C2) and Profitability (C3) to compare different alternatives for establishing new branches in city of Tehran, Iran. Using fuzzy data envelopment analysis the study has determined that center of the city could receive the most important attraction followed by north region, west region as well as south west. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.011 Keywords: DEA, Fuzzy, Efficiency, Banking industry |
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3. |
Assessment of country-of-origin-related and -neutral elements of mobile communication service offers: An empirical study of consumers with a Turkish migration background in Germany
, Pages: 337-356 Torsten J. Gerpott and Ilknur Bicak PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: Due to more than three million people in Germany with a Turkish migration background country-of-origin (COO)-sensitive, designs of offers directed at this customer segment have been implemented by various corporations and discussed in the management literature for quite a while. Unfortunately, to date most publications have a weak empirical foundation and refrain from simultaneously investigating preference effects of several country-of-origin-sensitive and -neutral offer characteristics among Turkish migrants living in Germany. Therefore, the present paper explores the relative impacts of three COO-sensitive offer characteristics and one COO-neutral attribute of bundled mobile communication offers on preference statements derived from a conjoint-analysis of questionnaire responses of 249 consumers in Germany with Turkish roots. The results suggest that for the offering category in question a COO-neutral feature (cell phone type/brand) shapes the preferences of Turkish migrants almost to the same extent as the three remaining price- and communication-related characteristics investigated. Furthermore, we found that Turkish consumers in Germany encompass four subsegments with distinct preferences with respect to the design of mobile communication offerings. The members of these subsegments in turn differ primarily in terms of their age and gender structures as well as their level of accommodation to the German culture. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.007 Keywords: Consumers with migration background, Ethno marketing, Limit conjoint-analysis, Mobile communication market, Offering attributes, Turkish mi-grants in Germany |
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4. |
Surface roughness and cutting force estimation in the CNC turning using artificial neural networks
, Pages: 357-362 Mohammad Ramezani and Ahmad Afsari PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: Surface roughness and cutting forces are considered as important factors to determine machinability rate and the quality of product. A number of factors like cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cutting and tool noise radius influence the surface roughness and cutting forces in turning process. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was used to forecast surface roughness and cutting forces with related inputs, including cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut and tool noise radius. The machined surface roughness and cutting force parameters related to input parameters are the outputs of the ANN model. In this work, 24 samples of experimental data were used to train the network. Moreover, eight other experimental tests were implemented to test the network. The study concludes that ANN was a reliable and accurate method for predicting machining parameters in CNC turning operation. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.010 Keywords: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Turning, Surface Roughness, Cutting Forces |
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5. |
Barriers to international supply chain management in Iranian flower industry
, Pages: 363-368 Arash Riasi PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: The main purpose of this study was to determine the major barriers to international supply chain management in Iranian flower industry. The results of the research revealed that the most important barrier is lack of investment in Iranian flower distribution sector. The results also indicated that the second most important barrier to international supply chain management in Iranian flower industry might be the rules that limit the presence of international distributors in the country’s flower industry. According to this research’s findings it can be concluded that it is useful to allow foreign investors to invest in this sector in order to improve the efficiency of supply chains and to ease the introduction of modern supply chain technologies to Iranian flower industry. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.005 Keywords: Flower Industry, International Supply Chain Management, Flower Distribution, Distribution Barriers, Supply Chain Management Technologies |
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6. |
The trade-off between DES and SD in modelling military manpower
, Pages: 369-376 Nethal K. Jajo PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: Operations research techniques have been used widely in simulating the dynamics of workforce systems. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and System Dynamics (SD) are among the techniques that have been increasingly used in modelling military workforces. In the last five years, DES has seen more interest in modelling both career management and the training pipeline. Two significant reasons for this are discussed in this paper. This article presents some notes in comparing the two techniques in modelling military workforce. The study found that DES is an appealing method in workforce modelling, especially with a small size population, as it more easily accommodates new personnel attributes and prevents the fractionalisation of personnel through the system. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.002 Keywords: Discrete event simulation, Military morkforce, System dynamics and state of space |
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7. |
A fuzzy method for improving the functionality of search engines based on user's web interactions
, Pages: 377-386 Farzaneh Kabirbeyk, Ali Harounabadi and Mostafa Sabzekar PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: Web mining has been widely used to discover knowledge from various sources in the web. One of the important tools in web mining is mining of web user’s behavior that is considered as a way to discover the potential knowledge of web user’s interaction. Nowadays, Website personalization is regarded as a popular phenomenon among web users and it plays an important role in facilitating user access and provides information of users’ requirements based on their own interests. Extracting important features about web user behavior plays a significant role in web usage mining. Such features are page visit frequency in each session, visit duration, and dates of visiting a certain pages. This paper presents a method to predict user’s interest and to propose a list of pages based on their interests by identifying user’s behavior based on fuzzy techniques called fuzzy clustering method. Due to the user’s different interests and use of one or more interest at a time, user’s interest may belong to several clusters and fuzzy clustering provide a possible overlap. Using the resulted cluster helps extract fuzzy rules. This helps detecting user’s movement pattern and using neural network a list of suggested pages to the users is provided. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.008 Keywords: Web Personalization, Recommender System, Web Usage Mining, Fuzzy clustering |
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8. |
A study on the effects of subsidies on market value: Evidence from Petrochemical and steel industries
, Pages: 387-392 Batool Norouzi and Mohsen Hamidian PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: Iran’s 4th development plan has enrolled the federal government to increase energy prices and remove any subsidies paid to energy sector in an attempt to increase productivity and provide better social welfare. It is, therefore, important to investigate the effects of the law on different industries and the subsequent effects on economic growth. This study investigates the impacts of subsidies on the market value of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange in Petrochemical and Steel industries. The study selects two firms, Esfahan's Mobarakeh Steel Company and Fanavaran Petrochemical Co. using Auto Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) over the period 2008-2013. The results have indicated that there was a meaningful relationships between removal of subsidies and market value of the firms. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.006 Keywords: Tehran Stock Exchange, Subsidy removal, Petrochemical industry, Steel industry |
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9. |
Market basket analysis in insurance industry
, Pages: 393-400 Marzieh Vahidi Roodpishi and Reza Aghajan Nashtaei PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: Nowadays, many organizations focus on discovering their customers’ hidden patterns to maintain their competitive position through customer analysis. In fact, more and more organizations are realizing that customers are their most valuable resources. This paper performs a research using data associated with 300 clients of an insurance company in city of Anzali, Iran and they are analyzed using K-Means clustering method. Using demographic variables including gender, age, occupation, education level, marital status, place of residence and clients’ incomes, the study determines the optimal numbers of clusters in order to achieve necessary data for grouping customers. Next, the study uses the method of association rules to find hidden patterns for the insurance industry. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.004 Keywords: Insurance industry, Shopping basket analysis, Data mining, Clustering, Association rules |
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10. |
A study on the effects of subsidies on market value of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange
, Pages: 401-406 Leyla Osati and Mohsen Hamidian PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: According to the 4th Iran’s development plan, there must an increase in energy prices and removal of subsidies paid to energy sector. Therefore, it is necessary to study the effects of removing subsidies paid on energy on different industries and the subsequent impact on economic growth. This study aims to investigate the effects of subsidies on the market value of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange in automotive and cement industries. The study selects two firms, Fars & Khuzestan Cement Co. and Irank Khodro using Auto Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) over the period 2008-2013. The results of study have indicated that there was a meaningful relationship between removal of subsidies and market value of the firms. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.003 Keywords: Tehran Stock Exchange, Subsidy removal, Cement industry, Auto industry |
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11. |
Factors influencing citizen participation in community management
, Pages: 407-412 Ali Shamai, Hamid Abya and Mohsen Ebrahimi PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: The primary objective of this study is to assess the factors affecting citizen participation in community management in district 13 of Tehran Municipality. Measured variables are: social cohesion, profitable partnerships, social-economic agencies, trust among civilians, trust in municipality management, feelings of powerlessness and social anomie. The results of the implementation of Pearson correlation test show that all of these variables had significant relationships with community participation in neighborhood management. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that three variables of social cohesion, profitable partnerships and socio-economic status had explained 37% of changes in citizen participation in community management while the changing social cohesion maintained the highest impact. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.2.001 Keywords: Tehran municipality, Citizen participation, Community management |
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12. |
A framework for assessing cost management system changes: the case of activity-based costing implementation at food industry
, Pages: 413-418 Tayebeh Faraji, Ali Esmailzade Maghari and Niloufar Mirsepasi PDF (288 K) |
Abstract: An opportunity to investigate the technical and organizational effect of management accounting system changes has appeared with companies' adoption of activity-based costing (ABC). This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of ABC system for case study from food industry in Iran. From this case, the paper develops a framework for assessing ABC implementation and hypotheses about factors that influence implementation. The study detects five cost centers and for each cost center, it determines different cost drivers. The results of our survey has detected that implementation of ABC system not only helps precise allocation of overhead costs but also helps internal management companies for better planning and control of production, making better decisions for company's profits. DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2015.1.017 Keywords: Activity based cost, ABC, Food industry |
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