In this paper, we study no-wait flow shop problem where setup times depend on sequence of operations. The proposed problem considers sequence-independent removal times, release date with an additional assumption that there are some preliminary setup times. There are two objectives of weighted mean tardiness and makespan associated with the proposed model of this paper. We formulate the resulted problem as a mixed integer programming, where a two-phase fuzzy programming is implemented to solve the model. To examine the performance of the proposed model, we generate several sample data, randomly and compare the results with other methods. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed two-phase model of this paper performed relatively better than Zimmerman & apos; s single-phase fuzzy method.

This paper considers an economic lot and delivery scheduling problem (ELDSP) in a fuzzy environment with the fuzzy shelf life for each product. This problem is formulated in a flexible job shop with unrelated parallel machines, when the planning horizon is finite and it determines lot sizing, scheduling and sequencing, simultaneously. The proposed model of this paper is based on the basic period (BP) approach. In this paper, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is presented and then it is changed into two models in the fuzzy shelf life. The main model is dependent to the multiple basic periods and it is difficult to solve the resulted proposed model for large-scale problems in reasonable amount of time; thus, an efficient heuristic method is proposed to solve the problem. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated using some numerical examples.

The increase competition and decline economy has increased the relevant importance of having reliable supply chain. The primary objective of many supply chain problems is to reduce the cost of services and, at the same time, to increase the quality of services. In this paper, we present a multi-level supply chain network by considering multi products, single resource and deterministic cost and demand. The proposed model of this paper is formulated as a mixed integer programming and we present two metaheuristics namely MOPSO and NSGA-II to solve the resulted problems. The performance of the proposed models of this paper has been examined using some randomly generated numbers and the results are discussed. The preliminary results indicate that while MOPSO is able to generate more Pareto solutions in relatively less amount of time, NSGA-II is capable of providing better quality results.

In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to measure the effects of intellectual capital using Maxwell model [Maxwell, J. C. (2003). Thinking for a change: 11 ways highly successful people approach life and work. Faith Words]. The proposed model of this survey designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 64 managers in an Iranian switch organization called ABFA. The main hypothesis of this survey studies whether the managers have beautiful mind in their work or not. There are 11 sub-hypotheses in this survey based on Maxwell model and the results of this survey conclude that “Sharing the ideas” index maintains the highest rate of importance and “being detailed oriented” maintains the lowest rate of importance.

During the past few years, there have been extensive developments on Islamic Azad University, which has led on reduction of managerial flexibility. Therefore, these organizations concentrate on their strategic management via usage of the Balanced Model such as Balanced Score Card (BSC) to consider different organizational perspectives and it is important to have good description of organizational strategies and goals. The strategy map is a primary factor to assess the performance in different organizational activities. In this paper, the performance evaluation system of Islamic Azad University of Semnan is designed by the utilization of strategy map as a prominent part of BSC.

Information asymmetry arises when one of the parties to the contract or transaction, possesses more information than the other, provided that the former uses such information effectively when communicating with the latter. The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of information asymmetry on the value of companies. Two techniques i.e. standard deviations of returns (STDRET) and turnover (TURNOVER) were used to determine information asymmetry while the Tobin’s Q was employed to determine companies’ value. The population under study was all the listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange, of which a total of 72 companies were chosen as the research sample and were studied over the period 2004-2009. Panel analysis technique was used in this study to analyze the collected data. The results of the study indicate information asymmetry affect the value of the companies.

This paper studies the level of depression and mental ability among elderly people who live in institutional elderly versus nursing home residents. The investigation designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 345 elderly people who are residences of both places. The study implements Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) test where mental ability includes seven factors including “general information”, “orientation”, “mind control”, “logical memory” and “repeated figures”, “visual memory” and “learn association”. The study performs some statistical tests and the results show that gender has no impact on two groups of elderly people in terms of mental utilization as well as depression level when the level of significance is five percent.

The main purpose of article is to survey the effect of Quality Management System (QMS) on organization efficiency based on the concept of change management. The role of top organization management for QMS implementation and change management solutions to eliminate organization resistance are investigated. In this study, fourteen Deming’s principles are independent variables, organization productivity is dependent variable and the study examines six different hypotheses. Cronbach Alpha coefficient is calculated as 87.62%, which validates research questionnaire. The proposed study of this paper uses t-student to examine all six hypotheses in a case study from a firm named Aria Sanaat factory. The results of this study confirm that there are some positive effects on organizational management variables & establishing training and explanation courses & meetings.

his paper investigates normalization and psychometric properties of career skills confidence inventory. For this purpose, we use Betz’s questionnaire [Betz, N. E., Harmon, L., & Borgen, F. (1996). The relationships of self- efficacy for the Holland themes to gender, occupational group membership, and vocational interests. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43, 90-98.], which consists of 60 questions in three groups of self-awareness, exploration and planning. The study distributes the questionnaire among 600 randomly selected students and analyzes the feedback using Pearson correlation ratios. The results indicate that there are some positive and meaningful correlations between three component and career counseling. There are also positive and meaningful relationships among three components of self-awareness, exploration and planning.

This paper presents a multi-objective location problem in a three level supply chain network under uncertain environment considering inventory decisions. The proposed model of this paper considers uncertainty for different parameters including procurement, transportation costs, supply, demand and the capacity of various facilities. The proposed model presents a robust optimization model, which specifies locations of distribution centers to be opened, inventory control parameters (r, Q), and allocation of supply chain components, concurrently. The resulted mixed-integer nonlinear programming minimizes the expected total cost of such a supply chain network comprising location, procurement, transportation, holding, ordering, and shortage costs. The model also minimizes the variability of the total cost of relief chain and minimizes the financial risk or the probability of not meeting a certain budget. We use the ?-constraint method, which is a multi-objective technique with implicit trade-off information given, to solve the problem and using a couple of numerical instances, we examine the performance of the proposed approach.