In the competitive business world, applying a reliable and powerful mechanism to support decision makers in manufacturing companies and helping them save time by considering varieties of effective factors is an inevitable issue. Advanced Available-to-Promise is a perfect tool to design and perform such a mechanism. In this study, this mechanism which is compatible with the Make-to-Forecast production systems is presented. The ability to distinguish between batch mode and real-time mode advanced available-to-promise is one of the unique superiorities of the proposed model. We also try to strengthen this mechanism by integrating the inventory allocation and job shop scheduling by considering due dates and weighted earliness/tardiness cost that leads to more precise decisions. A mixed integer programming (MIP) model and a heuristic algorithm according to its disability to solve large size problems are presented. The designed experiments and the obtained results have proved the efficiency of the proposed heuristic method.

Nowadays, most manufacturing units try to locate their requirements and the depot vehicle routing in order to transport the goods at optimum cost. Needless to mention that the locations of the required warehouses influence on the performance of vehicle routing. In this paper, a mathematical programming model to optimize the storage location and vehicle routing are presented. The first objective function of the model minimizes the total cost associated with the transportation and storage, and the second objective function minimizes the difference distance traveled by vehicles. The study uses Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) to solve the resulted problems in different sizes. The preliminary results have indicated that the proposed study has performed better than NSGA-II and PAES methods in terms of Quality metric and Spacing metric.

The present study has been conducted in order to investigate the documentation of the organiza-tional knowledge condition from the managers’ perspective of libraries, museums, and Docu-ments Center of Astan Quds Razavi based on Dalkir model [Dalkir, K. (2005). Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. Elsevier. Butterworth-Heinemann.]. The survey popula-tion consisted of all managers of Astan Quds libraries. The relevant information was gathered using a researcher-created the questionnaire based on Dalkir model of knowledge management cycle. Findings revealed that in all six dimensions of knowledge documentation, obtained means were less than intermediate level (3) and documentation status in all studied dimensions of Dal-kir’s model was not suitable.

Performance of mines can be affected by different factors such as safety and economic factors. This study aims to analyze the influence of safety and economic factors on mines’ performance. To this purpose, a framework is proposed based on a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Ro-bust Data Envelopment Analysis (RDEA) and common weight Robust Data Envelopment Anal-ysis (CWRDEA) to determine the factors affecting on performance of mines. In this study, for the first time, integrated economic and safety factors are considered for evaluation of mines per-formance. To analyze safety and economic factors, this research gathers real data from a mine with 56 sites in south of Iran. Based on different DEA models, different sites become the best site among other sites, but RDEA is much closer to real situation than basic DEA and CWRDEA is the most efficient approach in real situation.

An effective safety management requires attention to human factors as well as system compo-nents which make risky or safe situations at technical components. This study evaluates and ana-lyze ergonomic behaviors in order to select the best work shift group in an Iranian process in-dustry, in 2010.The methodology was based on the Ergonomic Behavior Sampling (EBS), and TOPSIS method. After specifying the unergonomic behaviors and with reference to the results of a pilot study, a sample of 1755 was determined, with a sampling accuracy of 5% and confi-dence level of 95%. However, in order to gain more confidence, 2631 observations were collect-ed. The results indicate that 43.6% of workers’ behaviors were unergonomic. The most frequent unergonomic behavior was amusing of legs while load lifting with 83.01% of total unergonomic behaviors observations. Using TOPSIS method, the most effective shift group and the least at-tractive alternatives for intervention were selected in this company. Findings declare high number of unergonomic behaviors. Catastrophic consequences of accidents in petrochemical industry ne-cessitate attention to workers’ ergonomic behaviors in the workplace and promotion of them.

In the project management, buffers are considered to handle uncertainties that lead to changes in project scheduling which in turn causes project delivery delay. The purpose of this survey is to discuss the state of the art on models and methods for project buffer management and time optimization of construction projects and manufacturing industries. There are not literally any surveys which review the literature of project buffer management and time optimization. This research adds to the previous literature surveys and focuses mainly on papers after 2014 but with a quick review on previous works. This research investigates the literature from project buffer sizing, project buffer consumption monitoring and project time/resource optimization perspectives.

Application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in modeling of combined cycle power plant (CCPP) with dry cooling tower (Heller tower) has been investigated in this paper. Prediction of power plant output (megawatt) under different working conditions was made using multi-layer feed-forward ANN and training was performed with operational data using back-propagation. Two ANN network was constructed for the steam turbine (ST) and the main cooling system(MCS). Results indicate that the ANN model is effective in predicting the power plant output with good accuracy.

The current study measures the mechanical behavior of both natural and the monobloc elastomeric disc prosthesis (CadiscTM-L) by employing a finite element method (FEM) to study the fiber-reinforced constitutive formulation provided in the literature. The three-dimensional geometry was created by computed tomography (CT) scan imaging technique. Frontal pure rotational, sagittal, and axial momentum of 7.5 N·m were applied on the top of L3 while the lower half of the L5 was fixed in all directions. This investigation was performed considering two stages: (1) intact L3–L5 lumbar spine (INT model), and (2) Cadisc implemented between L4 and L5 (IMP model). The numerical results for the INT model were validated by experimental data from the literature. Several parameters including the inter-segmental rotation, range of motion in flexion-extension, axial rotation and lateral bending were analyzed. Our numerical results show that the IMP model has a 50% reduction in the ‘range of motion’ and a 33% reduction in flexion in lateral bending compared to the INT model. These outcomes of this paper reveal the feasibility of applying a fibre-reinforced constitutive formulation to generate an accurate three-dimensional FEM model.

New product development is a modern approach to deal with the environmental changes and an introduction to enter the competitive atmosphere is a challenging condition. By realizing the critical aspects of success of the new product and selecting a compatible model of variables in these aspects, companies may create a unique context for developing the product; but whether in terms of the multiplicity of the decision-making choices or the inherent conflicts of the response atmosphere’s variables, the complexities of the current world have caused disruption and inefficiency in the field of optimal selection and decision making. The aim of this study is to identify the critical aspects of development of the new product in the Sedan automobile class and to offer a morphological model of that by investigating the ideas and comments of the experts and scholars. In this regard, by using the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) method, the proposed method assesses the mode of the organization; and with the General Morphological Analysis, it assesses and searches for the most compatible decision-making variables to find the fully optimal and compatible solutions. After studying the subject literature, seven critical aspects are selected for the product development and three purposes are chosen for limiting the morphological model. Finally, four fully compatible configurations and one configuration are proposed with the entrance of the aspects determined from the output of IPA method. The innovative solution in solving the morphological model and its integration with IPA method are considered as the innovations of this study.

Leasing currently plays an important role for the global economy. The equipment leasing earning acquired through leasing rather than cash or credit, has reached a dominant level. With this regards, this paper represents a basic mixed-integer non-linear programming model. The study deliberates a firm that leases new products and remanufactured leased merchandises. The proposed study considers the end of lease contract, which contains several options: Return the leased product, return the used product and purchase other remanufactured product and buying the leased product. The primary objective is to maximize the discrepancy between the revenue and the costs of a firm, which leases new products as well as selling remanufactured ones. The product deteriorates with time and the difference between a new and used good is obvious. The product must undergo a remanufacturing procedure before being sold as a remanufactured product.