Flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is an important component of competitive strategy, which could be used for improving organizational performance, productivity, and profitability. The goal of this research is to use DEMATEL approach for finding the intensity of influence of selected criteria. Then, in order to evaluate flexible manufacturing systems, the results of DEMATEL are used in SAW method. A questionnaire was developed and ten professional experts working in various departments of Aluminum Composite Panel Industry are asked to answer its questions. The obtained results reveal that in this case, it is a better choice not to implement and develop FMS.

Weather forecast has been a major concern in various industries such as agriculture, aviation, maritime, tourism, transportation, etc. A good weather prediction may reduce natural disasters and unexpected events. This paper presents an empirical investigation to predict weather temperature using minimization of continuous ranked probability score (CRPS). The mean and standard deviation of normal density function are linear combination of the components of ensemble system. The resulted optimization model has been solved using particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the results are compared with Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (BFGS) method. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed PSO provides better results in terms of CRPS deviation criteria than the alternative BFGS method.

There is a high risk of R & D based innovation being commercialized, especially in the innovation transfer process which is a concern to many entrepreneurs and researchers. The purpose of this research is to develop the criteria of R & D commercialization capability and to propose a combined technique of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) for R & D project evaluation. The research utilized a mixed-method approach. The first phase comprised a qualitative study on commercialization criteria development though the survey research of 272 successful entrepreneurs and researchers in all industrial sectors in Thailand. The data was collected with a structured questionnaire and analyzed by SEM. The second phase was involved with SEM-TOPSIS technique development and a case study of 45 R & D projects in research institutes and incubators for technique validation. The research results reveal that there were six criteria for R & D project commercialization capability, these are arranged according to the significance; marketing, technology, finance, non-financial impact, intellectual property, and human resource. The holistic criteria is presented in decreasing order on the ambiguous subjectivity of the fuzzy-expert system, to help with effectively funding R & D and to prevent a resource meltdown. This study applies SEM to the relative weighting of hierarchical criteria. The TOPSIS approach is employed to rank the alternative performance. An integrated SEM-TOPSIS is proposed for the first time and applied to present R & D projects shown to be effective and feasible in evaluating R & D commercialization capacity.

The Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory, which serves as a key to the determination of several models of exchange rates, suggests a long-term relationship between exchange rates and relative prices. It states that the price levels in all the countries are the same when measured in terms of a single currency. The purpose of this study is to model the behavior of the exchange rates of five partner countries of Tunisia, namely, (Germany, the United States, France, Italy, the UK, Morocco and Libya) relative to its fundamentals over the period 1990-1999. Beyond the traditional linear cointegration, we use the approaches based on fractional cointegration. We are trying to discriminate between the adjustment dynamics with long memory (but linear) and a dynamics of a short memory (nonlinear). Given the important role of the exchange rates in the successful experience of open economies, we are interested, in this work, in analyzing the dynamics of the exchange rates in the long run. The econometric results obtained through the GPH tests, make us consider the PPP as an event in the long run if significant short-term deviations from the PPP cannot exist. Therefore, the analysis of the fractional cointegration makes the deviations, regarding equilibrium, follow a slightly integrated process and therefore capture a much wider group of research parity or mean-reverting behavior.

The article presents solution procedure of geometric programming to solve the structural model with imprecise coefficients. We have considered a single objective structural optimization model with weight as an objective function. Geometric programming provides a powerful tool for solving a variety of imprecise optimization problems. Here we use nearest interval approximation method to convert a triangular fuzzy number to an interval number. In this paper, we transform this interval number to a parametric interval-valued functional form and then solve the parametric problem by geometric programming technique. The advantage of this technique is that we can find directly optimal solution of the objective function without solving two-level mathematical programs. Numerical example is given to illustrate the model through this approximation method.

A number of factors, e.g. cutting speed and feed rate, affect the surface roughness in machining process. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network model was used to forecast surface roughness with related inputs, including cutting speed and feed rate. The output of the ANN model input parameters related to the machined surface roughness parameters. In this research, twelve samples of experimental data were used to train the network. Moreover, four 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 of Particulate Reinforced Aluminum Matrix Composites (PAMCs) specimens with 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% filler. The aim of this work is to decrease the production cost and consequently increase the production rate of these materials for industry without any trial and error method procedure.

This paper presents a new search methodology for different sizes of 0-1 Knapsack Problem (KP). The proposed methodology uses a modified scatter search as a meta-heuristic algorithm. Moreover, rough set theory is implemented to improve the initial features of scatter search. Thereby, the preliminary results of applying the proposed approach on some benchmark dataset appear that the proposed method was capable of providing better results in terms of time and quality of solutions.

Capacity waste management is highly essential because under utilization of capacity is often referred to as a major reason for lower productivity among industries around the world. For better estimation of capacity and its utilization and then for its improved management; newer techniques are being devised in industrial sector. The current case of capacity waste problem has been taken up as a Six Sigma project, where we try to analyze critical factors responsible for the capacity waste. Decisions on critical factor selection in analysis phase of Six Sigma are always very crucial. The paper discusses an approach for selection of capacity waste factors at an automotive industry using fuzzy logic based AHP method. The fuzzy AHP is a well recognized tool to undertake the fuzziness of the data involved in choosing the preferences of the different decision variables engaged in the process of capacity waste factors selection. In this context, we have explored six crucial parameters for selection of capacity waste factors. Final ranking is calculated through priority vector thus obtained and it is seen that conveyor malfunction is found to be the key factor for capacity waste among all alternatives at the selected site.

The most popular approach for solving fully fuzzy linear programming (FFLP) problems is to convert them into the corresponding deterministic linear programs. Khan et al. (2013) [Khan, I. U., Ahmad, T., & Maan, N. (2013). A simplified novel technique for solving fully fuzzy linear programming problems. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 159(2), 536-546.] claimed that there had been no method in the literature to find the fuzzy optimal solution of a FFLP problem without converting it into crisp linear programming problem, and proposed a technique for the same. Others showed that the fuzzy arithmetic operation used by Khan et al. (2013) had some problems in subtraction and division operations, which could lead to misleading results. Recently, Ezzati et al. (2014) [Ezzati, R., Khorram, E., & Enayati, R. (2014). A particular simplex algorithm to solve fuzzy lexicographic multi-objective linear programming problems and their sensitivity analysis on the priority of the fuzzy objective functions. Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, 26(5), 2333-2358.] defined a new operation on symmetric trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and proposed a new algorithm to find directly a lexicographic/preemptive fuzzy optimal solution of a fuzzy lexicographic multi-objective linear programming problem by using new fuzzy arithmetic operations, but their model was not fully fuzzy optimization. In this paper, a new method, by using Ezzati et al. (2014)’s fuzzy arithmetic operation and a fuzzy version of simplex algorithm, is proposed for solving FFLP problem whose parameters are represented by symmetric trapezoidal fuzzy number without converting the given problem into crisp equivalent problem. By using the proposed method, the fuzzy optimal solution of FFLP problem can be easily obtained. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed method.

In this paper a hybrid algorithm for solving bound constrained optimization problems having continuously differentiable objective functions using Fletcher Reeves method and advanced Genetic Algorithm (GA) have been proposed. In this approach, GA with advanced operators has been applied for computing the step length in the feasible direction in each iteration of Fletcher Reeves method. Then this idea has been extended to a set of multi-point approximations instead of single point approximation to avoid the convergence of the existing method at local optimum and a new method, called population based Fletcher Reeves method, has been proposed to find the global or nearer to global optimum. Finally to study the performance of the proposed method, several multi-dimensional standard test functions having continuous partial derivatives have been solved. The results have been compared with the same of recently developed hybrid algorithm with respect to different comparative factors.