In this research, three variance ratio tests: the standard variance ratio test, the wild bootstrap multiple variance ratio test, and the non-parametric rank scores test are adopted to test the random walk hypothesis (RWH) of stock markets in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using most recent data from January 2010 to September 2012. The empirical results obtained by all three econometric tests show that the RWH is strongly rejected for Kuwait, Tunisia, and Morocco. However, the standard variance ratio test and the wild bootstrap multiple variance ratio test reject the null hypothesis of random walk in Jordan and KSA, while non-parametric rank scores test do not. We may conclude that Jordan and KSA stock market are weak efficient. In sum, the empirical results suggest that return series in Kuwait, Tunisia, and Morocco are predictable. In other words, predictable patterns that can be exploited in these markets still exit. Therefore, investors may make profits in such less efficient markets.

The purpose of these comments is to serve as a revision to the article by Khan, Jaber, & Bonney [2011, An economic order quantity (EOQ) for items with imperfect quality and inspection errors, International Journal of Production Economics, 133: 113–118]. This commenting paper first suggests that the revenue function derived in Khan et al. (2011) is unrealistic, and then offers revisions to complement the shortcomings.

In this paper, we develop an integrated vendor-buyer production-inventory model for items with imperfect quality and inspection errors. The production process is imperfect and produces a certain number of defective items with a known probability density function. We consider the policy in which the delivery quantity to the buyer is identical at each shipment. Once the buyer receives the lot, a 100% screening process of the lot is conducted, and the screening process and demand proceed simultaneously. The screening process is not perfect. The inspector may incorrectly classify a non-defective item as defective, or incorrectly classify a defective item as non-defective. The expected integrated total annual cost of the vendor and the buyer is derived and a solution procedure is provided to find the optimal solution. Numerical examples show that the integrated model gives an impressive cost reduction in comparison to an independent decision by the buyer.

A joint vendor-buyer strategy is analyzed which is beneficial to both the players in the supply chain. The demand is assumed to be trapezoidal. It is established numerically that the joint venture decreases the total cost of the supply chain when compared with the independent decision of the buyer. To entice the buyer to order more units, a permissible credit period is offered by the vendor to the buyer. A negotiation factor is incorporated to share the cost savings.

The human error has been reported as a major root cause in road accidents in today’s world. The human as a driver in road vehicles composed of human, mechanical and electrical components is constantly exposed to changing surroundings (e.g., road conditions, environment)which deteriorate the driver’s capacities leading to a potential accident. The auto industries and transportation authorities have realized that similar to other complex and safety sensitive transportation systems, the road vehicles need to rely on both advanced technologies (i.e., Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)) and Passive Safety Systems (PSS) (e.g.,, seatbelts, airbags) in order to mitigate the risk of accidents and casualties. In this study, the advantages and disadvantages of ADAS as active safety systems as well as passive safety systems in road vehicles have been discussed. Also, this study proposes models that analyze the interactions between human as a driver and ADAS Warning and Crash Avoidance Systems and PSS in the design of vehicles. Thereafter, the mathematical models have been developed to make reliability prediction at any given time on the road transportation for vehicles equipped with ADAS and PSS. Finally, the implications of this study in the improvement of vehicle designs and prevention of casualties are discussed.

In recent years, the availability of power plants has become increasingly important issue in most developed and developing countries. This paper aims to propose a methodology based on Markov approach to evaluate the availability simulation model for power generation system (Turbine) in a thermal power plant under realistic working environment. The effects of occurrence of failure/course of actions and availability of repair facilities on system performance have been investigated. Higher availability of the components/equipments is inherently associated with their higher reliability and maintainability. The power generation system consists of five subsystems with four possible states: full working, reduced capacity, reduced efficiency and failed state. So, its availability should be carefully evaluated in order to foresee the performance of the power plant. The availability simulation model (Av.) has been developed with the help of mathematical formulation based on Markov Birth-Death process using probabilistic approach. For this purpose, first differential equations have been generated. These equations are then solved using normalizing condition so as to determine the steady state availability of power generation system. In fact, availability analysis is very much effective in finding critical subsystems and deciding their preventive maintenance program for improving availability of the power plant as well as the power supply. From the graphs illustrated, the optimum values of failure/repair rates for maximum availability, of each subsystem is analyzed and then maintenance priorities are decided for all subsystems.The present paper highlights that in this system, Turbine governing subsystem is most sensitive demands more improvement in maintainability as compared to the other subsystems. While Turbine lubrication subsystem is least sensitive.

This paper addresses the problem of lot sizing and scheduling problem for n-products and m-machines in flow shop environment where setups among machines are sequence-dependent and can be carried over. Many products must be produced under capacity constraints and allowing backorders. Since lot sizing and scheduling problems are well-known strongly NP-hard, much attention has been given to heuristics and metaheuristics methods. This paper presents two metaheuristics algorithms namely, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA). Moreover, Taguchi robust design methodology is employed to calibrate the parameters of the algorithms for different size problems. In addition, the parameter-tuned algorithms are compared against a presented lower bound on randomly generated problems. At the end, comprehensive numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. The results showed that the performance of both GA and ICA are very promising and ICA outperforms GA statistically.

The capacitated arc routing problem is one of the most important routing problems with many applications in real world situations such as snow removing, winter gritting, refuse collection, etc. Since this problem is NP-hard, many of researchers have been developed numerous heuristics and metaheuristics to solve it. In this paper, we propose a new constructive and improvement heuristic in which forming a vehicle’s tour is based on choosing an unserved edge randomly as current partial tour and then extending this partial tour from its both of end nodes base on four effective proposed criteria. When the vehicle load is near its capacity, it should come back to the depot immediately. Finally, the constructed tours are merged into more efficient and cheaper tours. The quality of this new approach was tested on three standard benchmark instances and the results were compared with some known existing heuristics and metaheuristics in the literature. The computational results show an excellent performance of our new method.

Cross docking play an important role in management of supply chains where items delivered to a warehouse by inbound trucks are directly sorted out, reorganized based on customer demands, routed and loaded into outbound trucks for delivery to customers without virtually keeping them at the warehouse. If any item is held in storage, it is usually for a short time, which is normally less than 24 hours. The proposed model of this paper considers a special case of cross docking where there is temporary storage and uses GRASP technique to solve the resulted problem for some realistic test problems. In our method, we first use some heuristics as initial solutions and then improve the final solution using GRASP method. The preliminary test results indicate that the GRASP method performs better than alternative solution strategies.

In this paper, an integrated layout model has been considered to incorporate intra and inter-department layout. In the proposed model, the arrangement of facilities within the departments is obtained through the QAP and from the other side the continuous layout problem is implemented to find the position and orientation of rectangular shape departments on the planar area. First, a modified version of QAP with fewer binary variables is presented. Afterward the integrated model is formulated based on the developed QAP. In order to evaluate material handling cost precisely, the actual position of machines within the departments (instead of center of departments) is considered. Moreover, other design factors such as aisle distance, single or multi row intra-department layout and orientation of departments have been considered. The mathematical model is formulated as mixed-integer programming (MIP) to minimize total material handling cost. Also due to the complexity of integrated model a heuristic method has been developed to solve large scale problems in a reasonable computational time. Finally, several illustrative numerical examples are selected from the literature to test the model and evaluate the heuristic.