Cost benefit analysis (CBA) is a useful tool for investment decision-making from economic point of view. When the decision involves conflicting goals, the multi-attribute analysis approach is more capable; because there are some social and environmental criteria that cannot be valued or monetized by cost benefit analysis. The complex nature of decision-making in road safety normally makes it difficult to reach a single alternative solution that can satisfy all decision-making problems. Generally, the application of multi-attribute analysis in road sector is promising; however, the applications are in preliminary stage. Some multi-attribute analysis techniques, such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) have been widely used in practice. This paper presents an integrated framework with CBA and AHP methods to select proper alternative in road safety projects. The proposed model of this paper is implemented for a case study of improving a road to reduce the accidents in Iran. The framework is used as an aid to cost benefit tool in road safety projects.

In recent decades, provision-chain management has been one of the major concepts. The main reason that attracts attention to the concept is the increase in competition and struggle for the survival. There are different ways to increase the competition in organizations such as increasing productivity by acquiring information technology.
In this paper, we present an integrated model with the balanced score card framework for supplier selection strategy. The proposed model of this paper gathers 161 important factors suggested in the literature and selects the six most important ones using different multi criteria techniques. We also propose a goal programming techniques with some hard constraints and implement the mathematical model for real-world case study of auto industry. The proposed model is solved in four different forms using TOPSIS, VIKOR and the combination of these 2 factors with factor analysis. The preliminary results indicate that a combination of VIKOR and factor analysis presented better results with 9% reduction in costs, 38% increase of quality, and 3.2% increase in acceptability.

In this paper, we present a study to determine the level of awareness of school principles on professional social work in the city of Esfehan, Iran. The proposed study of this paper distributes questionnaire among eighty principle managers who work for different schools in this city. The first part of the questionnaire is devoted to people & apos; s personal characteristics such as gender, age, etc. and the second part is associated with the some questions about their awareness on professional social work. The study, for instance, finds that there is a meaningful relationship between job experience and gender and awareness when the statistical significance level is less than five percent but there is no relationship between the level of education and the awareness on professional social work.

Distribution refers to the steps taken to move and store a product from the suppliers to a customers in the supply chain and is a key driver of the overall profitability of a firm and overall supply chain. In this paper, a problem regarding managing of the move and store of goods are articulated and a mathematical model is presented to solve the model. The objective function is the total costs of distribution network, including transportation, storage rental, general warehousing, goods damages due to the transportation and storage, procurement, packing, and finally loading and unloading costs. The cost components described are defined based on the assumptions for a real distribution network of a chain stores firm. The aim of developing such a model is to find the optimum pattern to move and store goods based on the minimum cost of the distribution network.

The aim of this research is to present a hybrid model to select auto part suppliers. The proposed method of this paper uses factor analysis to find the most influencing factors on part maker selection and the results are validated using different statistical tests such as Cronbach & apos; s Alpha and Kaiser-Meyer. The hybrid model uses analytical network process to rank different part maker suppliers and fuzzy goal programming to choose the appropriate alternative among various choices. The implementation of the proposed model of this paper is used for a case study of real-world problem and the results are discussed.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is founded based on the value exchange between organization and customers and focuses merely on the value created in this connection. In this paper, the critical success factors are identified for a proper and effective implementation of CRM for an oil distribution company. The proposed survey of this paper identifies some important factors affecting the CRM implementation and determines the most important ones using a survey. The results indicate that there are twelve factors playing the most important roles on the success of CRM. There are CRM strategy, knowledge management in customer relationship, CRM technology, effective strategic committee, management of customer contact channels, customer information management, customer-oriented change management, training programs, strategic communication with staff, staff commitment, integration, and sectional implementation. We categorize the factors into two levels based on the level of their importance. The first level consists of the most important ones include only four items and the other eight items are categorized in level 2.

This paper performs an empirical study to study the effects of social capital on social contribution for a group of people of 18-year-orl who lived in a city of Meymand/Iran. The survey selects 300 people out of 5026 people based on a two-stage cluster sampling and distributed questionnaire among them. The results are analyzed based on descriptive and inductive terms, which indicate a positive and meaningful relation between social capital and social solidarity. However, there is a negative and meaningful relationship between social opposition and conflict with organizations while there are some opposite relationships among networks of social relationships instead of level of internal group relationships.

In current paper, an organized and quantitative approach is proposed for selection of quality management systems. The proposed model of this paper first uses fuzzy analytic hierarchical process to rank different quality management systems. Since there are normally various constraints associated with the selection of quality management, we propose a 0-1 programming for selecting an optimal mix of quality management systems. We also use the proposed model of this paper for a real-world case study of research center in aerial industries and the results are discussed.

In this paper, we present two regression functions to estimate gold coin futures price based on gold coin price, foreign exchange rate, price of gold traded globally and trend of time. The proposed model of this paper is used for price estimation of gold coin futures in Iran mercantile exchange (IME).
The proposed model of this paper is applied for historical data of future gold prices and the results are discussed. The preliminary results indicate that an increase on gold coin price could increase gold coin futures price. An increase on foreign exchange price has negative impact on gold coin futures and time horizon has positive impact on gold coin futures on IME.

The amount of damage induced by brittle fracture of cracked bodies depends considerably on the path of fractures. Therefore, prediction of the trajectory of fracture using suitable theoretical fracture criteria is very important for cracked structures. In this paper, using higher-order terms of Williams’s series expansion and the maximum tangential stress criterion, the mixed mode I/II crack growth path of an angled crack plate subjected to biaxial far field loading is investigated theoretically. To evaluate the accuracy of the theoretical results, they are compared with the experimentally reported trajectories for the angled crack plate specimen. It is shown that by taking into account the higher order terms of the Williams series expansion a very good agreement is observed between the experimental and theoretical mixed mode fracture paths in the angled crack problem. It was also observed that the theoretically determined initial angle of crack growth is consistent with the experimental results.