Nowadays the use of fossil fuels as a non-renewable energy source has become a major challenge because of the pollution and the environmental impact. Substitution of biomass as an energy source and its supply chain design is the main question. Because of difficulties such as supply chain complexity, uncertainty in variables and selecting the site of bio-refineries many studies have been conducted in this regard. Studies in the field of biomass and biofuel production are described and classified. Also the strategic decisions such as choosing the sites, selecting energy conversation technology, ensuring economic, environmental, technical, and social sustainability and tactical decisions including allocating resources to productive plants, selecting transport modes, and types of warehouses are addressed in the reviewed papers. We have reviewed 140 papers in the interval between 1997 and 2016 and classified them based on the objective functions. The articles are classified based on their being single or multi objectivity, linearity or nonlinearity. Finally, a classification based on the regions in which the studies have been done.

In this paper we develop an inventory model for deteriorating items with price sensitive demand. Generally the vendor offers a cash discount or fix time period to the retailer to pay all the dues. According to the availability of money the retailer chooses his/her option. In this paper we discuss the possible cases of permissible delay and cash discount. The shortages are allowed in this model and are partially backlogged. Holding cost is considered as varying function of time, which reflects a more realistic concept. The purpose of this study is to optimize the overall cost of the system and to compute optimal ordering quantity. Numerical examples for different cases are also presented to illustrate the study. A sensitivity analysis with regard to distinct associated parameters is shown to make sure the constancy of the model.

This paper presents a survey to identify and rank the supply chain management factors influencing the quality of the products for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in food industry. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 238 randomly selected managers of SMEs in food industry in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.851, which is well above the acceptable level. Using principle component with Varimax rotation, the study has determined four important factors including strategic management, product management, manufacturing process management, organizational resources, customer orientation, industry capacity, which influence the most on product quality improvement.

In this paper, an inventory model is studied with ramp type demand rate where holding cost is expressed as linearly increasing function of time. The study includes some features that are likely to be associated with certain types of inventory, like inventory of seasonal fruits and vegetables, newly launched fashion items, etc. When stock on hand is zero, the inventory manager offers a price discount to customers who are willing to backorder their demand. The optimum ordering policy and the optimum discount offered for each backorder are determined by minimizing the total cost in a replenishment interval.

Due to environmental issues, social concerns, increased pollution and enforced regulations; organizations are focusing to include green practices in their supply chain. This can be accomplished by adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices. Therefore, GSCM is now a proactive approach for firms to increase their ecological performance, corporate image, achieve competitive advantages and sustainable business practices. This study identifies, evaluate and analyze the critical factors (CFs) for successful implementation of GSCM practices. The proposed study uses hybrid Fuzzy DEMATEL model to prioritize the identified critical success factors (CSFs) for GSCM adoption. Fuzzy approach is integrated with DEMATEL to deal with uncertainty arises in decision making process. To demonstrate the application of the proposed approach a case study from electronic industry is considered. This approach investigates the cause and effect relationships among the CFs for successful adoption of GSCM practices in Indian electronic organizations.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of quality in supply chain management in development of brand equity. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring quality in supply chain adopted from Fynes et al. (2014) [Fynes, B., De Burca, S., & Marshall, D. (2004). Environmental uncertainty, supply chain relationship quality and performance. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 10(4), 179-190.] and the other for measuring the brand equity, which was adopted from Buil et al. (2013) [Buil, I., De Chernatony, L., & Martínez, E. (2013). Examining the role of advertising and sales promotions in brand equity creation. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 115-122.]. The survey has accomplished among auto part producers in Iran. The study selects 385 randomly selected people who were active in this industry. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as Stepwise regression techniques, the study has concluded that there were positive and meaningful relationships between three supply chain factors, namely relationship, commitment and compatibility, and brand equity.

Humanitarian assistance by foreign organizations in general and foreign military forces in particular, is typically provided in a non-neutral political environment. Local politics that range from national pride, through strained relations with the country offering military logistic support, to blatant aversion to the population in need, affect the ability to provide effective humanitarian aid. The current paper presents the use of mathematical modeling and robustness approach when the government of the affected area declines offers of aid from international organizations because of political constraints. The multi-objective model seeks to minimize unsatisfied demands and total costs of the government and suppliers. To explore the effects of various parameters and show managerial insights that can guide DMs under a variety of conditions, the sensitivity analysis of the experiments are presented.

During the past few years, there have been an increasing competition among auto producers. Customers have experienced emissions misrepresentation activities from well-known auto producers such as Volkswagen and Mitsubishi, and have increased their expectations, accordingly. This paper designs a questionnaire to measure factors influencing on customer satisfaction in Likert scale, and distributes it among 210 randomly selected people who purchased a product from an Iranian Auto maker named SAIPA. The questionnaire was validated by some experts and it was also verified using Cronbach alpha (α = 0.83). Using structural equation modeling with Varimax rotation, the study has detected four groups of factors including car specifications and options, before sales services, after sales services and payment policy, which influence the most on customer satisfaction.

There have been many unexpected natural disasters such as earthquake, flood, etc. in developing countries, which have created catastrophic incidents and we need to do appropriate planning for relief to reduce the possible casualties. Such actions normally face different challenges such as damages on transportation infrastructures including roads, bridges, etc. One of the primary actions for such crises management is associated with facility location for relief distribution centers. This paper presents a multi-objective mathematical problem and applies it for a real-world case study in northern region of Iran. The study uses Lp metric to handle different objectives and fuzzy programming is used to cope with uncertainty. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed study of this paper has been able to provide efficient results.

This paper presents a mathematical model to choose appropriate technology for production and capacity planning. The proposed study considers manufacturing planning in textile industry as a make-to-order (MTO) system by managing employees and water consumption and the possibility of outsourcing. The resulted model has been formulated as a mixed integer programming problem, which can be solved using a commercial software package. The implementation of the proposed study has been considered for a real-world case study and the results are discussed.