INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT SHARIF (SHARIF: ENGINEERING)
Year:2008 | Volume:24 | Issue:43|Papers Count:22

Advances in information and communication technology (lCT) provide a good situation for spreading virtual organizations. The existing virtual environment has forced managers to change the form of manufacturing from traditional to virtual. From one point of view, manufacturing in virtual organizations has caused a reduction in investment costs and the time for producing new products. From another point of view, it has created new core competencies for organizations in a global competitive environment. How will the formation of strategy in new virtual space be? Will existing strategy schools be qualified for the new space? This paper aims to describe a survey on new organizational development under the title of "virtual organizations" and their characteristics, as well as strategy schools and, then, proposes a new school of strategy formation under the title of "verticalness school".

This paper presents a unique and integrated model for production planning and control of complex multi product workshops through computer simulation. The proposed model which is composed of eight modules bas been applied to an actual workshop. It has been validated by robust statistical tests and verified by management. The proposed model has been presented for workshops with fluctuating demands for several products. The multi-product workshops with fluctuating demand would face managers with several production issues. Implementation of the proposed integrated model will decrease the production planning and control issues substantially in such systems. A unique feature of this study is development of an integrated simulation approach for high demand multi-product workshops. Second, the integrated approach is an optimizer model in which the optimal means with regard to production planning and control are reported to management. It is also capable of guiding management with respect to: 1) assessment of sequencing and scheduling, 2) allocation of order priority, 3) comparison of present conditions with future plans, 4) allocation of operators to workstations, 5) planning for new orders, 6) identification of parts' arrival to workshop 7) assessment of overtime for workstations and 8) decision making about contracts. The above eight modules are modeled in the computer simulation such that it is capable of acting as a decision support system (DSS).

Information Technology (IT), as an important technology in today's world, has a major effect on human life. It has also an important role in supporting current and common operations in most contemporary organizations. Nowadays, the time cycle of these operations keep shrinking and the risk of missing opportunities that negatively affect businesses is very high. In this situation, because of the increasing rate of changes, the role of IT becomes much more profound. Although IT itself can increase fixed costs, the organization cannot meet information needs without it and, consequently, companies are forced to stay on the side of the world market or respond weakly to information-powered competitors. Furthermore, not only for achieving victory, but also, for surviving in the competitive marketplace, the companies need to adapt and take advantages of rapidly emerging opportunities. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are critical to the economies of all countries, especially the developing ones. These countries cannot be left behind and many of them are already demonstrating their entrepreneurship strength by grasping the opportunities offered by IT. Web or digital economy is the result of the effect of IT on economy. Today's electronic commerce, as a major component of digital economy, has also received special attention. E-readiness of SMEs is related to the level of IT acquisition or adoption, especially e-commerce. The main objective of this research is to extract effective factors on the e-readiness of the service based SMEs, by using Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), as well as Linear Multiple Regression.

This study seeks to identify the nature of association and assess the level and type of the relationship between e-learning and the factors, both internal and external, influencing the productivity of the employees. The results of this assessment are specifically useful for senior managers in IT systems, human resources, and training departments of each organization, because they should be able to justify the large amount of investment required for implementation of e-learning in their organizations. The required data have been collected, based on the presented model and through carrying out interviews and administering questionnaires. The findings of this study emphasized that e-learning and the internal factors influencing the productivity of the employees, are synthetically correlated with external factors influencing the productivity of the employees as an intermediary correlation. This reiterates the positive influence of e-learning over the productivity of the employees.

Precise and reliable prediction of economical phenomena is one of the most important goals of economists. Economists have used econometric methods to predict and analyze economic phenomena for several years. Recently, methods, such as Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic and Genetic Algorithms, have been introduced to economists as new methods for the prediction of economical phenomena. In this paper, based on a combination of Econometric and Neural Network approaches, a new method is introduced, which is more precise and more reliable than the typical Econometric or Neural Network methods. Its reliability has come from its Econometric function and its precision has come from its Neural Network part. In order to observe the performance of the new method, the number of demands of financial facilities from one of the development banks of Iran is modeled and the results compared with those of the typical methods. The results of the comparison show the efficiency of the proposed method.

This paper develops optimal economical models for variable acceptance samplings when inspection errors are considered. In this model, we used the Taguchi function for acceptance of the sampling cost, when variables have normal distribution.An optimal method is presented, considering inspection errors to be constant and decreasing /increasing patterns.A sensitivity analysis was done to find the feasibility of the models. There is also a comparison between the Taguchi cost method and the Stepwise method (Traditional method). Finally, some numerical examples are given and solved by Maple software to facilitate the comparison between the methods.

Studying the knowledge and experience of information retrieval specialists shows that, usually, a set of factors affects the search for web-based information, especially the Internet. It seems that the implementation of web based technologies, including portal, may facilitate the process of information retrieval and improve the effectiveness of information services. So, research was undertaken on a sample of employees and users at Malek- Ashtar University of Technology, Imam Hussein University and Dana Information Network information centers, in order to evaluate their views regarding the effectiveness of information services through portal technology implementation. The research was made, based on a hypothesis, in which the correlation between the dependent variable of "information services effectiveness" and the independent variable of "establishment of defense portal" was going to be determined. The reliability of the questionnaire used in this research was measured through Kronbach's alpha method and by using SPSS software, which showed an alpha coefficient of 84%. The hypothesis was measured by the main questions of 10 and 16 and the controller questions of 11 and 12 in the questionnaire through Mann- Whitney's U method. This proved a correlation between the two above mentioned variables with a variability of + /- 1% at the 92% confidence level. Also, the meaningful correlation between "the effectiveness of information services" and factors such as "information adaptation", "ease of use", "personalization" and "users' knowledge about web and the Internet" was examined using the Spearman rank-order correlation method. These factors showed 47%, 47%, 42% and 40% coefficients of correlation, respectively. Finally, based upon research results, some suggestions were made for the improvement of information service effectiveness through portal technology at the above mentioned centers. A sample defense portal was designed, developed and deployed at: http://www.faraham.com. according to the application development methodology.

In statistical process control, traditionally, the assumption is made that successive observations of a quality characteristic are independently distributed. However, in practice, the observations are often serially correlated, resulting in poor performances of control charts that work under independent assumption. This point has received considerable attention in the literature in the last decade. In this paper, we propose a new method to statistically control data from AR(p) processes. The results of different simulation studies show that the new method performs better than the best currently proposed method, in different scenarios of autocorrelation.

The researchers have been considering the carpet surface appearance for many years. The parameters that affect carpet appearance include; shape, area, directionality and density of carpet piles. These parameters change with the passing of time and wear and affect the luster of the carpet. The researchers have considered the use of image processing to distinguish and measure carpet surface appearance. In this research, a watershed algorithm is used to distinguish and separate the carpet piles from each other. Then, the geometrical characteristics of the carpet piles, i.e., area, shape, directionality and density, were determined. The results show that this technique is independent of the color of the sample and the direction in which the image is taken.

In the automobile chain of Iran, improving the automobile industry and increasing the numbers of the partmarker Company, is the cause of the rising importance of Resourse scheduling in the supply chain. In addition, a new scenario is needed to full fill the demands of the customer, because of the accelerated competition the of market structure and the shortened life of productions. Some research shows that performances of JIT and MRPII do not help to decrease delay costs for the expected time of procurement and that there is an enforced receive time from the supplier to the manufacturer. In this article, these problems has been solving by entrancing Just In Time (JIT) into Material Resourse Planning (MRPII) by a two stage model. In the first level, two inventory models calculate an amount of material, which depends on the number of supplier's and comply with JIT regulations. Consequently, the second level determines the optimization lead time by customer. There is a model which aims to minimize the cost of delay.

Because of the essential application of cel1lent in making constructions such as bridges, barriers, wharfs and houses, it is very important to implement quality control experiments, before production (on the raw materials, argils, exploited Cao from basement and dish furnace materials) during production and, after that, on the clinker and final product (Portland cement). In this paper, with regard to the high importance of the four main cement compounds (Cao, SiO2, AhO3 and Fe2O3) that constitute 96 percent of the cement, Response Surface Methodology was used to determine the optimal percent of the four compounds and the optimal value of the L.S.F factor in the before clinker product stage (before acceding raw materials to the furnace) Finally, an optimal solution, using the LP-metric method was examined.

The importance of forecasting trends in variables can be seen, obviously, in the policy making of economic relations and in conducting appropriate activities. Accordingly, various methods have been developed to meet the necessity of efficient prediction instruments.In the recent literature of applied economic studies, researchers have used widely the artificial neural network (ANN), particularly for prediction of monetary and financial variable trends.In this paper, we use the time series of Iran's exchange rate over the period 1959-2002, and employ two different methods of prediction in order to examine the hypothesis in which ANN is more efficient and reliable than ordinary economic techniques in forecasting trend of Iran's exchange rate. The results obtained approve the fact that, if artificial neural network methods are specified correctly, they have better performance in forecasting exchange rates rather than that of other econometric methods. 

In this paper, the relative robustness of two types of credit scoring models are determined in evaluating the credit risk of corporate bank customers in the case of a private bank. This has been done by using the financial information of the bank and constructing a legit model and a non parametric AHP model. The result is in favor of the AHP method, which performs better in terms of representing lower values for the first and second type errors.

Entrepreneurship in less developed countries ascribes more importance to the business firm as a family institution. In the west, the firm is seen as the institutionalization of work. Although there are a few medium-size companies in Iran, the number of large-scale companies is fairly high. Considering these, it seems that the necessity for developing corporate entrepreneurship becomes undeniable.This article, in addition to introducing the domestic factors influencing the development of corporate entrepreneurship in Iran, surveys the more dominant factors involved in this area. It also attempts to draw attention to the shortcomings regarding the Iranian Entrepreneur organizations.

The current article starts with a literature review in Managerial work and its trend. The trend includes the review of five major theories in the field i.e.: managerial characteristics, managerial functions, managerial roles, managerial competencies and managerial talents. Considering the managerial roles as an empirically grounded theory, this has been selected for current study as its theoretical framework.Different research methods employed in empirical managerial work studies are reviewed in this article and the reason for selecting Mintzberg's 'shadow observation" method is explained. This paper provides the findings of an empirical investigation, conducted in Iran, to examine the nature of managerial work in this country. The paper presents the results emerging from the study within two sections. The first section explains the characteristics and the second describes the content of Iranian managers' jobs. The finding concludes with a twelve level managerial role model developed based on the study.Finally, this article offers a four level model to interpret the content of managerial jobs internationally. The model explains the nature of managerial work in four levels including: individual level (managing oneself), interorganizational level (managing internal affairs of organizations), organizational level (managing external affairs of organizations) and super-organizational level (man-aging social affairs). The model has not been merely developed based on the study explained in the present article, but, also, reflects further study including interviews with 18 highly experienced Iranian managers.

Nowadays, performance assessment and efficiency estimation of distribution electricity companies is an important issue for regulators. Electricity companies in reform and restructuring enhances the importance of this issue. For evaluation of electricity distribution companies, parametric and non-parametric methods are used. In this paper, twenty six electricity distribution companies are evaluated by both "Data Envelopment Analysis" (DEA) and "Corrected Ordinary Least Square" (COLS) techniques. In most previous studies, the inputs and outputs which are applied in this study have been used. In order to conclude final ranking and efficiency scores, among the companies, the geometric means of efficiency scores, which are gained from DEA and COLS, are used. Both the results from DEA and COLS methods indicate that selected companies have good performance. Furthermore, the correlation between DEA and COLS scores and ranks is acceptable.

The main aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive model for selecting the appropriate mode of Technology Acquisition at a firm level. Technology transfer (acquisition) is vital for every company, because no organization can develop all necessary technologies alone. Various mode of technology transfer have been recognized by practitioners as well as academics in the field of MOT.First, these modes of technology acquisition are described briefly. Then, some decision making models for selecting appropriate mode of technology transfer are introduced. Finally, by integrating the mentioned models, a compressive model is proposed that allows selecting the appropriate way of technology transfer based on different criteria. An algorithm has been also developed and presented which support new decision making model.