Industrial Management Journal
Year:2019 | Volume:11 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:9

Objective: To help the injured during the crisis, the planning must begin before the crisis. The aim of this study is to provide a model for locating and optimally allocating transfer points, relief centers and hospitals during an earthquake to help the injured including screening, first aid services and transfer to the facility. Methods: Quantitative modeling through the presentation of the mathematical model is used in this paper. For this purpose, the mixed integer, single and double-objective mathematical programming models are presented. The single-objective model seeks to minimize the injured transmission time, and the double-objective model minimizes the fines due to the failure in transferring the injured as well as minimizing the time. The models are applicable based on two approaches of locating and optimal allocation in a 6-Richter earthquake with fewer injuries and based on the selection of a limited number of facilities and optimal allocation approach in the 7-Richter earthquake with a large number of injuries and the use of total capacity of the facilities. Results: Models were applied based on the information of south-central districts of Tehran including districts 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, and 19. Transfer points, relief centers and selected hospitals in each model, manner and degree of the allocation of the injured to these points were specified. Conclusion: To provide proper relief in real conditions, adding relief centers to the problem due to the large number of injuries against hospitals capacities, the screening of the injured, the provision of outpatient treatment services at the transfer point and rejection of the injured in Hospitals are among the basic assumptions that should be considered in the models. Moreover, unbalanced distribution of hospitals in the city and the lack of basic infrastructure should be resolved before a possible crisis.

Objective: In the last two decades, the use of models of business excellence has become very common and many companies use models to evaluate their performance. Nevertheless, the review of the articles published between 1994 and 2017 shows that the firms have many difficulties wxploiting and evaluating the criteria for these models. They are also unable to ensure long-term success in firms with quickly changed environments. Therefore, in this study, organizational excellence is studied based on dynamic capability perspective and conceptual modeling. Methods: In the present study, the conceptual model of organizational excellence was presented based on resources and dynamic capabilities through literature review and content analysis and was confirmed by structural equations modeling. At the end, the related maturity levels were planned using fuzzy Delphi method and used in mobile communication company of Iran. Results: In this study, the effect of dynamic capability on business excellence model is shown to stabilize the performance results of the organization. Conclusion: The conceptual model presented in this study helps to integrate these models with organizational capabilities and culture of excellence and lead the organization to sustainable performance.

Objective: Risk in the supply chain is disturbing it. In order to reduce the effects of risk, the supply chain must be designed in such a way that it can efficiently and effectively respond to environmental changes. Electrical industry is an important part of the economy of the country and any risk and disruption in it can lead to irreparable costs to the production and inter-dependent industries. It is necessary that the supply chain has a high resilience. Therefore, the aim of this research is to design a model for assessing the resilience of the electricity supply chain. Methods: In this research, a theme analysis approach mixed with factor analysis approached was used to design a model for assessing the resilience of the supply chain of the electricity industry. Results: The research findings were obtained through interviews with 15 experts (experienced experts in electrical engineering with a master's degree or higher, with the necessary experience and knowledge in this field) and a model to analyze the resilience of the power supply chain was designed using the theme analysis approach. Then, the relationship among the variables were analyzed through factor analysis using Smart PL software and collecting 323 questionnaires. Conclusion: The results of the research showed that the effective measures for supply chain resonance in the electricity industry are divided into two general categories of internal and external criteria. Among internal criteria, three important dimensions of process issues, flexibility and agility are found and in the category of external criteria, the dimensions of the issues of actors, economic issues and environmental issues are important and effective.

Objective: This study applies a discreet event simulation to improve the performance of hospital emergency department in order to reduce the waiting time for patients and optimize the resources. Methods: First, a simulation model is developed based on flow of patients in an emergency department using ARENA software; then, the simulation model is run 180 times for any feasible scenario including some physicians, emergency medicine specialists, nurses, acute phase cure unit, injection unit, supervised ward, and ICU unit. In the next step, two data envelopment analysis methods are used for ranking the scenarios. Results: Ranking of DEA methods showed that the scenario number 39 is the best choice in both methods. Non-parametric Spearman-Row and Kendal-Tau tests were used to determine the correlation among the results of ranking methods. The results of the two tests (0. 93 and 0. 81, respectively) indicated a significant correlation among DEA ranking methods. Conclusion: The results of case study showed that the scenario 39 is the best scenario among all the 44 feasible scenarios defined in both DEA methods; that is, there should be 2 general physicians, 1 emergency medicine specialist, 16 nurses in the supervised ward, 5 nurses in the acute care unit, 2 beds in the injection room, 22 beds in the supervised ward and 16 beds in the acute care unit.

Objective: During the last three decades, the concept of decision-making integrity in the supply chain has become one of the most important dimensions in the supply chain management. This concept examines the dependence between the location of facilities, allocation of flow between facilities, the structure of transport system and inventory control system. This paper presents a new form of locating-routing-inventory problem in a closedloop supply chain network for perishable products with respect to environmental considerations, in such a way that the aggregate system costs, the aggregate maximum transportation time and emission of pollutants throughout the network should be minimized. Methods: The research problem is formulated in the form of a multi-objective mixed integer nonlinear programming model and a genetic algorithm approach is proposed to solve the model. In order to validate, the results of the proposed algorithm are compared in small-scale examples with the exact solution method using GAMS software. Results: The mean error of the proposed algorithm for the objective function is fewer than 4% as compared to the exact solution. In addition, the results of the algorithm's performance are discussed based on standard indices. The computational results indicated the efficiency of the algorithm for a wide range of problems with different sizes. Conclusion: The locating, routing and inventory decisions are interdependent and determining the optimal values for these variables is in interaction with each other which can lead to an optimal system with the least possible cost.

Objective: Today, many activities have been outsourced, some of which have been successful and have continued, and some of them have been reversed because of failure. Therefore, it can never be claimed that outsourcing is, in itself, beneficial, unless outsourced activities are evaluated. Regarding the importance of the issue, the main objective of this research is to determine the extent to which the outsourcing goals are achieved and the probable improvements in the subscribers services sector of the water and wastewater company of Hormozgan province. Methods: In this research, the system dynamics approach is used to evaluate the outsourcing process. At first, after reviewing the theoretical literature and the experts’ opinions, key variables were indentified and causal relationships among these variables were depicted. Then, the mathematical relations among these variables were determined and, accordingly, the study system was simulated in Hormozgan province water and wastewater Company during the period 2001 to 2027. Results: The findings showed that outsourcing reduces the number of employees, reduces the service provision waiting time and reduces costs in the subscriber services sector of the company. Conclusion: Finally, in order to improve outsourcing performance in line with outsourcing goals, some policies to improve suppliers’ performance evaluation and suppliers credit enhancement were proposed and the results of these policies were simulated.

Objective: In this paper, we investigate a new optimization for territory design in the distribution system and allocation of the customers to supply centers which are considered as territory centers using MIP model. The objective is to balance the work load through minimizing the maximum differences the minimum customers allocated to the various centers. The study constraints guarantee continuity of the territories and the lack of gaps in the territories. Also, other constraints include allocation of a center to each territory and exclusive allocation of each customer to only one territory. Methods: Since, territory design and positioning are among NP-hard issues, in order to solve real-world case and big problems we have to propose meta-heuristic algorithms. For this purpose, in this paper, a grey wolf optimizer and a salp optimizer algorithm are proposed. Based on the literature review, it is very difficult to use encoding-decoding solution without any modifier algorithm. Therefore, we design a novel solution scheme based on a minimum spanning tree in order to obviate the complexities, guarantee the continuity of the territory structures and the lack of gaps, and generate feasible solutions. Results: Computational results on random instances showed that the proposed algorithms can effectively help to generate reasonable responses. Conclusion: The model proposed here could be a useful tool to aid the decision-making in distribution management, as well as for the better organization of any distribution.

Objective: Nowadays, with significant growth in the number of organizations, they seek to increase their competitive advantages as much as possible. One of the effective approaches is knowledge management, through which organizations try to re-exploit the experiences and knowledge created in their previous projects. Today, many projects are carried out by forces from other nationalities, in which each participating organization operates within complex national, organizational, and informal contexts. So, knowledge is transferred between geographically dispersed individuals and organizations, and across cultural and national boundaries. Given these conditions, knowledge management processes, especially the transfer and acquisition of knowledge, are critical. The purpose of the present study is to design a conceptual framework of the contextual factors affecting the knowledge transfer in transnational projects using a meta-synthesis method Methods: Firstly, this study would combine previous researches in the field of knowledge transfer. These factors are determined using the open coding method to propose a conceptual framework. Secondly, hypotheses are defined based on obtained factors, and then we would examine the hypotheses and identify the relationship between independent variables and the dependent variable. The statistical population of the present study includes companies involved in the upstream industry in the realm of petroleum. The data are gathered using a questionnaire. Results: This paper focuses on those types of factors which affect knowledge transfer, from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. We provided an integrative conceptual framework to evaluate and organize the literature on effective contextual factors on knowledge transfer. Conclusion: The obtained results revealed that cultural distance, knowledge distance and language had the most significant influence on the knowledge transfer. Besides, we provided effective solutions for the organizations to improve their knowledge transfer process.