Year:2010 | Volume:5 | Issue:11|Papers Count:9

Agility has been proposed as a strategy to empower the manufacturing organizations in order to sustain their competitive advantage under an unexpectedly turbulent and changing environment. Although, there have been many researches about what agility is and how firms can become agile, but there is a few researches about measuring and evaluating the agility of a manufacturing organization. n order to decision-making and planning about making agile of an organization, it is necessary to determine the level of manufacturing agile with regard to the agile capability of the organization. In this article, it is developed a methodology for measuring and evaluating of manufacturing agility with considering agility capabilities through integrating hierarchical approach, fuzzy logic, and entropy technique. This methodology was performed in Khoozestan's Steel Industry. The results indicated two agile manufacturing capabilities "education" and "competency" have the highest and the lowest of scores, respectively.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis are not a suitable analytical means to determine the importance of the identified factors or to evaluate decision-making options concerning those factors. Although the SWOT analysis successfully pinpoints the factors, it cannot quantify the factors' weights as well as the strategic issues affects on these factors. Therefore, it is necessary to employ a form of SWOT analysis that measures and takes into account the possible dependency among the factors. his paper demonstrates a process for quantitative SWOT analysis that can be performed even when there is dependence among strategic factors. The proposed algorithm uses the analytic network process (ANP). This algorithm allows measurement to be performed in which situations that there is a dependency among the strategic factors. The network model proposed in this study for SWOT analysis is composed of four levels, the goal (best strategy) is indicated in the first level, the SWOT factors and SWOT sub-factors are found in the second and third levels respectively, and the last level is composed of the alternative strategies. In order to finding out the weight of SWOT factors based on ANP method, a pair wise comparison matrix questionnaire with 1-9 scale was designed and then 32 specialists of Arak Petrochemical company were asked to complete this questionnaire. Then the average opinion of those specialists who had completed the questionnaire, was calculated by using the geometric mean method and based on the ANP method the strategies of the company were determined.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is one of modern methods of quality engineering. QFD includes market study, finding customers, customers' needs identification, and then considering their needs in all stages of design and production. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, like what carries out in human mind, deals with analysis of the subjects. This method enables the decision makers to determine the simultaneous impacts and counter effects of many of complicate and ambiguous situations. This procedure helps decision-makers to arrange the priorities according to their aims, knowledge, and experience, in way that consider their emotions and judgments directly. The aim of this research is to improve the quality of products in candy and chocolate industry through utilizing Quality Function Deployment (QFD). For this reason after collecting the demands of target customers, through utilizing experts' viewpoints, the technical and engineering necessities related to any of the customers' demands were identified. By using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the customers' demands have also been prioritized based on their importance.

In recent years many auto parts companies has been able to get ISO/TS 16949 certificate. According to the hypotheses of this research, the auto parts companies will improve their performance in such areas: customer satisfaction, training efficiency, products selling, time of decaying machineries, waste reduction, on-time delivery of products, on-time purchase of raw materials, number of rehabilitation, and number of issued lenient certificates; in the case of establishing the ISO/TS 16949 standard. After collecting the data, the quality indexes and their weight were determined. Then the necessary information about the selected indexes was collected through the documents of companies. By preparing the special score tables, the points of each companies regarding the selected indexes were calculated. Finally, the research results obtained by using vilcoktion hierarchical test indicated implementing the ISO/TS 16949 quality management system causes of improving the quality indexes of the studied companies.

Understanding the necessity of eliminating waste of all kinds and creating value for all beneficiaries is a prerequisite to move towards lean. The lean process needs rationality, strong willingness, and continues support. Therefore, to be lean, we cannot take simple and hasty actions. Lean management is a complicated procedure which revolves around many key conceptual tools, so that its implementation needs breaking old patterns and installing new ones. In order to achieve the lean management, an organization needs a set of tools as well as an applied frame. In other words, a lean management needs a system. This research has been conducted in accordance with Jackson's lean management system and its step-by-step practices. In order to conduct this research, such issues as: formulating development plans and annual strategies, as well as operationalzing and organizing the plans were considered in ALPHA ELECTRIC Co. The mangers of ALPHA ELECTRIC CO. (Producer of different kinds of LAC cables) intend to use all of their company capacities as well as the country facilities in order to make a sustainable value. A reconstruction team was founded in ALPHA ELECTRIC Co. With guidance of researcher, this team formulated the plans and performed Jackson's lean management system. This team also conducted the reconstruction process – through concentration and standardization – for performing fundamental improves. In companies' development plans, lean production and lean equipment management were considered as fundamental elements and cost reduction was considered as improvement element.

Paying serious attention to customers is a prerequisite for going concern in today's competitive markets. Through customer satisfaction, organizations can reduce their production costs and increase their incomes. Customer relationship management (CRM) can assist managers and organizations to create constructive relationships with customers as well as to maintain them. Therefore, formulating and implementing an efficient customer relationship management is a necessity of today's organizations. In this research, the effective factors (i.e. cultural, technological, strategic, and structural factors) on the process of CRM implementation in Telecommunication Company of Sistan & Baluchestan were identified and ranked. This research is a kind of descriptive-measurable research and its statistical community is the managers and staff of Telecommunication Company of Sistan & Baluchestan. Research hypotheses were investigated by Friedman test and Student t-test. The research results indicated the highest scores were related to the cultural factors and the lowest scores were related to the structural factors in the process of CRM implementation in Telecommunication Company of Sistan & Baluchestan. In order to be successful in the process of CRM implementation, Telecommunication Company of Sistan & Baluchestan should pay serious attention to the structural factors.

In recent years, ICT has been one of the most important factors affecting technological quick progresses related to the production factors, productivity improvement of production factors, and economic growth. Nowadays, the yield of ICT capital is much more than the yield of non ICT capital in those countries which are active in the area of ICT, despite the share of ICT capital is much less than the share of non ICT capital. In this research the effective factors on the gross domestic product changes (economic growth) with emphasis on ICT capital were considered. For this reason, in addition to the theoretical analysis of the topic, the effective factors on gross domestic production will be studied. Then the long-term and short-term effects of the research topic through time series analysis by using self-explanation dynamic models with regarding to Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) and Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) will be analyzed. The research results indicate ICT capital doesn't have a meaningful effect on economic growth and gross domestic production because of its very little share compared to total capital of the country. In order to use of this valuable capital, it is necessary to be prepared the needed situations and infrastructures. ICT capital has a lot of benefits and so it should be seriously considered by the economic decision-makers.

In finance, a portfolio is an appropriate mix or collection of investments held by an institution or an individual. Selecting a portfolio in order to maximize income is one of the main problems of the investors in the financial markets. The existing methods are not enough efficient on the optimal selection of portfolio, so in order to solve this problem some initiative algorithms have been recently considered. Genetic algorithm is one of the initiative algorithms which can successfully optimize the portfolio with regarding to the different levels of risk. The purpose of this research is selecting and optimizing the portfolios based on the different levels of risk. In order to achieve this goal, two genetic algorithms were designed. In the process of designing the needed algorithms, two basic models (i.e. mean-variance model of Markowitz and mean-semi variance model) were considered. In order to be more efficient, some real world constraints were added to the designed algorithms. MATLAB7 for designing genetic algorithms and single sample t-test for testing the research hypotheses were used. Statistical community of this research was 146 companies operating in Tehran's Stock Exchange and its time frame was from 1380 to 1387. The research results revealed that the designed genetic algorithm has enough optimality and stability on the case of continues repeats. According to the results, there is no meaningful difference between using two models (i.e. mean-variance model of Markowitz and mean-semi variance model). By using the designed genetic algorithms, we believe the investors will be able to select an optimal portfolio.

This study is going to answer this question if the variables Systematic risk, Book-to-Market Ratio of Equity, Company Size, Price-to-Earnings Ratio, Earnings-to-Price Ratio, Market Rate of Return, Non-Risk Return, and Risk Premium will be able to determine and anticipate the actual return of stock in Iran stock exchange or not. All research variables come from capital asset pricing model (CAPM), Fama and French model, and accounting ratios. In order to answer the research question, 8 hypotheses were designed. The statistical community of this research includes those listed companies on Iran stock exchange – by using single variable regression – which their Book-to-Market Ratio of Equity have the highest correlation coefficient and their company size have the lowest correlation coefficient. According to the obtained results of applying multivariable regression, the variables of company size because of the lowest correlation coefficient, and the variables of earnings-to-price ratio as well as market risk premium because of the co-linearity elimination between independent variables, were eliminated. The results of testing hypotheses indicate using multi-factor model stock is better than single-factor (CAPM) to determine the actual return of stock during the 1380-1386 period.