Sharif Digital Repository

This paper points out a flaw in the derivation of the optimal price and warranty length policies proposed by Wu et al. (2006) (Wu, C.C., Lin, P.C., Chou, C.Y. Determination of price and warranty length for a normal lifetime distributed product. International Journal of Production Economics 102 (2006): 95–107). While we show one of the optimal strategies that they considered is incorrect, correct versions of the optimal strategies are presented  

This paper introduces a novel and practical vendor selection problem of a firm that cooperates with multiple geographically dispersed stores. In this problem, the firm entrusts some of its business process to external vendors, and each store can split the ordered quantity between one or more potential vendors, represented as a multi-sourcing strategies. Moreover, the Cobb–Douglas demand function is utilised to establish a relationship between the market demand and the selling price; representing price-sensitive demand. This paper seeks to choose the best vendors, to allocate the stores to them, and to find the optimal values for inventory-related decisions. The approach is based on the... 

It has recently been shown that the performance of multivariate exponentially weighted mean square and multivariate exponentially weighted moving variance charts of Huwang et al. (J. Qual. Technol. 2007; 39:258-278) in monitoring the variability of a multivariate process for individual observations is better than existing schemes. Both of these control charts monitor a distinct matrix which is an estimator of the in-control covariance matrix. Instead of using the trace, in this paper, we propose a L1-norm and a L2-norm-based distance between diagonal elements of the estimators from their expected values to design new control charts in monitoring the covariance matrix of a multivariate... 

This paper addresses the problem of robust parameter estimation of simple linear profiles in multistage processes in the presence of outliers in Phase I. In this regard, two robust approaches, namely the Huber’s M-estimator and the MM estimator, are proposed to estimate the parameters of the process in Phase I in the presence of outliers in historical data. In addition, the U statistic is applied to the robust parameter estimates to remove the effect of the cascade property in multistage processes and as a result, to obtain adjusted robust estimates of the parameters of simple linear profiles. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated under weak and strong autocorrelations... 

Although statistical modeling is a common task in different fields of science, it is still difficult to estimate the best model that can accurately describe inherent characteristics of a system for which historical or experimental data are available. Since we may classify estimating techniques as optimizations, we can model this problem as an optimization problem and solve it by a new heuristic algorithm like neural networks, genetic algorithms, and tabu search or by classic ones such as regression and econometric models. In this paper, we propose a new type of genetic algorithm to find the best regression model among all suggested and evaluate its performances by an economical case study. ©... 

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to apply Poisson generalized linear model (PGLM) with log link instead of multinomial logistic regression to monitor multinomial logistic profiles in Phase I. Hence, estimating the coefficients becomes easier and more accurate. Design/methodology/approach: Simulation technique is used to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm using four different control charts for monitoring. Findings: The proposed algorithm is faster and more accurate than the previous algorithms. Simulation results also indicate that the likelihood ratio test method is able to detect out-of-control parameters more efficiently. Originality/value: The PGLM with log link has... 

A resource investment problem with discounted cash flows (RIPDCF) is a project-scheduling problem in which (a) the availability levels of the resources are considered decision variables and (b) the goal is to find a schedule such that the net present value of the project cash flows optimizes. In this paper, the RIPDCF in which the activities are subject to generalized precedence relations is first modeled. Then, a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to solve this model. In addition, design of experiments and response surface methodology are employed to both tune the GA parameters and to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in 240 test problems. The results of the performance... 

This article points out the real-world prevalence of the multiple-product, multiple-constraint newsboy problem with two objectivesthe 'newsstand problem'in which there are total and incremental discounts on purchasing prices. The constraints are the warehouse capacity and the batch forms of the order placements. The first objective of this problem is to find the order quantities that maximize expected profit, and the second objective is maximizing the service rate. It is assumed that the holding and shortage costs, modelled by a quadratic function, occur at the end of the period. Moreover, the decision variables are integer. A formulation of the problem is presented and shown to be an... 

In some quality control applications, processes consist of multiple components, stations or stages to finish the final products or the services. Some quality characteristics in each stage of these processes (called multistage processes) can be represented by a relationship between a response and one or more explanatory variables which is named as profile. In this paper, a general model is proposed for monitoring multivariate profiles in multistage processes. To this aim, the multivariate form of the U transformation approach is first used to remove the effect of the cascade property between the stages. Then, three control schemes are employed to monitor the parameters of multivariate simple... 

The usual key assumptions in designing quality control charts are the normality and independency of serial samples. While the normality assumption holds in most cases, in many continuous-flow processes such as the chemical processes, serial samples have some degrees of autocorrelation associated with them. Ignoring the autocorrelation structure in constructing control charts, results in decreasing the in-control run length, and so increasing the false alarms. Moreover, when the object is to detect small shifts in the mean vector of a process, the performance of Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) control charts is dramatically better than Schewhart control charts. One of the methods, which have been... 

In some quality control applications, processes consist of multiple components, stations or stages to finish the final products or the services. Some quality characteristics in each stage of these processes (called multistage processes) can be represented by a relationship between a response and one or more explanatory variables which is named as profile. In this paper, a general model is proposed for monitoring multivariate profiles in multistage processes. To this aim, the multivariate form of the U transformation approach is first used to remove the effect of the cascade property between the stages. Then, three control schemes are employed to monitor the parameters of multivariate simple... 

In most modern manufacturing systems, products are often the output of some multistage processes. In these processes, the stages are dependent on each other, where the output quality of each stage depends also on the output quality of the previous stages. This property is called the cascade property. Although there are many studies in multistage process monitoring, there are fewer works on profile monitoring in multistage processes, especially on the variability monitoring of a multistage profile in Phase-I for which no research is found in the literature. In this paper, a new methodology is proposed to monitor the standard deviation involved in a simple linear profile designed in Phase I to... 

When a multistage manufacturing process is monitored statistically, the cascade property results in a more complicated condition compared to the case when a single-stage process is controlled. The cascade property usually exists in different stages of a multistage process, where the quality of a stage influences the performance of the next stage. Moreover, sometimes the quality of a product/process is best characterized by a functional relationship. This relationship is referred to as a profile. In this paper, phase I monitoring of simple linear profile is addressed for a multistage process involving the cascade property. To aim this, the capabilities of the methods that may be used to... 

A new multi-objective intermodal hub-location-allocation problem is modeled in this paper in which both the origin and the destination hub facilities are modeled as an M/M/m queuing system. The problem is being formulated as a constrained bi-objective optimization model to minimize the total costs as well as minimizing the total system time. A small-size problem is solved on the GAMS software to validate the accuracy of the proposed model. As the problem becomes strictly NP-hard, an MOIWO algorithm with an efficient chromosome structure and a fuzzy dominance method is proposed to solve large-scale problems. Since there is no benchmark available in the literature, an NSGA-II and an NRGA are... 

In process robustness studies, it is desirable to minimize the influence of noise factors on the system and simultaneously determine the levels of controllable factors optimizing the overall response or outcome. In the cases when a random effects model is applicable and a fixed effects model is assumed instead, an increase in the variance of the coefficient vector should be expected. In this paper, the impacts of this assumption on the results of the experiment in the context of robust parameter design are investigated. Furthermore, two criteria are considered to determine the optimum settings for the control factors. In order to better understand the proposed method and to evaluate its... 

Multivariate monitoring techniques such as multivariate control charts are used to control the processes that contain more than one correlated characteristic. Although the majority of previous researches are focused on controlling only the mean vector of multivariate processes, little work has been performed to monitor the covariance matrix. In this research, a new method is presented to detect possible shifts in the covariance matrix of multivariate processes. The basis of the proposed method is to eliminate the correlation structure between the quality characteristics by transformation technique and then use an S chart for each variable. The performance of the proposed method is then... 

An economic order quantity (EOQ) model with payment in advance is developed to purchase highprice raw materials. A joint policy of replenishments and pre-payments is employed to supply the materials. The rate of demand and lead time are taken to be constant and it is assumed that shortage does not occur in the cycles. The cycle is divided into three parts; the first part is the time between the earlier replenishment-time to the next order-time (to), the second part is the period between to to a payment-time (tk) and the third part is the period between tk to the next replenishment-time. At the start of the second part (to), α% of the purchasing cost is paid. The (1-α)% remaining purchasing...