Sharif Digital Repository

In recent years the advent of internet and web has transformed the process of data collection and make organizational and environmental data more accessible. On the one hand, many organizations have realized that the knowledge in these huge databases is key to supporting the various organizational decisions. Particularly, the knowledge about customers from these databases is critical for the marketing function. But, much of this useful knowledge is hidden and untapped. On the other hand, the intense competition and increased choices available for customers have created new pressures on marketing decision-makers and there has emerged a need to manage customers in a long-term relationship.... 

Facility location decisions play a prominent role in strategic planning of many firms, companies and governmental organizations. Since in many real-world facility location problems, the data are subject to uncertainty, in this thesis, we consider the P-center problem under uncertainty of demand nodes. Using Bertsimas and Sim approach, we modeled the problem as a linear optimization model. Furthermore, we develop a tabu search algorithm to solve the problem. Finally we designed some experiments to adjust the parameters of tabu search algorithm. We presented the numerical result accordingly  

Success in forecasting and analyzing sales for a given good or service can mean the difference between profit and loss for an accounting period and, ultimately, the success or failure of the business itself. Therefore reliable prediction of sales becomes a very important task. This thesis presents a novel sales forecasting approach by integration of Genetic Fuzzy Systems (GFS) and Data Clustering to construct a sales forecasting expert system. At first, we use stepwise regression analysis (SRA) to determine factors which have most influence on sales. At the next stage we divide our raw data into k clusters by means of K-means algorithm. Finally, all clusters will be fed into independent... 

Nowadays, competition in supplying the requirement of the customer having become so important and curtail between the companies, so marketing plays an important role in the progress of the firms. Therefore, business and marketing concept is one the important tools to achieve their potential goals in the target markets. For Esfahan Steel Company because of their product’s quality, marketing is so significant. With respect to put the third forge will be put into operation perfectly in this company, the production will be increased and reach to 3.7 million tones per year. In this research, we develop a Marketing Plan for the products of this company in the international target market  

Assortment planning considers the problem of product classification in order to maximize the profit by considering related constraints. Integrating the assortment planning with inventory management plays an essential role in retail optimization. The importance of integrating these problems is related to customer behavior in substituting the products in case of shortage. The customer checks the availability of products in order of his/her priorities and buys a product if available otherwise leaving the store without purchase if he/she cannot find a product according to his/her preferences. Customer preferences are modeled through the definition of consumer types, where a type is a ranking of... 

In this study, we consider a newsvendor problem. The newsvendor in addition to determine order quantities must also determine the selling price of each product. The demand of each product is of a stochastic nature and depends on the selling price. It is assumed that products are cross-elastic. We also assume that retailers want to apply mixed bundling strategy. It means that in addition to selling products separately, they sell them as bundles. Two types of two-steps algorithms (p-constant, q-constant) were proposed. First we applied these algorithms for newsvendor problem with 2 single products and 1 bundle. After demonstrating its efficiency, algorithms were developed for solving problems... 

Energy is of the essential elements to improve every nation’s economy and society, which is influenced by a variety of parameters. Thus many empirical methods have been represented to assess the said parameters using other parameters by which they are affected. In this research, Linear Genetic Programming method (LGP) has been used for assessment, which has been applied to project the global shining of the sun in two Iranian metropolises (Tehran and Kerman), and also natural gas utilization in both industrial and domestic sectors. In this research, authentic data from the empirical results existing in technical documents has been used to develop the models. Most prevalent effective... 

In this thesis, the problem of the hotel revenue management with the customer choice behaiver has been studied . In this model , each customer has a preference order among the set of products. He purchased or booked his products according to his ordered list of preferences. Because the high number of hotel products are assumed, each customer can only choices different fare classes and the list of the preference customers is made up of different fare classes. Two different approaches have been used to solve this problem . The first approach is The linear programming model in which α percent of the capacity is allocated to business customers and the remaining capacity to leisuer customers... 

In this research we study multi-commodity inventory-location problem under disruption risk that is formulated to a nonlinear integer-programming model. The objective function of this model is minimization of inventory and location costs simultaneously under disruption risk. These disruptions may be caused by natural events such as earthquake, flood, fire and man-made sources like labor strike or terrorist attack. The structural design of a supply chain greatly affects how these kinds of disruption risks influence the network. In this regard, this study proposes a strategy to reduce the impacts of disruption risk by considering substitute commodity in the multi-commodity inventory-location... 

In this thesis, several metaheusristic algorithms for solving the generalized tardiness flow shop problem are proposed. In the generalized tardiness flowshop a due date is defined for every operation of the jobs. With the best of our knowledge is the first attempt to develop a genetic algorithm for the proposed problem. Several genetic algorithms are develpoed based on selecting the parents.The proposed GAs are tunned using experimtal analysis and the efficiency of lgorithms are analyzed with many randomly generated problems. Sensitivity analysis is also done to drive mangerial insights  

In the aftermath of mass-casualty events, main resources may be overwhelmed by the sudden jump in demand. To ration these resources with considering the patients priority for help, mean triage. For prioritizing the patient for help, the limitation of resources should be considered. These resources can be different. This thesis at the first step investigates how the priority assignment can be done in a clearing system and what the potential benefits would be when there are same resources in the system. At the next step, the difference between resources is considered. So in this thesis, the problem of priority assignment of patients in an emergency system is modeled and analyzed at first with... 

In the research, the order acceptance and scheduling problem is integrated with pricing in order to maximize the net profit. Two mixed linear integer programming models have been proposed for the problem. A two level tabu search algorithm is proposed to solve the model. The suitable structure is determined for the algorithm based on numerical experiments. Based on experimental design results, the hybrid of random initial solutions and swap move in neighborhoods determination is the best structure for the algorithm. Numerical analysis shows the reasonable performance of proposed algorithm  

Pricing and Revenue Management in systems that offer services in subscription as well as pay-per-use format simultaneously is one of the most significant challenges in service companies. One of the main criteria in these systems is keeping the loyal customers and attracting more subscribers. Pricing and capacity allocation are decisions to be made in such systems considering customer’s behavior. In this research, we consider a service system with subscription and pay per use options to analyze the price and capacity allocation based on customer’s bahvior. The Loss Aversion theory is assumed for customer’s behavior and its effect on decisions is analyzed. A greedy algorithm as well as a smart... 

In today’s industrial world, firms’ focus on production only, embedded in forward supply chains is not acceptable. Environmental crises have drawn public attention to the concept of Sustainability, and government regulations are pushing firms to taking the responsibility of their wastes. These have led to manufacturers’ tendency towards collecting returns from their customers in order to use them in remanufacturing processes embedded in Reverse Supply Chains. Besides, inventory policies compatible with appropriate flows of information is widely being used, out of which is the Vendor-Managed Inventory policy. These reasons clarify the importance of research and academic work into the field of... 

Cross docking is a novel docking method which importance in supply chain management has been underlined in recent decades. Two main operations of regular docking centers, including storage and picking up are eliminated in cross docking facilities in order to decrease inventory holding costs, shorten lead times and at the same time increase service level. Although inbound and outbound flow at each cross dock are determined by the flow of shipments through the network, overwhelming majority of papers in this field have addressed each of local and network-wide cross docking problems mutually in isolation. That being so, the problem dealt with in this research, is to how determining the flow of... 

In This article, we aimed to estimate impact of dual sourcing strategy on environmental implication and show how this strategy can ameliorate the emission of greenhouse gases. For this purpose, first we define comprehensive NLP models for splitting order problem with carbon emission cap and carbon emission Trade-Cap policy. Then customized sequential quadratic programming approach had been developed for solving these models. In addition, customized Genetic Algorithm validated this approach. Finally numerical results show that order splitting strategy cause to reduction in costs and emission at same time. Beside this outcome, we show the so-called Trade- Cap policy almost performs better than... 

The main purpose of this thesis, is the scrutiny of social influences on products sales and prices. That is what probable effects can be imposed on the amount of sale and price of products as a result of customer's satisfaction or dissatisfaction. In this research pricing of a new product is considered which is produced and supplied through market in a monopolized manner for a specific time period. At the first period, people purchase the product given factors such as price, quality, etc. a part of whom, put comments about their experience regarding the product quality on social networks. In following periods, alongside with aforementioned factors, new purchasers also consider positive or... 

Dealing with different supply chain risks and how firms should prepare against them has become an important issue in real world application. In this paper, we propose a periodic model to fortify supply chain structure against disruption by remanufacturing different types of returned products at first priority and manufacturing raw materials at second priority only if it is necessary. Additionally, our approach to model disruption is that there are two kinds of facilities for manufacturing/ remanufacturing centers. The first one is reliable and the second one is unreliable. Therefore, in this paper, we formulate and solve a reliable discrete dynamic linear programming with different types of... 

Nowadays diversion of products from authorized distribution channels to the gray markets has been considered by manufacturers. There many cases that the products of main industries are supplied through gray markets. Gray markets are divided into two categories. The first category is parallel imports where an unauthorized distributor or a third party imports the products from a low price market into a market with high price. In most researches of parallel importation it is assumed that a monopoly manufacturer distributes its products in both two markets. In the second category of parallel importation researches, it is assumed that the manufacturer distributes the products in a certain market... 

One of the main applications of revenue management is in healthcare industry. By combining these two concepts, subjects such as patient allocation and scheduling and no-show rates were developed in the literature. Up until now, allocation and scheduling were considered separately in the literature. Also, no-show rates were predicted using regression models and data mining tools and these predictions were rarely used in scheduling systems. In this thesis, we combined allocation based on patients’ insurance type with scheduling based on patients’ no-show rates. Also, patients’ no-show rates were predicted and these rates were used in the proposed scheduling model. Firstly, the integrated...