Sharif Digital Repository

This article introduces the concept of latecomer systems integration capability (LSIC) as a construct for theory development in the area of emergence and competitiveness of producers of complex capital goods from developing economies. The study draws on three bodies of the literature to conceptualize LSIC and then presents an in-depth case study of the development of LSIC in a major Iranian firm engaged in producing electricity generation systems. Although an exploratory study, the findings suggest that, in this case, LSIC evolved in a fairly short period of time from simple low-cost project management skills to innovative capabilities, supported by some sophisticated engineering and design... 

We develop an integrated vendor-buyer model for a two-stage supply chain. The vendor manufactures the product and delivers it in a number of equal-sized batches to the buyer. The items delivered are presented to the end customers in a display area. Demand is assumed to be positively dependent on the amount of items displayed. The objective is to maximize total supply chain profit. The numerical analysis shows that buyer-vendor coordination is more profitable in situations when demand is more stock dependent. It also shows that the effect of double marginalization provides a link between the non-coordinated and the coordinated case  

Complex product systems (CoPS) industries largely contribute to industrial development, economic growth and creation of national wealth in both developed and developing economies. CoPS also show a number of specific characteristics as a distinctive category of industrial products in comparison with mass-produced consumer goods. These aspects have attracted the attention of scholars to study CoPS over the last two decades, resulting in a fairly extensive body of literature on the subject. However, there is a further need to connect research findings in this area, to illustrate a macro view of the development in the field, explore common themes, and identify possible paths into the future.... 

In today competitive world, productivity or lack of it is a major challenge facing the construction industry. The term "productivity" is defined as the amount of output per unit of input. In order to boost productivity in the construction industry, influencing factors should be recognized and improved. Researchers have identified a myriad of factors affecting construction productivity that can be broadly classified as "external" and "internal" factors. In this paper it has been tried to identify and categorize different factors influencing construction productivity. As a result the intended audience is practitioners in the construction industry and project managers who are eager to improve... 

Firms performance in their new product development (NPD) is believed to be positively related with involving suppliers in the process of new product development, and also with the organisations capacity and capability to absorb external and internal knowledge, namely absorptive capacity (AC). Addressing a gap in the literature, this study adopts the definition and structure for AC suggested by Tu et al. (2006) to examine relationships between ACs sub-dimensions with NPD performance, and also their moderating effects on the relationship between supplier involvement and new product development performance, on both financial and nonfinancial aspects. Data from a survey of 161 manufacturing... 

Copper slag (CS) is an industrial by-product, which is commonly disposed in engineered landfills. Prior studies have successfully incorporated CS as an aggregate phase in cementitious materials. However, the alkali-activated material (AAM) incorporating CS has been scarcely studied. Specifically, the elevated temperature behavior of AAM with CS has not been investigated previously. The present paper aims to study the effects of elevated temperature treatment on the mass loss and residual strength of alkali-activated slag mortars incorporating 0–100% (by volume) of CS with an incremental step of 20% instead of natural sand. The mass loss, compressive and flexural strengths, and microstructure... 

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have shown rapid progress in a decade of extensive research and development, aiming now towards commercialization. However, the development of more facile, reliable, and reproducible manufacturing techniques will be essential for industrial production. Many lamination methods have been initially designed for organic photovoltaics (OPVs), which are conceptually similar to PSCs. Lamination could provide a low-cost and adaptable technique for the roll-to-roll production of solar cells. This review presents an overview of lamination methods for the fabrication of PSCs and OPVs. The lamination of different electrodes consisting of various materials such as metal back... 

Graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets have usually been synthesized through Hummers' method by using highly pure graphite (HPG) as the main starting material. However, HPG can be relatively expensive for mass production of high-quality graphene. In this work, a general method for synthesis of high-quality GO and rGO sheets from various natural and industrial carbonaceous wastes such as vegetation wastes (wood, leaf, bagasse, and fruit wastes), animal wastes (bone and cow dung), a semi-industrial waste (newspaper), and an industrial waste (soot powders produced in exhaust of diesel vehicles) was developed. Based on atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray... 

One of the most important characteristics of industrial products, especially mechanical set-ups, is considering the tolerances of production and assembly of these set-ups, which directly influences the products' operations. In sheet metal structures, due to the high flexibility of the sheets, the errors appeared while assembly will be as highly influential as the errors due to the production tolerance of the sheets. As a result, having a comprehensive model which could analyze the assembly process of these structures and also clarifies the relation between the tolerance of the parts and the ultimate changes of the set-up will be of considerable importance. During the assembly process, the... 

The use of solar concentrators can be an alternative for initial cost reduction in the PV systems. However, they suffer from high cell temperature that can be overcome by different active or passive cooling approaches. Spectral splitting and the elimination of high-energy solar photons are effective solutions for cell temperature reduction. In this study, we developed a Polymethyl methacrylate Spectral Splitting Fresnel Lens (SSFL) for linear concentration using a new design, which directs the desired portion of the spectrum towards the cell and diffracts the rest to eliminate the use of beam splitters or nanofluids in the spectral splitting system. Different SSFLs were considered for... 

Gasification of black liquor is an alternative recovery technology. Pulp and paper industries are turning their attention to black liquor gasification as a replacement for recovery boilers. Gasification-combined cycle exergoeconomic analyses have been used to study the economical and exergetical performance of black liquor. Both conventional iterative exergoeconomic optimization and multi objective evolutionary optimization have been applied. The iterative optimization results have been compared with evolutionary programming results in order to evaluate the accuracy. The strength of proposed optimization methods are elucidated in a case study applied to Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries... 

The present study evaluates the application of top-down steel demand estimation in developing countries. The anticipated steel demand for the case of Iran is calculated by three methods, including the growth model (GM), the intensity of use hypothesis (IUH), and the fixed stock paradigm (FCP). GM shows a broad range of apparent steel demand based on the assumed growth factor. When the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita reaches 13,000 dollars per person (constant 2010 US$), the IUH method estimates the consumption peak consumption at around 500 kg steel per capita per year, which is being expected between 2040 and 2060 depending on the economic growth assumptions. Since fluctuations in... 

Chinese hamster ovary cells are the main cellular factories for production of a wide range of recombinant proteins in biopharmaceutical industry. Recombinant human Interferon beta-1a (rh-IFN β-1a), as a cytokine is broadly used to treat multiple sclerosis. In this work, the cell line producing rh-IFN β-1a was studied to improve cell density along with the specific expression. For this reason different cell culture experiments were done using different commercial serum-free media to find the appropriate media providing higher cell density. It was shown DMEMF12, DMEM:ProCHO5, and CHO-S-SFM II led to higher cell density and shorter doubling time. Next, using these media, fed-batch, and...