Sharif Digital Repository

Purpose – This paper aims to describe a structured review framework for managing business performance. The framework entails the review of business performance, including the strategic relevance of the measures, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the performance measurement system itself. Design/methodology/approach – A range of approaches and tools are employed in the framework, which features a review card providing a highlevel view of the review process, showing the different types of review perspectives and their interactions. Findings – The performance measurement system of an organisation is a mechanism to manage and control the organisation. Maintaining the effectiveness... 

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an exclusive review framework for the Performance Prism. Design/methodology/approach: An extensive literature survey on performance measurement is used to identify the main aspects of the review in such systems. Various dimensions related to the characteristics of Performance Prism are explored. All the findings are then rationally put together to develop the proposed conceptual framework. Findings: The paper presents a conceptual model to review performance measurement systems (PMS) which are designed based on Performance Prism. The presented framework categorizes review processes and tools into two main categories; Business Performance... 

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated dynamic model, based on empirical findings, which can be used in research centers for evaluating the performance of research projects by using multiple attribute utility theory. Design/methodology/approach-In developing the model, the measures by which the performance of research projects could be evaluated are identified by Delphi method and group decision making. These measures are categorized into three general success factors of time, cost and quality. Then a multi-attribute utility function is applied to integrate these dimensions to determine the utility resulting from the performance of the project. Findings-Through... 

Traditional fragmented and mechanistic science is unable to cope with issues about sustainability, as these are often related to complex, self-organizing systems. In the paper, sustainable development is seen as an unending process defined neither by fixed goals nor by specific means of achieving them. It is argued that, in order to understand the sources of and the solutions to modern problems, linear and mechanistic thinking must give way to non-linear and organic thinking, more commonly referred to as systems thinking. System Dynamics, which operates in a whole-system fashion, is put forward as a powerful methodology to deal with issues of sustainability. Examples of successful... 

The performance of a solution gas-drive reservoir can be predicted using Vogel inflow performance relation (or IPR), which simply relates the deliverability of a well to bottom-hole pressure and average reservoir pressure. While many studies have shown the success of Vogel-type IPR for single porosity reservoirs, the applicability of this method for naturally fractured reservoirs (NFRs), is under question mainly because of the complex flow behavior in matrix and fracture systems. The present study is undertaken to determine if the relation between NFR flowing wellbore pressure and oil production rate could be described by Vogel's IPR. For this purpose, a synthetic dual porosity fractured... 

Here, we use numerical analysis to study the effects of a shock control bump (SCB) on the performance of a transonic axial compressor blade section and to optimize its shape and location to improve the compressor performance. A section of the NASA rotor 67 blade is used for this study. Two Bézier curves, each consisting of seven control points, are used to model the suction and pressure surfaces of the blade section. The SCB is modeled with the Hicks–Henne function and, using five design parameters, is added to the suction side. The total pressure loss through a cascade of blade sections is selected as the cost function. A continuous adjoint optimization method is used along with a RANS... 

Network-on-Chips (NoCs) employ several virtual channels per input port to mitigate head-of-line blocking issue in transmitting network packets. Unfortunately, these virtual channels are power-hungry resources that significantly contribute to the total power consumption of NoCs. In particular, we make the key observation that even in high load traffic, a number of virtual channels are idle, imposing significant static power overhead. Prior works use power-gating technique to switch off idle VCs and reduce the static power consumption. However, we observe that prior works are mostly suitable for low traffic loads and are ineffective in high traffic loads. In this chapter, we aim to propose a... 

Although it is widely accepted that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) improves firm performance, scholars have advised that particular attention should be paid to the context. In this research, we investigate a less explored context of franchising where business systems and procedures are usually dictated to franchisees by franchisors. Therefore, whether a franchisor should allow franchisees to pursue EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy) is not clear. In the context of franchising, the majority of prior studies have mainly focused on the employment of EO as a unidimensional construct and at the franchisor level. In this research, we take a... 

In this paper, two basic new call admission control policies in soft-handoff regions in Code-Division Multiple-Access (CDMA) cellular networks are compared. The two policies are Independent Decision Policy (IDP), which is, approximately, equivalent to a directed retry policy proposed for non-CDMA cellular networks and Collective Decision Policy (CDP). The merits in this comparison include the tradeoff between carried traffic and quality loss probability while maintaining other traffic parameters (such as blocking and dropping (handoff failure) probabilities) sufficiently low. Using numerical results, it is deduced that the CDP leads to a better overall performance. Another important issue... 

In this paper, we provide the exact multiuser performance analysis of the MC-FH system introduced in [1] in the presence of partial-band interference in both AWGN and fading channels. For comparisons, we also provide the performance analysis of both MC-FH and FFH systems based on Gaussian distribution assumption. The partial-band interference is assumed as a Gaussian zero-mean random process with flat power spectrum on a fraction of the signal bandwidth. Our numerical results indicate that in both channels, the MC-FH system significantly outperforms the FFH system in the applications considered. Further, they indicate that the Gaussian analysis works quite well at high number of users. ©2... 

Network-on-Chips (NoCs) employ several virtual channels per input port to mitigate head-of-line blocking issue in transmitting network packets. Unfortunately, these virtual channels are power-hungry resources that significantly contribute to the total power consumption of NoCs. In particular, we make the key observation that even in high load traffic, a number of virtual channels are idle, imposing significant static power overhead. Prior works use power-gating technique to switch off idle VCs and reduce the static power consumption. However, we observe that prior works are mostly suitable for low traffic loads and are ineffective in high traffic loads. In this chapter, we aim to propose a... 

Processor allocation in todays many core MPSoCs is a challenging task, especially since the order and requirements of incoming applications are unknown during design stage. To improve network performance, balance the workload across processing cores, or mitigate the effect of hot processing elements in thermal management methodologies, task migration is a method which has attracted much attention in recent years. Runtime task migration was first proposed in multicomputer with load balancing as the major objective. However, specific NoC properties such as limited amount of communication buffers, more sensitivity to implementation complexity, and tight latency and power consumption constraints... 

The performance parameter uncertainties of turbomachines at different rotational speed were determined by experimental and analytical consideration. The instruments/sensors were located and installed according to the standards for evaluating the performance characteristics of turbine and compressor in a turbocharger laboratory in a wide range of rotational speeds. The comparison of turbine and compressor sensitivity shows that the sensitivity of compressor to 1% shift in the pressure is higher than that for the turbine. Results also show that the sensitivities of efficiency and power of turbine reduce as rotational speed increases. The total uncertainty of turbine and compressor are obtained... 

In this research, bitumen from seven Iranian bitumen production plants were tested and characterized according to the Superpave performance grading (PG) system. The study compared the results of this classification with the 13 performance grade binders required for specific climatic zones in Iran. A set of modifiers, as well as laboratory air blowing, were used to generate the required PG binders. The modifiers used were crumb rubber, gilsonite, polyphosphoric acid, and styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS). It was found that the variety of available binders is not adequate to fully cover the required PGs. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

An 8-bit High-speed folding/interpolating ADC is presented. Designed in 0.18μm CMOS technology, the ADC dissipates only 50mW from a single 1.5V supply. A novel technique based on using both N and P folding cells is used to widen the input range and a self-calibration technique based on using Trimmable MOSFETs is employed to improve the static and dynamic performance  

A general regression neural network technique is applied for design optimization of liquid-liquid coaxial swirl injectors. Phase Doppler Anemometry measurements for velocity and SMD distributions for various Reynolds numbers are used to train the neural network to generate the injector's performance map. Excellent agreement between the predicted values and the measurements is obtained. It is observed that by reducing the number of randomly selected training samples to about one third of the number of prediction points, one may reconstruct the velocity field in the extrapolation regime with an accuracy of 93%. Copyright © 2005 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.... 

In the Endurance Time (ET) method, structures are subjected to a calibrated intensifying accelerogram and their performance is assessed based on their response at various equivalent intensity levels. Application of the ET method in performance-based design of structures has been studied by introducing a continuous performance target curve, which expresses the limit of the proper seismic performance of a structure along various times of the ET accelerogram. The correlation between time in the ET method and the return period for different structural periods is investigated. The procedure is based on the coincidence of response spectra obtained from the ET accelerogram at different times and...