Sharif Digital Repository

In maintenance and replacement planning of an industry, the purchasing of new equipment on the market with some kind of technological improvement over existing equipment should be taken into account. Because of operating cost, ordinary and preventive maintenance expenses may be lower, production rate may be higher and the quality of output may be better, etc. The industry to be considered in this paper is the mining industry and the replaced equipment is the mine shovel. It is assumed that, at most, one new shovel can be purchased before the mine is exhausted. It is possible that the mine is given up before exhausted, because of the disadvantage of the expense and loss of the salvage value... 

A new methodology has been proposed which offers a systematic approach to use the so called "performance index" or cost function as the basic tool to incorporate the dynamics of the aircraft in the process of trajectory planning. Moreover, by using non-dimensional parameters a better understanding of the dynamic terms are provided. © 2005 IEEE  

Technology Identification involves developing a list of technologies which are, or may be, incorporated into products or processes. After reviewing Technology Assessment, Technology Strategy, Management of Technology and New Product Development in literature, four methods of Technology Identification are investigated: Value Chain of Technologies, Process-based Approach, Quality Function Deployment and Technology Mapping. A model facilitating decision making process is then proposed by which the most appropriate method to be employed is identified. The proposed model is examined in specific case of fuel cell technologies while preparing the Fuel cell Development Strategic Plan of Iran. 1... 

In restructured and de-regulated power systems, generating companies (Gencos) are responsible for supplying electricity for both energy and reserve markets, which usually operate simultaneously. In this condition, the question is how much and for what price must each Genco generate for each market to maximize its profit, so this paper intends to answer to this question. In this paper, first, the combined energy and reserve markets are considered, and the Nash equilibrium points are determined. Then, the bidding strategies for each Genco at these points will be presented. The bids for the energy and 10 min spinning reserve (TMSR) markets are separated in the second stage, and again, the... 

Systematic management of enterprise knowledge, e.g. new ideas, innovations and patents, has a great impact on business sustainability and growth. Without comprehensive assessment of knowledge assets, agile companies can not design and run knowledge promotion programs required for survival in competitive environments in modern economy. A comprehensive framework for the assessment of as-is situation and development of knowledge promotion plans includes (a) assessing the as-is situation- the quantity and quality of organizational knowledge; (b) developing a situational program based on assessment results, business strategy and knowledge maturity indicators; (c) and working out an action plan in... 

This article concerns the notion of methodology in strategic management of R&D/technology. Though development of new tools and methods has received much attention during the recent decades, attention to understanding methodologies has remained disproportionally low. In this study we distinguish two methodologies that are used in strategic management of R&D/technology: planning methodology and evolutionary learning methodology. We mainly focus on defining and describing the origins, nature, and characteristics of the latter. We propose a framework for methodology selection by investigating context, content, and process factors. Using this framework, we provide supportive evidence for... 

This paper presents an ITS pilot project in a developing country, Iran, as a way to foster to the development of ITS national strategic plan. The pilot project concerns a high trafficked road corridor, linking the capital Tehran to the largest city in the suburb: Karaj, This corridor was selected among others, by the end of 2002 as a good candidate, due in particular to the variety of problems encountered [1] In order to launch the pilot project a co-operation was set up in 2004 between ISIS, Groupe EGIS, France and Metra Consulting Engineers Co, Iran and several ITS experts were sent to Iran for two missions in June and July 2004. The mission consisted of detailed on-site visits, interviews... 

Agile software development methodologies have been greeted with enthusiasm by many software developers, yet their widespread adoption has also resulted in closer examination of their strengths and weaknesses. While analyses and evaluations abound, the need still remains for an objective and systematic appraisal of Agile processes specifically aimed at defining strategies for their improvement. We provide a review of the strengths and weaknesses identified in Agile processes, based on which a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis of the processes is performed. We suggest this type of analysis as a useful tool for highlighting and addressing the problem issues in Agile... 

One of the most important issues in planning the "reservoir" type of hydro-power plants (HPP) is to determine the installation capacity of the HPPs and estimate its annual energy value. In this paper, a method is presented. A computer program has been developed to analyze energy calculation and estimation of the most important economic indices of an HPP using the sensitivity analysis method. Another program, developed by Matlab software, calculates the reliability indices for a number of units of an HPP with a specified load duration curve using the Monte Carlo method. Ultimately, comparing the technical, economic and reliability indices will determine the installation capacity of an HPP. By... 

In the restructured power systems, generating companies (Genco) are responsible for selling their product in the energy market. In this condition, the question is how much and for what price must each Genco generate to maximize its profit. Therefore, this paper intends to propose a rational method to answer this question. In the proposed methodology, the hourly forecasted market clearing price (FMCP) is used as a reference to model the possible and probable price strategies of Gencos. The forecasted price is the basis of the bidding strategies of each Genco, which can be achieved by solving a bi-level optimization problem using GAMS (general algebraic modeling system) language. The first... 

In the restructured power systems, they are typically scheduled based on the offers and bids to buy and sell energy and ancillary services (AS) subject to operational and security constraints. Generally, no account is taken of unit reliability when scheduling it. Therefore generating units have no incentive to improve their reliability. This paper proposes a new method to obtain the equilibrium points for reliability and price bidding strategy of units when the unit reliability is considered in the scheduling problem. The proposed methodology employs the supply function equilibrium (SFE) for modeling a unit's bidding strategy. Units change their bidding strategies and improve their... 

In an increasing competitive world, marketing survival can be depended simply on timely new information on customers and market trend. One of the most important strategies in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is to capture enough information from customers and using this information carefully [17, 19]. Of course security of this information is very important in CRM data management [2]. Data management is a method for scheduling and controlling data saving, recovering and processing. This activity has been done continually or periodically [2]. Security level of this information depends on the security policy of the organization. CRM security policy is the directives and practices for... 

This paper describes a new method for analyzing the bidding strategies of Generating Companies (GENCOs) in the Independent System Operator (ISO) point of view. ISO uses these results to detect the participants that have the potential for market power or actual exercise of market power. ISO models all GENCOs with perfect information. The proposed methodology uses the marginal cost of GENCOs as an initial point for bidding strategies of GENCOs and improves bidding strategies based on the objective function of GENCOs, the state of them in each hour of the day and with regard to ISO's market clearing problem. ISO tries to maximize the social welfare or minimize consumer's payments. The model...