Sharif Digital Repository

Here, a fuzzy multi-period multi-echelon multi-objective mixed-integer non-linear programming (MOMINLP) model is considered for a sustainable multi-product multi-site multi-distribution multi-customer supply chain in forward flow having multi-centers for collecting, checking, repairing and decomposing and multi-disposal centers in the reverse flow. Minimizing the total cost of the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC), elevating the customer satisfaction degrees, minimizing the total waiting time, minimizing the manufacturing site greenhouse gases and minimizing the CO2 emissions from vehicles are considered as the objective functions. Furthermore, integration of strategic decisions of flow... 

Companies and firms, nowadays, due to mounting competition and product diversity, seek to apply virtual cellular manufacturing systems to reduce production costs and improve quality of the products. In addition, as a result of rapid advancement of technology and the reduction of product life cycle, production systems have turned towards dynamic production environments. Dynamic cellular manufacturing environments examine multi-period planning horizon, with changing demands for the periods. A dynamic virtual cellular manufacturing system is a new production approach to help manufacturers for decision making. Here, due to variability of demand rates in different periods, which turns to flow... 

Lot streaming means breaking a lot into sublots, where sublots may be transferred to a number of machines for the operations. Here, the multi-job lot streaming problem in a multistage hybrid flow shop having identical parallel machines at stages with work-in-process (WIP) jobs, work shifts constraint, and sequence-dependent setup times is studied. The aim is to minimize the sum of weighted completion times of jobs in each shift in order to furnish a better machine utilization for the following shifts. Our model in meeting the job demands appropriates job scheduling onmachines for processing, the sequence of operations on allocated machines, the size of the sublots in the work shifts, the... 

The airline industry is under intense competition to simultaneously increase efficiency and satisfaction for passengers and profitability and internal system benefit for itself. The boarding process is one way to achieve these objectives as it tends itself to adaptive changes. In order to increase the flying time of a plane, commercial airlines try to minimize the boarding time, which is one of the most lengthy parts of a plane's turn time. To reduce boarding time, it is thus necessary to minimize the number of interferences between passengers by controlling the order in which they get onto the plane through a boarding policy. Here, we determine the passenger boarding problem and examine the... 

In this paper, a multi-product inventory problem is investigated in which a retailer buys items from different suppliers based on their purchasing costs and defective rates. Due to the warehouse and staff constraints involved, the inventory cycle consists of two parts. The first part corresponds to a screening period in which a destructive testing acceptance-sampling plan is used to accept or reject a lot. The other part is for selling the items. In the screening period, a lot that is rejected is returned to the suppliers where another lot is claimed for substitution at no cost. Shortage occurs during the screening period and the defective items are sold at a lower price at the end of the... 

In this paper, a multi-product inventory problem is investigated in which a retailer buys items from different suppliers based on their purchasing costs and defective rates. Due to the warehouse and staff constraints involved, the inventory cycle consists of two parts. The first part corresponds to a screening period in which a destructive testing acceptance-sampling plan is used to accept or reject a lot. The other part is for selling the items. In the screening period, a lot that is rejected is returned to the suppliers where another lot is claimed for substitution at no cost. Shortage occurs during the screening period and the defective items are sold at a lower price at the end of the... 

Supplier selection is a multi-criteria problem which includes both tangible and intangible factors. In these problems when suppliers have capacity or other different constraints, two questions persist: which suppliers are the best and how much should be purchased from a selected supplier? Here, we propose an integrated approach of analytic hierarchy process (AHP), Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and multi-objective nonlinear programming to consider both tangible and intangible factors in choosing the best suppliers and define the optimum quantities among selected suppliers to maximize the total value of purchasing and minimize the budget, total... 

This paper addresses the issue of finding and accessing desired items when a large amount of data items are concerned, by proposing some concepts based on Tree Search Structure -a hierarchical structure for information retrieval. The proposed concepts are applicable to several environments such as File Managers on PCs, help tree views, site maps, taxonomies, and cell phones. A software tool, FTS (File Tree Search), that is developed to utilize the proposed concepts is also presented  

We are concerned with the design of a model and an algorithm for computing a shortest path in a network having various types of fuzzy arc lengths. First, we develop a new technique for the addition of various fuzzy numbers in a path using α-cuts. Then, we propose a regression model for obtaining membership function for the considered addition. Finally, we present a dynamic programming method for finding a shortest path in the network. An example is worked out to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach  

Purpose: A new Monte Carlo (MC) source model (SM) has been developed for azimuthally symmetric photon beams. Methods: The MC simulation tallied phase space file (PSF) is divided into two categories depending on the relationship of the particle track line to the beam central axis: multiple point source (MPS) and spatial mesh based surface source (SMBSS). To validate this SM, MCNPX2.6 was used to generate two PSFs for a 6MV photon beam from a Varian 2100C/D linear accelerator. Results: PDDs and profiles were calculated using the SM and original PSF for different field sizes from 5×5 to 40×40cm2. Agreement was within 2% of the maximum dose at 100cm SSD and 2.5% of the maximum dose at 200cm SSD... 

We consider a multi-facility location problem in the presence of a line barrier with the starting point of the barrier uniformly distributed. The objective is to locate n new facilities among m existing facilities minimising the summation of the weighted expected rectilinear barrier distances of the locations of new facilities and new and existing facilities. The proposed problem is designed as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model, conveniently transformed into a mixed-integer quadratic programming model. The computational results show that the LINGO 9.0 software package is effective in solving problems with small sizes. For large problems, we propose two meta-heuristic algorithms,... 

This paper introduces a new file manager to support multiple categorization. The proposed file manager is designed based on a subtle idea named Conceptual File Management (CFM). According to this approach, files are not contained by folders; nevertheless, each file can be a member of one or more folders (concepts). A prototype file manager is designed and implemented based on the new approach. Filtering by set operations and also manual concept selection improves retrieval of the files. CFM improves file system's clarity and avoids ambiguity and redundancy. As a result, it reduces the size of file system and enhances file access  

Graph theory has numerous applications to problems in systems analysis, operations research, transportation, and economics. In many cases, however, some aspects of a graph-theoretic problem may be uncertain. For example, the vehicle travel time or vehicle capacity on a road network may not be known exactly. In such cases, it is natural to make use of fuzzy set theory to deal with the uncertainty. Here, we are concerned with finding shortest chains in a graph with fuzzy distance for every edge. We propose a dynamic programming approach to solve the fuzzy shortest chain problem using a suitable ranking method. By using MATLAB, two illustrative examples are worked out to demonstrate the... 

We develop a fuzzy multi-objective linear programming (FMOLP) model for solving multi-objective mixed-model assembly line problem. In practice, vagueness and imprecision of the goals in this problem make the fuzzy decision-making complicated. The proposed model considers minimizing total utility work, total production rate variation, and total setup cost, using a two-phase linear programming approach. In the first phase, the problem is solved using a max-min approach. The max-min solution not being efficient, in general, we propose a new model in the second phase to maximize a composite satisfaction degree at least as good as the degrees obtained by phase one. To show the effectiveness of... 

Decision making is the process of finding the best option among the feasible alternatives. In classical multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, the ratings and the weights of the criteria are known precisely. Owning to vagueness of the decision data, the crisp data are inadequate for real-life situations. Since human judgments including preferences are often vague and cannot be expressed by exact numerical values, the application of fuzzy concepts in decision making is deemed to be relevant. In this paper, we proposed the application of a fuzzy distance formula in order to compute a crisp value for the standard deviation of fuzzy data. Then, we use this crisp value of the standard... 

Decision making is the process of finding the best option among the feasible alternatives. In classical multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods, the ratings and the weights of the criteria are known precisely. Owning to vagueness of the decision data, the crisp data are inadequate for real-life situations. Since human judgments including preferences are often vague and cannot be expressed by exact numerical values, the application of fuzzy concepts in decision making is deemed to be relevant. Here, we apply a new distance formula to compute the standard deviation of fuzzy data to achieve crisp data by normalization. There is a flexibility to consider various fuzzy values as... 

We are concerned with the design of a model and an algorithm for computing a shortest path in a network having various types of fuzzy arc lengths. First, we develop a new technique for the addition of various fuzzy numbers in a path using α -cuts by proposing a linear least squares model to obtain membership functions for the considered additions. Then, using a recently proposed distance function for comparison of fuzzy numbers. we propose a new approach to solve the fuzzy APSPP using of genetic algorithm. Examples are worked out to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model  

The theory of network coordination presents an effective approach to improve the business processes within supply networks. The automation of the negotiation process among buyers and suppliers has become an important policy in the transactional networks. This leads to assessing the roles of both quantifiable and non-quantifiable parameters in coordination mechanisms with the aim of achieving higher performance. Here, we develop an e-based supply chain multi-agent model for the design of mass-customized on-line services. The model addresses the bullwhip effect in multi-stage supply chain and also clarifies the evaluation of inventory policies in various supply and demand uncertainties. To... 

The shortest path problem is a classical and important network optimization problem appearing in many applications. We discuss the shortest path problem from a specified vertex to every other vertex on a network with imprecise arc lengths as fuzzy numbers. Using an order relation between fuzzy numbers, we propose a new algorithm to deal with the fuzzy shortest path problem. The algorithm is composed of a fuzzy shortest path length procedure and a similarity measure. The fuzzy shortest length method is proposed to find the fuzzy shortest length, and the fuzzy similarity measure is utilized to get the shortest path. Two illustrative examples are worked out to demonstrate the proposed algorithm...