Research Paper
Business Analytics
Parvaneh Gelard; Khosro Farahi; Hamid Tohidi
Abstract
Rural entrepreneurship is one of the most important goals of policy-makers to develop villages and prevent migration from rural to urban areas. Significant challenges at the rural entrepreneurship level have reduced the entrepreneurship development process. Recognizing these challenges can be constructive ...
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Rural entrepreneurship is one of the most important goals of policy-makers to develop villages and prevent migration from rural to urban areas. Significant challenges at the rural entrepreneurship level have reduced the entrepreneurship development process. Recognizing these challenges can be constructive in identifying the various dimensions related to rural entrepreneurship and removing barriers to rural business development. This study aims to identify the effective financial factors on entrepreneurship in rural small businesses and rank these factors. The research method applied based on purpose and data collection is a semi-structured interview done through interviews with academic experts, implementers of rural employment and entrepreneurship projects, and entrepreneurs. Data analysis and validation of financial factors on rural entrepreneurship in both service and agriculture sectors were performed using the fitting of a time-series regression model. The results indicate a positive and significant effect of rural population ratio, financing through financial institutions, economic growth, openness rate in business space, gender composition, and inflation rate in agriculture sectors, as well as a significant reverse effect of official employment rate, job-seeking population ratio, exchange rate uncertainty, government employment rate and graduation ratio on entrepreneurship in both service and agriculture sectors. Finally, the results of the Friedman test showed that the financing factor through financial institutions has the highest average rating due to the bank-oriented financial resources of entrepreneurial enterprises in the rural service and agriculture sectors. Therefore, policy-makers seeking to develop rural entrepreneurship should prioritize policies related to the ease of access of rural businesses to financial resources.
Research Paper
Mathematical modelling
Seyyed Mostafa Mousavi; Majid Motamedi; Rasoul Karimi
Abstract
A supply chain is a network that creates and delivers products and services to customers. In this research, the four-level supply chain in the field of food products, including the levels of supplier, customer, and central and secondary warehouses, has been investigated. A mixed integer mathematical ...
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A supply chain is a network that creates and delivers products and services to customers. In this research, the four-level supply chain in the field of food products, including the levels of supplier, customer, and central and secondary warehouses, has been investigated. A mixed integer mathematical model of the research problem is presented to minimize chain costs, including the setting up and preparation of warehouses, transportation between transfer levels, and holding products. The proposed model is developed based on constraints such as inventory, warehouse capacity, vehicle capacity, and multi-period multi-product. The decision variables are determined after solving the model, which includes the optimal number of central and secondary warehouses, the optimal amount of product transferred between the factory and central warehouse, the central warehouse and secondary warehouse, and the secondary warehouse and customer, the optimal amount of product storage in secondary warehouses, the type of vehicle for transportation between levels, and the capacity level of each product in each central warehouse. To validate the proposed model, experiments were conducted using the Kaleh company's real data in GAMS software. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of the model was carried out on two critical parameters influencing decision-making: demand and the cost of increasing the capacity of the central warehouse. The output results confirmed the validity and efficiency of the proposed model.
Research Paper
Computational modelling
Alper Kiraz; Asiye Yücedag Gürel
Abstract
Continuously adding value to a company's products and services is inevitable in adapting to this evolving and challenging global market. That is why lean philosophy is becoming increasingly important and popular among companies, and they are relying more and more on it. It not only assists in increasing ...
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Continuously adding value to a company's products and services is inevitable in adapting to this evolving and challenging global market. That is why lean philosophy is becoming increasingly important and popular among companies, and they are relying more and more on it. It not only assists in increasing profitability and quality by eliminating all processes that provide no value to the customer but also enables increased flexibility in production and productivity. In this study, the criteria affecting the Lean Maturity Level (LML) were determined, and a lean maturity measurement model, which helps companies define and understand the level of lean maturity and lean effectiveness, was developed. A recently completed case study included data from an online survey with 116 questions, which were conducted on 187 middle to senior-level professionals in Türkiye from different industries. In this model, 9 main and 14 sub-lean criteria were generated to determine LML , and each criterion was weighted based on the assessments of experts. In this paper, the interval-valued spherical fuzzy AHP method is applied for the very first time to the weighting of the criteria of a lean maturity assessment model. After collecting data through an online survey study, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in the IBM SPSS AMOS V26 program was applied to test the model fit, validity, and reliability. To determine the LMLs, the leveling scale (understanding, implementation, improvement, and sustainability) was used from the model for LMLs in manufacturing cells. As a result of the analysis of the survey results obtained from the participating companies, the overall LML was calculated as 2.55 out of 4. This result corresponds to the level 3 - improvement range on the leveling scale. The lean maturity success rate of surveyed companies was set at 64%.
Research Paper
Operations Research
Kizito Paul Mubiru; Maureen Nalubowa Ssempijja
Abstract
The paper considers a modelling framework for a set of households in residential areas using electricity as a form of energy for domestic consumption. Considering the demand and availability of units for electricity consumption, optimal decisions for electricity load allocation are paramount to sustain ...
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The paper considers a modelling framework for a set of households in residential areas using electricity as a form of energy for domestic consumption. Considering the demand and availability of units for electricity consumption, optimal decisions for electricity load allocation are paramount to sustain energy management. We formulate this problem as a stochastic decision-making process model where electricity demand is characterized by Markovian demand. The demand and supply phenomena govern the loading and operational framework, where shortage costs are realized when demand exceeds supply. Empirical data for electricity consumption was collected from fifty households in two residential areas within the suburbs of Kampala in Uganda. Data collection was made at hourly intervals over a period of four months. The major problem focussed on determining an optimal electricity loading decision to minimize consumption costs as demand changes from one state to another. Considering a multi-period planning horizon, an optimal decision was determined for loading or not loading additional electricity units using the Markov decision process approach. The model was tested, and the results demonstrated the existence of optimal state-dependent decision and consumption costs considering the case study used in this study. The proposed model can be cost-effective for managers in the electricity industry. Improved efficiency and utilization of resources for electricity distribution systems to residential areas were realized, with subsequently enhanced service reliability to essential energy market customers.
Research Paper
Operations Research
Hamiden Abd El-Wahed Khalifa; Dragan Pamučar; Seyyed Ahmad Edalatpanah
Abstract
The current study investigates to characterize the Complex Programming Problem (CPP) solution in a fuzzy environment. The paper is divided into two parts: 1) the first presents a Fuzzy Complex Programming Problem (F-CPP) with fuzzy complex constraints, and 2) the second presents the optimality criteria ...
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The current study investigates to characterize the Complex Programming Problem (CPP) solution in a fuzzy environment. The paper is divided into two parts: 1) the first presents a Fuzzy Complex Programming Problem (F-CPP) with fuzzy complex constraints, and 2) the second presents the optimality criteria using the fuzzy complex cone. The CPP is suggested by involving fuzzy numbers in the constraints in parts. Using the cut set concepts, the problem is converted into the complex programming. A number of basic theorems with proofs are established concerning the basic results for the fuzzy complex set of solutions for the F-CPP, and the optimality criteria of the saddle point for F-CPP with fuzzy cones is derived.
Research Paper
Machine Learning
Mohammad Reza Nazabadi; Seyed Esmaeil Najafi; Ali Mohaghar; Farzad Movahedi Sobhani
Abstract
Adopting an integrated production, maintenance, and quality policy in production systems is of great importance due to their interconnected influence. Consequently, investigating these aspects in isolation may yield an infeasible solution. This paper aims to address the joint optimal policy of production, ...
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Adopting an integrated production, maintenance, and quality policy in production systems is of great importance due to their interconnected influence. Consequently, investigating these aspects in isolation may yield an infeasible solution. This paper aims to address the joint optimal policy of production, maintenance, and quality in a two-machine-single-product production system with an intermediate buffer and final product storage. The production machines have degradation levels from as-good-as-new to the breakdown state. The failures increase the production machine's degradation level, and maintenance activities change the status to the initial state. Also, the quality of the final product depends on the level of degradation of the machines and the correlation between the degradation level of the production machines and the product's quality in the case that high degradation of the previous production machines leads to a high probability to produce wastage by the following machines is considered. The production system studied in this research has been modeled using the agent-based simulation, and the Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm has obtained the optimal integrated policy. The goal is to find an integrated optimal policy that minimizes production costs, maintenance costs, inventory costs, lost orders, breakdown of production machines, and low-quality production. The meta-heuristic technique evaluates the joint policy obtained by the decision-maker agent. The results show that the acquired joint policy by the RL algorithm offers acceptable performance and can be applied to the autonomous real-time decision-making process in manufacturing systems.
Research Paper
Machine Learning
Parvaneh Afzali; Abdoreza Rezapour; Ahmad Rezaee Jordehi
Abstract
The authentication of writers through handwritten text stands as a biometric technique with considerable practical importance in the field of document forensics and literary history. The verification process involves a meticulous examination of the questioned handwriting in comparison to the genuine ...
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The authentication of writers through handwritten text stands as a biometric technique with considerable practical importance in the field of document forensics and literary history. The verification process involves a meticulous examination of the questioned handwriting in comparison to the genuine handwriting of a known writer, aiming to determine whether a shared authorship exists. In real-world scenarios, writer verification based on the handwritten text presents more challenges compared to signatures. Signatures typically consist of fixed designs chosen by signers, whereas textual content can vary and encompass a diverse set of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. Moreover, verifying a writer based on limited handwritten texts, such as a single word, is recognized as one of authentication's open and challenging aspects. In this paper, we propose a Customized Siamese Convolutional Neural Network (CSCNN) for offline writer verification based on handwritten words. Additionally, a combined loss function is employed to achieve more accurate discrimination between the handwriting styles of different writers. The designed model is trained with pairs of images, each comprising one authentic and one questioned handwritten word. The effectiveness of the proposed model is substantiated through experimental results obtained from two well-known datasets in both English and Arabic, IAM and IFN/ENIT. These results underscore the efficiency and performance of our model across diverse linguistic contexts.