International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production Research

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 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is used to identify the characteristics of an object wirelessly using radio waves. The purpose of this technology in this study is mainly focused on healthcare for inventory management and theft control replacing the manual logs. The storage and tracking of high-cost inventory items is developed. Automatic reordering and billing interfaces are designed for the inventory falling below the par levels. iRISupply and iRIScope are the two RFID systems developed to reduce the inventory costs, expired item costs and to improve the inventory management with easy reporting system .

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Evaluative and comparative analysis among educational projects remains an issue for administration, program directors, instructors, and educational institutes. This study reports a fuzzy complexity model for educational projects, which has two primary aspects (technical aspects and transparency aspects). These aspects may not be measured precisely due to uncertain situations. Therefore, a fuzzy graph-based model to measure the relative complexity of educational projects is presented that uses an aggregation operator to resolve conflict among experts with respect to a complexity relation. The model maps the fuzzy graph into a scaled Cartesian diagram that depicts the relative degree of complexity among projects. An illustrative example for several educational projects is demonstrated to present the application of the model.

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As functional integration has increased in hand-held consumer devices features such as Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers have been embedded in increasingly more devices in recent years. For example, the train positioning system based on GPS provides an integrated positioning solution which can be used in many rail applications without a cost intensive infrastructure. The network built in the GPS receiver has the advantage of determining the exact location and time of the train. The objective of this research was to develop a system which accepts the location from the GPS receiver mounted on the train and extracts its local time. This is implemented using Altera SOPC builder in the NIOS – II environment. Nios II is a 32 bit soft-core embedded-processor architecture designed specifically for the Altera family of FPGAs. The signal received using the GPS receiver is given to the DE2 board through the UART port and converted it in to local time and displayed on the NIOS II console. A working system was developed, which accepts the location from the GPS receiver and extracted its local time.

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Today’s world economy situation forces enterprise organizations toward more soft and flexible organization, management, and production processes. They need to explore the most suitable Knowledge Management (KM) tool not only to identify gaps and overlaps but also to maintain and support innovation cross organizations. In this study, a multiple-experts-multiple-criteria decision making model is developed to select the most appropriate set of KM tools to support the innovation processes in organizations. Also, the model aims to suggest conditions for the improvement of KM in different types of knowledge-based inter-organizational collaborations. The application of the model is demonstrated by an illustrative example.

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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has become the most strategic tool for an organization to employ. A leading ERP solution is SAP®. It has been employed by organizations to enable them to collaborate on different projects and to integrate all aspects of operations. Just as organizations have adopted ERP solutions, they employed quality initiatives that are designed to help organizations maximize efficiency. One of these quality initiatives organizations have turned to is Six Sigma. This paper explores the impact of SAP® solutions on the success of Six Sigma initiative implementation in an agile environment, where the needs of the customer changes rapidly. The literature shows that SAP® type ERP products play a critical role in the implementation process like Six Sigma, where the implementation process takes time. Also, the literature implies that in agile environments Six Sigma implementation can be ineffective.

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The main objective of the present survey is to conduct a comparative analysis of the challenges of the performance evaluation system in two private and public sectors and their impact on effectiveness of human resources management practices. This survey was conducted using the field-descriptive method. The historical study method was used to collect theoretical subjects and the field study method was applied to answer the research questions and confirm or reject the research hypotheses. Statistical population of the research included all experts and managers at various levels in two private and public sectors of the petrochemical industry. Cluster-stratified sampling method in two phases was utilized. According to the results of the present survey, there is a significant difference among identified challenges in the performance evaluation system in two private and public sectors of the petrochemical industry. Results demonstrate that the effectiveness level of human resource management practices in the performance evaluation system is higher than the average level in the public sector, effectiveness level of human resource management practices in the performance evaluation system is lower than the average level in the private sector of the petrochemical industry, and there is a significant difference between the effectiveness level of human resource management practices in the performance evaluation system in two private and public sectors of petrochemical industry. Studying the impact of existing challenges in the performance evaluation system on effectiveness of human resource management practices shows existence of a significant and reversed relation among the existing challenges in the performance evaluation system and effectiveness of human resource management practices in this regard.