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The purpose of this paper is to assist facility designers decide when to use the graph‐theoretic (GTH) approach to develop a block layout and when to seek another alternative that requires a lesser effort. Difficulties encountered when a GTH block layout is developed from an adjacency graph could force designers to sacrifice or change some of the adjacencies of the adjacency graph in the GTH block layout. Consequently, the value of the objective function of a GTH block layout could become less than what would be expected from the GTH approach.

A computational study is performed to assess the value of the objective function of block layouts produced by the GTH approach when adjacencies of the adjacency graph are deleted or changed in the GTH block layout and two of the procedures in the literature.

The computational study reveals that the magnitude of the decline in the value of the objective function of the GTH block layout renders it comparable to values obtained by the two procedures selected from the literature.

The results of the study could motivate layout designers to resort to various approaches to develop a block layout rather than sacrifice some adjacencies of the adjacency graph in the GTH block layout, which would adversely affect its objective function value.

Many manufacturers have attempted to improve the productivity of their facilities without much success. The Japanese, on the other hand, have recently achieved significant improvements in productivity by implementing JIT. There are several reasons for the Japanese success. First, JIT adheres to well‐established concepts and methods of production and operations management. Second, JIT is a holistic approach to productivity that directs attention to all resources involved in producing a product, and to all factors affecting their utilization. Third, JIT avoids many obstacles to productivity, in addition to utilizing resources efficiently. Fourth, JIT focuses on shopfloor design and operations where resources are primarily affected. Manufacturing managers can learn several useful lessons for improving productivity from the Japanese experience.

This paper presents a framework for the design of warehouse layout to organize the design process, facilitate the task of designers, and highlight important design issues to help warehouse managers make informed decisions. The framework accounts for several factors and operations of warehousing in the design, and addresses design decisions required to respond to them. It attempts to develop a layout that has several characteristics such as modularity, adaptability, compactness, accessibility, flexibility, and distribution of movement to enable it to respond to changing conditions, improve space utilization, and reduce congestion and movement.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate expert systems (ES) for selection of material handling (MH) equipment on their use of information and generation of equipment, and provide guidelines that can enhance developing them in the future.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to evaluate efficiency of ES on their use of information and generation of equipment. Characteristics of benchmark ES are identified to serve as guidelines in developing future ES.

Results of DEA indicate that most ES use a large amount of information that does not commensurate with the number and variety of equipment they generate.

The ideal MH equipment for a situation is not known whether it is selected by ES or other procedures. Therefore, this study focusses on efficiency of ES in using information to generate MH equipment without regard to whether ES produce the right equipment for a situation or not.

Developers of future ES should consider the efficiency of an ES in using information and generation of equipment, in addition to considering its functions and methodologies. They should utilize means similar to those employed by benchmark methodologies and other ones that can be thought of to economize information and generate more number and variety of equipment, and thus render ES more useful to facility designers and manufacturing managers.

The paper presents the first evaluation of ES for selection of MH equipment. The evaluation performed should enhance development of future ES in this field, and can be extended to ES in other application domains.

The purpose of this paper is to assist facility design practitioners, industrial managers, and expert systems (ES) developers identify important issues to consider and actions to follow in the selection of material handling (MH) equipment, overcome limitations of existing equipment selection approaches, and design complete MH systems.

A framework that specifies the steps that have to be taken in the selection of MH equipment is suggested. It identifies categories of equipment based on all handling‐related functions performed in a facility, which allows consideration of various categories of equipment, and selects equipment classes and types from among candidates based on user requirements and objectives.

The suggested framework is capable of producing a wide range of equipment that performs various functions in a facility, and satisfies requirements and objectives without the need for using large data bases. Applying it requires cooperation of facility managers and designers.

Some of the steps of the suggested framework require further investigation and research.

Facility design practitioners, industrial managers, and developers of ES can make better selection among a large number of MH equipment and design complete systems by relying on functions performed in a facility, requirements, and objectives.

A framework for selection of MH equipment is lacking in the literature. This paper fills a gap by presenting design issues and organized steps that practitioners, managers, and expert system developers working on selection of MH equipment have to address and follow in order to design complete MH systems.

The study's main objective is to evaluate the morphological developments in the characteristics of the spatial configurations of the residential layouts in Kerman, Iran, in examining the impact on the level of visual privacy through the spectrum of permeability and wayfinding in space syntax analysis.

In this paper, plan graph analysis is used to measure the syntactic properties of seven topological residential architecture plans in Kerman, Iran, built from the 1970s to 2010s. The methodology involves the development of mathematical measurements to signify permeability and simulation of visibility graph analysis (VGA) to indicate wayfinding.

The findings reveal the residential layouts of Iranian houses tend to be less integrated over decades of design development from the 1970s to 2010s. Reduction in spatial integration corresponds to increase segregation allowing for enhanced visual privacy. The study underpins that, even with the constraints in the scale of the house and reduction in the number of nodes, as evident in the design of the modern residential layout, the efficient level of visual privacy is still achievable with regards to the standards demanded by the local culture.

The study examines the development in residential spatial configuration and building scale on visual privacy through a proposed methodology based on the level of permeability and wayfinding measured as a combined effect using the space syntax analysis and visual accessibility.

The purpose of this paper is to present an economic–statistical design (ESD) for the Bayesian X‾ control chart based on predictive distribution with two types of informative and noninformative prior distributions.

The design used in this study is based on determining the control chart of the predictive distribution and then its ESD. The new proposed cost model is presented by considering the conjugate and Jeffrey's prior distribution in calculating the expected total cycle time and expected cost per cycle, and finally, the optimal design parameters and related costs are compared with the fixed ratio sampling (FRS) mode.

Numerical results show decreases in costs in this Bayesian approach with both Jeffrey's and conjugate prior distribution compared to the FRS mode. This result shows that the Bayesian approach which is based on predictive density works better than the classical approach. Also, for the Bayesian approach, however, there is no significant difference between the results of using Jeffrey's and conjugate prior distributions. Using sensitivity analysis, the effect of cost parameters and shock model parameters and deviation from the mean on the optimal values of design parameters and related costs have been investigated and discussed.

This research adds to the body of knowledge related to quality control of process monitoring systems. This paper may be of particular interest to quality system practitioners for whom the effect of the prior distribution of parameters on the quality characteristic distribution is important.

economic statistical design (ESD) of Bayesian control charts based on predictive distribution is presented for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a double-objective economic statistical design (ESD) of (X ‾) control chart under Weibull failure properties with the Linex asymmetric loss function. The authors have expressed the probability of type II error (β) as the statistical objective and the expected cost as the economic objective.

The design used in this study is based on a double-objective economic statistical design of (X ‾) control chart with Weibull shock model via applying Banerjee and Rahim's model for non-uniform and uniform schemes with Linex asymmetric loss function. The results in the least average cost and β in uniform and non-uniform schemes by Linex loss function, compared with the same schemes without loss function.

Numerical results indicate that it is not possible to reduce the second type of error and costs at the same time, which means that by reducing the second type of error, the cost increases, and by reducing the cost, the second type of error increases, both of which are very important. Obtained based on the needs of the industry and which one has more priority has the right to choose. These designs define a Pareto optimal front of solutions that increase the flexibility and adaptability of the X ‾ control chart in practice. When the authors use non-uniform schemes instead of uniform schemes, the average cost per unit time decreases by an average and when the authors apply loss function, the average cost per unit time increases by an average. Also, this quantity for double-objective schemes with loss function compared to without loss function schemes in cases uniform and non-uniform increases. The reason for this result is that the model underestimated the costs before using the loss function.

This research adds to the body of knowledge related to flexibility in process quality control. This article may be of interest to quality systems experts in factories where the choice between cost reduction and statistical factor reduction can affect the production process.

The cost functions for double-objective uniform and non-uniform sampling schemes with the Weibull shock model based on the Linex loss function are presented for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is to model the relationship between “innovation systems” players and markets to indicate the “innovation functions” behavior during the petrochemical technology life cycle.

In a general classification, innovation systems are divided into four categories: technical, sectoral, regional and national. If two approaches are hybrid, their benefits would be combined. According to the sectoral structure of the governance model in Iran, in many sectors, such as petrochemical technology, the combination of one another with a sectoral approach is essential. Hence, this paper has introduced a new hybrid approach, called a techno-sectoral innovation system, and has used system dynamics as a methodology and a petrochemical industry as a case study.

The results predict the functions state of the innovation system and detect activation of innovation motors in each stage of innovation life cycle. Validation is investigated using Monte Carlo simulation that shows the error of the indices is acceptable. It can be concluded that the model is relatively in a development state and the motor of entrepreneurship functions.

This case-based model can help other researchers, as a generic model. It could be customized with the input parameters and relational flows of new cases, and functions (F1-F7) can show the result of each scenario made by the innovation analyst and the policymaker.