Journal of Systems Thinking in Practice
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Oct 2022

COVID-19 has been a pandemic, a communicable disease that presented as atypical pneumonia with an unclear clinical spectrum. The first case in Pakistan was reported on February 26, 2020. Sind provincial government showed seriousness in initiating the containment measures. The outbreak progression was multiplying day by day. Fear and spread were dominating the areas increasing the number of detected infections and cumulative deaths. The demand for serious containment measures was increasing and highlighting the issues regarding public health capacity. This paper aims the development an epidemic model using the system dynamic architecture. The research aims to unveil the underlying structure that caused the spread of this contagious disease and identify the containment measures as policy levers to mitigate the spread of this deadly novel corona. Experimentation with the model highlighted that the model performed better in replicating the detected infections and cumulative deaths than the recovered people. Simulation results for varied simulation lengths under the combination of policy levers exactly traced the future trajectory of infected and dead people. Horrible numbers of future predictions demanded seriousness from the public and the government to mitigate its emerging outbreak with rational and plausible policies.

This paper presents a framework to prioritize the supply chain strategies (SCS) according to all involved criteria, including objectives, process characteristics, product types, and environmental and demand conditions, to gain competitive advantages. This process has been done for the entire SC and upstream, downstream companies, and the focal companies of SC separately. Literature review and nominal group technique were used to identify customized criteria and SC strategies. Fuzzy Multiple Criteria Decision-Making techniques, including FDEMATEL and FANP, were used to structure the causal diagram and prioritize the entire and each section of SC. The case study is an industrial electronic supply chain (ESC) that produces condition monitoring devices. This is the first study on SC strategies for the entire SC and each section separately and implemented in an ESC. In addition, this is one of the few studies on flexibility requirements evaluation in supply chain strategies.

This study considers push and pull strategies to control production systems with random processing times for multistage manufacturing inventory systems. In this paper, the behavior of push and pull production systems is examined to explain the superior performance of push systems. On the production system, the phrases "push" and "pull" have been defined to explain a variety of production and distribution environments. To some, the difference refers to an important attribute that can be defined by observing the methods for managing material flow on the production lines. To others, pull and push can be considered in phrases as a special method for managing production schedules. This paper considered the push and pull systems and developed a framework to compare multistage production systems based on work-in-process (WIP) and throughput (TP) tradeoffs. In this paper, according to the way of defining the systems and the desired criteria in evaluating the efficiency, the push system is a better option. Finally, the proposed model with generated different examples is simulated in Arena software to analyze the model performance. The results obtained from models and simulation proved the push system is the suitable method for this problem. The pull system also appears more general in its applicability than traditional pull systems.

To recognize customers, organizations use a scale to measure the importance of different customers. In the present study, the customer segmentation is done in the aesthetic and dermatology center in an Islamic country based on the extended LRFMP model. For attaining the purpose, this study used clustering by Two-Step SOM and data gathered from 220 patients of aesthetic and dermatology center in an Islamic country. Due to selecting the optimal number of clusters, is adopted the Davies-Bouldin index. In the first step, the number of clusters is calculated by Lehman's rule, and then by the SOM method, the analysis was repeated for three, four, and five clusters and through the Dunn index compared the results. Also, for more understanding, the type of patients has selected the label for the clusters by using Marcus's customer value matrix as the foundation. Considering the value of the Dunn index, the triple cluster is the favorite cluster. The status of LRFMP indices was shown in the triple cluster, and selected the labels for each cluster as "Loyal customers", "Potential loyal customers" and "Uncertain customers". Regarding the nature of the labels and the literature, this study recommended marketing strategies. The investigation of the kinds of the literature showed that segmentation in the aesthetic and dermatology center in an Islamic country was not performed with LRFMP indices by SOM in an aesthetic and dermatology center.

Natural disasters affect economic growth, and due to the location of Tehran, as the capital of Iran, on the Rey fault, Masha, and North of Tehran, the present research was conducted to investigate the effect of earthquakes on the Rey fault on the economic growth of Iran. The economic growth of Iran has been simulated for 40 years, starting from 2013, and through cause and effect cycles, the long-term economic effects of a possible earthquake have been simulated. The innovation of the current research is the economic growth model is designed in terms of product production, knowledge production, production of intermediate energy goods, and the performance of the insurance industry as a part of the financial sector. Also, the influence channels of the earthquake on Roemer's endogenous economic growth model have been simulated using the system dynamics method. The results show that causalties will lead to a reduction in human resources and, as a result, a slight decrease in Iran's economic growth in the long-term. Secondly, the destruction will lead to the reduction of physical capital and, as a result, the reduction of economic growth in the long term. Thirdly, reconstruction costs will have a negative effect on economic growth, which will diminish in the long run.

The purpose of this research is to segment the hypermarket market according to the lifestyle of VALS and identify their needs. In this research, hypermarket customers were first classified according to the VALS lifestyle model; in the second step, the needs of each of the lifestyle categories were determined according to the Kano model; and in the last step, to determine the dominant lifestyle needs of store managers, the motivational needs of the dominant group were prioritized and weighted according to the three indicators of customer satisfaction, customer dissatisfaction, and implementation cost using the combination of DEMATEL and ANP techniques. To carry out the work, after identifying the needs of the customers of the store based on the theoretical basis and the opinions of the customers, two types of questionnaires were designed, and according to Cochran's formula, 400 questionnaires were distributed among the customers of the Daily Market store and 210 items were collected. In the final step, a questionnaire was given to store managers to implement the motivational needs of dominant customers so that they could prioritize the implementation of each need according to the store's facilities. The results indicated that the dominant group in this hypermarket has a hardworking lifestyle, that the features of product arrangement, appropriate behavior of employees, and clean environment are among the basic needs; diversity, quality, the performance of cashiers, the level of information of employees and neatness are among the functional needs and discounts, paper envelopes, online sales, having parking and courier are among the motivational needs for them. Also, according to the facilities and infrastructure of the store and the opinions of its managers, it was determined that the need to have a courier is one of the most important motivational needs that should be prioritized to implement and implement so that more audiences will have the desire to buy from this store.