مرتضی راستی برزکی

In recent years, manufacturers have started selling their products online. This study examines pricing in a supply chain involving manufacturing, retailers, logistics service providers, and integrators. There are three products in this chain: two physical products from manufacturers and a service product from logistics providers. Physical products are sold online and in retail stores, with online purchases including two products. The problem is examined in four scenarios, including decentralized, manufacturer integration with retailer, functional logistics service provider integration with logistics service integrator, and a combined approach of manufacturer integration with retailer and functional logistics service provider integration with logistics service integrator. This paper introduces a novel approach by analyzing the impact of logistics supply chain members, focusing on logistics service levels and pricing. The study aims to explore how the integration of supply chain members influences the profits and service levels of other stakeholders. The results indicate that integrating two supply chain members typically lowers profits for other members. Integrating a logistics service provider and integrator can increase manufacturer profit and decrease retailer profit in certain cases, while in other cases profits remain unchanged. Similarly, integrating manufacturer and retailer usually results in decreased profits for logistics service providers and integrators. The integration of functional logistics service provider and logistics service integrator has an impact on the relationship of parameters with service level. In the decentralized scenario, if service price and service coefficients increase, service levels increase. It also increases service levels as the cost of service increases.

Governments today are increasingly focused on managing environmental and economic challenges to safeguard the environment. Consequently, companies are striving to remain competitive in society. This paper introduces a revenue-sharing agreement between the retailer and the manufacturer. The contract is designed to alleviate the research and development costs incurred by the manufacturer in greening their products. Additionally, the paper incorporates consumer surplus as a consideration for the social dimension, which is a key pillar of sustainability.

Government interventions in this paper are modeled as subsidies that influence the final price of the product. Notably, this study, for the first time, integrates all three dimensions of sustainability—social, economic, and environmental—within a game-theoretic framework that includes government intervention and a revenue-sharing agreement between the retailer and the manufacturer.

The modeling results demonstrated that incorporating consumer surplus enhances the profitability of both the government and the manufacturer. Although consumer surplus reduces wholesale prices and revenue-sharing proportions, it leads to increased product sales. This boosts the benefits for consumers and members of the supply chain, contributing to improved greenness and higher levels of product sustainability. Consumers show a preference for purchasing products with greater environmental benefits; however, higher levels of greenness require increased production costs. Manufacturers can boost their sales through research and development efforts and by raising public awareness about green products. As a result, manufacturers, retailers, and the government adjust prices and subsidies to maximize their respective profits, altering the overall profitability of the supply chain. The findings highlight that social welfare is a crucial consideration in supply chains, as it significantly enhances the profitability of chain members and promotes higher levels of green production.

Originality/Value: 

This paper is the first to examine all dimensions of sustainability—social, economic, and environmental—within a theoretical framework that incorporates government intervention and the impact of consumer surplus on pricing policies and the greening of products. The scientific contribution of this research lies in providing new insights to managers and policymakers to enhance strategic decision-making aimed at improving sustainability and social welfare within green supply chains.

Today online retailers all over the world are looking to oer virtual reality service through their online channels in order to attract customers to purchase product online and increase sales by creating a sense of customer condence. Virtual reality service provides information about how a product ts a customer and closes the gap between online and oine retailers. However, such services also facilitate consumer webrooming behavior, which may reduce online demand and intensify competition between traditional and online retailers. Webrooming behavior means customers use virtual reality service in the online channel and view the specications of the product, but they buy the product in the oine channel. On the other hand, providing virtual reality through the online channel due to the conditions of the testing products before the purchase can have a positive impact on the rate of returned products. This study aims to investigate the optimal amount of investment in virtual reality service and its impact on the rate of return, as well as the impact of webrooming behavior on pricing and competition between the two channels. To address this issue, we develop a dual-channel supply chain including an online and a traditional retailer under two dierent scenarios. In the rst scenario, the online retailer oers a partial refund in his channel to attract customers, but he does not provide virtual reality service. In the second scenario, the online retailer provides virtual reality service in the online channel to compete with the traditional retailer. The results show that providing virtual reality will have a positive eect on the demand of both channels and will increase retail prices on both online and oine channels. Also, providing virtual reality in the online channel causes the customers to view and test the product before buying. Therefore, the number of returned products was reduced.

In today's business world, companies try to collaborate with each other without losing their own competitive powers. In this case, the concept of coopetition can describe these situations excellently. In this paper, collaboration between a supplier and a retailer in a decentralized supply chain has been examined through the use of quantitative discounts in a game theory model. In this model, the agents are faced with inventory, pricing, and discount-offering decisions. At first, this paper examines the problem in the case where the supplier does not offer any discounts to the retailer and obtains the results. Then the paper studies a situation that the supplier applies a discount on the retailer's wholesale price and retailer sells the product to the customers with the same amounts of discounts. In these situations, the paper models a sequential game that the supplier is the leader of the negotiations in order to obtain the Stackelberg Equilibrium. Also the retailer is allowed to set different prices for the customer according to the supplier's discount decisions. Finally, the model is analyzed by studying the fixed and variable transportation costs, using two scenarios in which the costs are paid by the supplier or the retailer. In the investigated problems, if the final customer is dissatisfied, the product is returned to the retailer at a different price, and the retailer sells the returned product at a new price in a secondary market. The results indicate that an increase in the retail price reduces the utilities of the customers from purchasing the product. Nevertheless, such increase also enhances the return price, leading to a greater incentive for the customers to return the purchased products. So an increase in the retail price can even increase the demands of customers. Also a numerical analysis shows that collaboration between the members of a supply chain through a discount contract can significantly improve the profits of the retailer and the supplier.

In recent years, competition has grown stronger due to technological advances. Market members need to be careful and decide to remain competitive by using scientific tools. One of the important decisions of manufacturers in the competitive market is to decide on how much their products are compatible with the environment. One of the most important aspects of environmental compatibility is energy consumption and pollution. With the rapid growth of the industry, the number of energy-consuming devices in the world is increasing day by day. These devices made life easier for humans; however, excessive energy consumption of these products has caused serious damage to the environment, and the consequences of these damages have made the general public more sensitive to environmental issues. An effective factor in reducing energy consumption improves the energy efficiency of consumer products. Increasing the energy efficiency of products that use fossil fuels will directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. For this reason, this paper considered a supply chain consisting of two manufacturers. Each manufacturer produces a product that consumes a certain amount of energy when used to perform a specific task. It is assumed that manufacturers can reduce the energy consumption of their products by upgrading their production technology. The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of these manufacturers in a competitive environment and answer the question of how much manufacturers need to spend on improving energy consumption and how to determine the price of the final product when consumers are sensitive to the cost of energy and environmental issues. The results show that, by increasing customers' public awareness concerning environmental issues, manufacturers must reduce the energy consumption of their products. Another result shows that the increased price of a unit of energy can make manufacturers increase the energy efficiency of their products.

Advertising is a form of marketing efforts to promote using a product or service. Researches show that in 2015 an estimate of US$529.43 billion was spent on advertising in the world. In addition, pricing, as the part of the business's marketing plan, is the process of setting the price at which customers buy products and services. In the pricing, manufacturers consider the price at which it could acquire the goods, the market place, the manufacturing cost, competition, brand, market condition, and quality of product. Therefore, advertising and pricing are two strategic important decisions for manufactures. In the current paper, three products including one main product and two substitute products where each substitute product is the complementary product for the main product are considered. In this paper, for the first time, the problem of determining the advertising level of the main product as well as determining the pricing of the two substitute products is addressed. It is assumed that the price of the main product is constant and specified. The solution of the mentioned problem is obtained based on the Stackelberg game in which the manufacturer of the main product is the leader and the two manufacturers of the complementary products are the follower. The equilibrium solutions for the mentioned structure are obtained. Also, some sensitivity analysis of the important parameters is done and presented. The results show that the market base has no effect on the main product advertising effort. Also, the result shows that the self-price has the negative effect on the advertising effort but the cross-price has the positive effect on the advertising effort. In addition to, the results show that the main product price has the positive effect on the advertising effort that means if the main product price increases the equilibrium advertising effort will be increases.

Today's organizations operate in a completely challengeable and complex environment. Moreover, they are constantly trying to adopt new approaches to the development, preservation and maintenance of human resources as the most important organizational capital in order to remain competitive. Mentoring is the art of facilitating the implementation of activities, the process of learning and personal development. In other words, mentoring can be defined as a technique which provides a new approach for organizations in order to conduct human resource in a conventional manner to attain the organization’s goal. The purpose of this study is to investigate the mentoring approach and to evaluate the qualitative dimension of mentors in Isfahan Province's scientific and research community. For evaluating the mentors, at first, the protocols related to the assessment and prioritization of values were given to the mentors in order to define the most important factors based on their responses. Based on their opinions and the most significant factors, a questionnaire was developed and the approach was conducted in a sample of 20 manufacturing-service companies in Isfahan. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were verified. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data, and also the SPSS was used to perform statistical tests. The obtained results prove that the mentors have generally performed at a moderate and good level in the framework of the mentoring approach. According to the single-group t-test, most of the defined factors are convenient in mentors’ performance evaluation in a negligible difference.

The global increase in the volume of foreign direct investment in recent decades has been the focus countries on it. The effects of foreign direct investment in sustainability indices has led many researchers to assess various aspects of this type investments. In the Foreign direct investment have two agents that are decision makers. They are the investor and the host country. So had to use the multi-agents decision makers’ methods for this kind of investment. This study for the first time examines foreign direct investment using game theory as an efficient tool in multi-agents decision-making. For this purpose has been paid to mathematical modeling and then using stackelberg game to solve the model in the different strategy. In Continue provide a numerical example and analyzed and finally, extracted Managements tips. The results of this study can be used as a decision support tool in the field of foreign direct investment.

In last two decades, with increasing access to the Internet, like the social networks and other web-based medias, costumer's distributors and producers show are interested to have closer relations with each other. In this paper, we examined dynamic advertising and pricing equilibrium strategies of a dual channel supply chain members, based on Stackelberg and centralized game models through differential game theory approach. Because analyzing interactions among a set of members in a supply chain could better described by tools of game theory. supply chain members can compete or cooperate with each other to promote and optimize their payoffs. Supply chain consists of a Manufacturer and one retailer. Manufacturer provides the product for the final consumer by two traditional and online channels. By a closer look, online channel, manufacturer tries to sell products to the final consumers as a retailer without intermediators such as retailers or distributors. The retailer's local advertising has a positive and direct effect on its sales. This leads them to compete between manufacturer and retailer at the retail level. Both of them, attempt to gain more profits and effects on the competitor's profit in the retail level through both online and traditional channels by controlling sale prices in order to obtain the optimal pricing strategies in the presented differential game of. Behavior of the advertising decision, selling price and profits of each member in the chain were modeled in these scenarios and analyzed using a numerical example. In addition, the total profit of supply chain in each of scenarios was compared. According to the results of Numerical analysis, in Stackelberg scenario, advertising effort, price and Profit of manufacturer in online channel are higher than advertising effort, price and profit of retailer in traditional channel, respectively. Conversely, in centralized scenario, advertising effort, price and profit of manufacturer in online channel is lower than the advertising effort, price and profit of Retailers in traditional channel, respectively.

This article deals with an important topic which is recognized widely in the industrial issues, and investigates a game theory problem in investment games. The problem considers a market with an investor and two manufacturers which are producing complementary products. These two manufacturers intend to purchase new technology; to use technological advantages. New facilities help them reduce their production costs. Market demand is a linear function of price; that increases due to the market price reduction. The two manufacturers in order to buy the new facilities need to use the capital of an investor. For satisfying the investor to invest his/her finance, manufacturers compete with each other. In many investment games, the investor enters into the market and becomes a market member. But in this game, unlike previous studies, the investor won't enter the market directly. He/she just invest in the firm and gains a definite percent of the investment's profit from manufacturers. During problem-solving, the profit of each agent is maximized separately. The game is considered as a Stackelberg-Bertrand game, and assumed the investor as the leader and the manufacturers as followers. To solve the problem, the investor first determines how much to fund in each firm, and then the manufacturers follow investor's decision, and each firm will determine its own price according to the amount of capital gains separately. It is worth noting that the manufacturers make their decision simultaneously. To solve the game, first by Nash equilibrium, the prices of two manufacturers are obtained. Then, according to the equilibrium prices and by Stackelberg equilibrium, the optimal amount of investment in the first firm, as the decision variable of the investor, will be evaluated. The amount of investing in per firm and new demand and also new market prices after the investment has been calculated afterward. At last some managerial insights are derived.

Nowadays, policymakers, organizations, businesses and even ordinary people are concerned about the environment and related issues. Considering environmental issues has led to complexity in supply chains; in recent years, green supply chains have received more and more attention from policy makers, academics, and scientists. Businesses consider environmental issues in their supply chains for a variety of reasons, including government pressure, popular demand, wanting to increase their market share, and attracting new customers. The present study considers a supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and two retailers. The manufacturer produces two products, one green and the other nongreen. Based on its policies and to protect the environment, the government imposes a tax on the nongreen product. We discuss pricing and greening policies for the manufacturer in a green and nongreen supply chain. Game theory is utilized to derive optimal pricing policies for the manufacturer and retailers and the optimal green level of the green product for the manufacturer in both the centralized and decentralized models. The effects of government intervention in the supply chain are also investigated. Finally, numerical examples and sensitivity analyses are presented. The results show that there are unique optimal retail prices for retailers, unique optimal wholesale price, and an optimal green level for the manufacturer in the decentralized model. Also, there are unique optimal retail prices and an optimal green level for the supply chain in the centralized model. The findings also show that the supply chain members' profits are highly dependent on the values of some model parameters, such as demand price elasticity, the cost coefficient of the green degree per unit, and the tax imposed by the government. The results also show that the government can increase or decrease the green level of the green product by changing the amount of the tax and different government policies have significant impacts on the profit of the supply chain members as well as on the environment.

In this study, the problem of competition in freight transportation market is considered by applying a game-theoretic approach. The roadway and the multi-modal transportation systems, as two main logistic agents competing in the market, are investigated, where the latter consists of both roadway and railway transportation modes. Moreover, two different scenarios represented by flexible and inflexible railway organizations are regarded. The game structure of the first scenario is based on Nash equilibrium; while the second one has the Stackelberg (leader-follower) equilibrium structure. The transportation prices for both roadway and multi-modal systems and the travel time of multi-modal system are as the decision variables of the problem. For each of the two scenarios, the freight transportation market is modeled and based on that, the impacts of different technical and economic policies on the competitive market are analyzed. By applying the policy of increasing the fuel cost, the travel time of multi-modal system, and both demand and profit of roadway system are decreased. The policy of reducing loading/unloading costs in multi-modal system causes reduction in equilibrium transportation price of both systems, as well as reduction in demand and profit of roadway system. The policy of decreasing investment cost coefficient to improve the travel time of multi-modal system leads to reduction in demand and profit of roadway system. The policy of employing the modern trucks with low fuel consumption rate results in reduction of transportation price for both systems, and increase of travel time of multi-modal system. The obtained results of this study can be used for transportation policy regulators and managers, who provide the railway and roadway freight transportation services.

Different variables effect on customer decision in product selection. The most important factor are price and service provided by the manufacturer to the customer. Advertising is one of the effective factors in the selection and purchase of goods is usually done by the manufacturer to increase goodwill of manufacturer brand. Therefore in this research we use centralized game approach to find optimal price, service level & advertising level in a dual channel supply chain simultaneously. Chain used in this study included a manufacturer and a retailer in which the manufacturer sells its products through retailer and through direct channel. Demand function used in this paper provide review possibility of three elements of price, service and advertising on customer demand seamlessly at the same time. Conduct examined in this paper, is cooperative behavior. Therefore, after modeling the problem is solved by centralized approach. After numerical examples, sensitivity analysis performed in this study provide the effect of important parameters on decisions players particularly price sensitivity factor. The issue examined in this study had a variety of practical applications for example can be cited its use in airlines, manufacturing sets and retailers to determine prices, service and advertising.

Today's business has rapidly changed and has become more competitive. In today's world, existing the competitors is an undeniable rule; therefore, for any manufacturer, appropriate decision making requires taking into account the competitors and their policy decisions. In today's competitive market, pricing is one of the important decisions for the success of a company. So, assessing the impacts of pricing strategies on demand and prot is very important. On the other hand, product pricing is one of the most important decisions and a strategic problem for manufacturers that is aected by pricing decisions made by the other producers. In the non-cooperative games, each member is a separate economic entity that makes its operational decisions independently. The Nash game is an equal power game. In this paper, for the rst time, the pricing problem for two substitute products in the present of one main complementary product is studied and Nash equilibrium prices have been introduced as well as demand and prot functions. After comparing the equilibrium prices, demand and prots, the eects of some important parameters on prices, demand and prot are addressed. The results show that the equilibrium prices of the complements products could be less or greater than the main complementary product price in comparison with each other. The threshold of this change has been provided. The parametric analysis shows that the increasing of the main complementary product price increases the related manufacturer prot with decreasing rate and ultimately reduce the own manufacturer prot. The threshold of this change is, also, calculated. Finally, a numerical example is presented and the results discussed. The numerical example veried the analytical results. This research can be expanded from some aspect such as 1) Considering a supply chain with three manufacturers and retailers. 2) Considering dynamic pricing and using dierential game theory for solving and addressing it. 3) Considering other decisions such as inventory and lot sizing to it.

In this paper an integrated production and outbound distribution scheduling (IPODS) with vehicle routing problem (VRP) for multi customer situation in a supply chain is addressed. There are K orders (jobs) that have to be scheduled on a single machine and delivered to K customers. Each order has its own due date. The manufacturer delivers the orders in batches which have no capacity constraint. Delivering the products in batches reduces the delivery cost but it may increase the number of tardy jobs. No other research has been conducted on this problem yet. This problem is strongly NP-Hard. The objective is to minimize the sum of the total weighted number of tardy jobs and delivery costs. Also, in this paper, an MILP model and a Heuristic Algorithm (HA) for solving this problem are presented. Full factorial Computational test is performed for evaluation of these two methods. The obtained results on 3840 problems show that the heuristic algorithm is efficient for solved problem. Also we surveyed parameter's levels effect on CPLEX and heuristic performance by analysis of variance.

Nowadays, with the increasing importance of communication, competition in the smart phone supply chain is greatly increased with the arrival of various companies. Companies at all levels of the smart phone supply chain compete and coordinate with each other for market share and prot. These companies should be able to make right decisions in the competitive marketplace and even collaborate with some other members of the chain to preserve their survival in the market. Telecom ser vice operator and smart phone manufacturer are twokey members of smart phone supply chain. The importance of channel selection and pricing to the competitiveness of a supply chain has been recognized in practice and literature for some time. In this paper, we examine the impact of power structures on the decision of pricing and channel selection between a free channel and a bundled channel. This paper investigates the smart phone supply chain that consists of two smart phone manufacturers and two telecom service operators. Based on game theory models, the manufacturers' optimal retail pricing policies in free and bundled channels and the telecom service operators' optimal subsidy policies in a bundledchannelarederivedunderdierentpowerstructures. The results show that there exist unique optimal retail prices for free and bundled products of the smart phone manufacturer in the free channel and bundled channel with dierent power structures. There are also unique optimal subsidies for the telecom service operator in bundled channels with dierent power structures. Our ndings also show that dierent power structures have signicant impact on the prot of individual rms and the entire smart phone supply chain's protability. Finally, a numerical example will be provided to illustrate the eectiveness of the proposed method, sensitivity analysis and the eect of price changes in telecom operatorservices. The results showthat cooperationbetweenasmartphonemanufacturerandatelecomservice operator has high impact on prot of each player.

Today, organizations are aware of the importance of appropriate pricing and cooperative advertising in profitability and survival of the organization. To coordinate decisions and activities of the organization, it is expected that many benets will be available to members. This article discusses the coordination of pricing policies and determines the amount of cooperative advertising considering the costs of inventory in a two level supply chain, including a manufacturer and a retailer with demand depending on pricing and cooperative advertising in which the manufacturer oers its product only in the retail channel and the retailer does the purchase only from the manufacturer. The purpose of this is, rst, to determine the wholesale price, the amount of national advertising and, the participation rate in local advertising by the manufacturer. Second, its propose is to determine the retail price and local advertising by the retailer. In this research, the ordering quantity of the retailer is the problem input. The problem has been solved by the two non-cooperative games of Nash and Stackelberg-retailer and a cooperative game in which the members work together to maximize the prot of the entire chain with several numerical examples; the acquired results for each game are compared. These results indicate that the prot of the entire chain in cooperative game is more than the two other games, and also the prot of the manufacturer and retailer in the Stackelberg-retailergameismorethatintheNashgame. The retail price is the lowest in the Stackelberg-retailer game. The results show that the amount of national and local advertising is highest in the cooperative game and the lowest in the Stackelberg-retailer game. Finally, the eect of changing the parameters of the problem have been investigated on the wholesale price and retailer price in which the eect of change in the cost of production on the wholesale price is higher than the retail price, and the eect of base demand change based on the retail price is higher than the wholesale price.

Supplychain, carrier-retailer channel, Pricing, game theory to the price, pricing decision becomes more important. In this case, with a slight change in the price of prod-ucts or services, the customer changes his demand that impact on chain pro t. In this study, a supply chain con-sists of two exclusive transport companies and a retail company is also taken into consideration. Each mem-ber of the system will a ect price and then the pro tof chain. Transport companies have a unique feature that makes them exclusive. Companies that transport hazardous chemical material, cargo liner companies in Iran and very large cargo transport company can be examples of this situation in the problem. The trans- port company can be a trucking company, a third-party logistics provider, or a freight forwarder. The retailer sets the retail price; this speci es the demand, which in turn, is the carrying amount for the transporters. Trans-porters decide the freight rate and their pro t dependon both the freight rate and the carrying amount. Fi-nally, the transporter's freight rate is an input of the retailer's cost that in uences the retail price eventually. In this study, the transportation cost is divided into two categories: costs per unit of goods such as load, unload, and handling; the xed cost per vehicle. The xed cost includes the driver's salary, fuel charges, etc. We en-tered the cost per truck separately in transporters pro tfunction that eventually led to integer linear model. We use centralized game approach to nding the optimal price of di erent levels. In the centralized channel, de-cision makers set the retail price that maximizes the to-tal channel pro t. Coordination of three parts of sup- ply chain and centralized decision-making can improve the system-wide pro t. A new method is developed to solve the problem. After that, di erent sensitive analy- ses are illustrated for pro t function graph. The results show that in the lower level of vehicle capacity, much less pro t exists, and in lower xed cost of vehicle, even less than before. After that, di erent sensitive analysis is illustrated for pro t function graph.

In this paper, integrated production and batch delivery scheduling problem for make to order production system and one customer in supply chain has been addressed. One manufacture received n orders from one customer. Orders must be processed by single machine and sent in batches to customer. Sending several jobs as a batch leads to less transportation cost but may increase the cost of tardiness jobs. The objective is determining the production and delivery scheduling so that the related costs is minimized. The problem is strongly NP-hard. In this paper, one new math programming model including Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model, Ant Colony System (ACS) and Elastic Ant System (EAS) are presented for solving it. In order to evaluate the efficiency of these two methods computational tests based on full factorial experimental design has been conducted. Computational test is performed for evaluation of these methods. The obtained results show that the heuristic algorithm is efficient which has been verified by using. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. The results showed that the ACS is the most efficient method.

This paper considers the problem of optimal advertising and pricing paths of a dual- channel supply chain members through differential games approach. Considered Supply Chain consists of a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer indirectly trades with the final consumer in retail or traditional channel and directly trades with the final consumer in online channel. Retailer trades with the final consumer just in traditional channel. Manufacturer aeffects on chain membersmember's profits with identifying control variables as online price, global advertising effort, and online advertising effort. The global advertising effort of the manufacturer has indirect and long-term effects on sale functions of both members. On the other hand, local advertising efforts of both firms in retail and online channel have direct and short-time effects on sales functions. Retailer's control variables are retail price and local advertising effort. The state variable of the dynamic system is the goodwill of the manufacturer which means that the accumulated reputation of the manufacturer is increased by the national advertising effort of manufacturer. In this article, competition between chain members are is modeled by evaluating Feedback Nash equilibrium. Also, the model is validated by results of the Stackelberg game model with manufacturer leadership consideration. The comparison between the two models showed that, chain profit in Stackelberg model is higher than chain profit in Nash model. At last, with a numerical example, impact of parameters named as advertising effectiveness of each member on rival member's sale response functions, on optimal decision variable paths of each chain member, is examined in three scenarios. In the first scenario, the effect of Manufacturer's advertising on retailer's strategies was performed. In the second scenario, the effect of retailer's advertising on the manufacturer's strategies was evaluated. Finally, in the third scenario, simultaneous change in Manufacturer and retailer's effect on competitor's profit functions was investigated. In all scenarios, it is observed that theses parameters have a decreasing effect on all channel member's optimal decision variable paths.

Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (FSSP) with the objective of minimizing total amount of tardiness is an NP-hard problem and many articles has been written about it. In this context, great attention has been paide to metahuristic techniques such as genetic algorithm. Additionally determination of the paraemeters of the algorithms is an important subject in the research area that many researches have been allocated to it. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of crossover and mutation operators of the genetic algorithm on the objective of minimizing total amount of tardiness in permutation FSSP in order to determine more suitable ones to be applied in the problem. The obtained numerical results indicate that in most cases among common crossover operators,using the one point and two point (first version) operators and among mutation operators,applying the adjacent exchange gives the best value for the mentioned problem.

The purpose of this study is to provide new methods for the problem with criteria interactivity in MCDM problem. Considering that the assessment criteria in MCDM may have effects on each other, so there are the necessary methods that take into account these interactions. This research In addition to identification, study, and Classify the different interaction that may the criteria have, introduces two new ways in this context. The new method presented in this paper is to solve the problems with the interactions between the criteria. The interaction between the criteria to be considered as a set of interactive effects between the criteria. The paper also offered two new ways to solve such problems. The proposed method approach is the effect of the interactions on the decision matrix.

Every year many people incur huge and often unavoidable damages because of accidents in roads of the country. This issue causes that, those involved in transportation focus on road safety subject. But the important issue in this area is that in order to increase the safety of roads it must be invested on which cases? So, in this paper, the effective factors in road transportation of the country have been studied using multivariate statistical analysis approach. Therefore, at first, effective variables on road transportation of the country have been specified and then principal factors have been extracted by factor analysis method. Moreover, the provinces of the country have been ranked according to a general index by concidering the obtained factor scores. Finally, trend of changing the general index were drawn and analyzied for some provinces from 1387 to 1392.