International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production Research

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Abstract Project management in construction industry, in many cases, is imperfect with respect to the integration of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) risks. This imperfection exhibits itself as complications affecting the riskiness of industrial procedures and is illustrated usually by poor awareness of OHS within project teams. Difficulties on OHS regularly came about in the construction industry. The integration of OHS risk is not systematic in construction areas in spite of progressing laws and management systems. As project safety and risk evaluation in construction industry is an important issue, thus, the way on doing evaluation and liability of estimation is necessary. In this paper, we propose a new systematic approach based on Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) for integrating occupational health and safety into project risk evaluation. This approach tries to identify and evaluate reinforcement effects in a systematic approach for integrating OHS risks into project risk assessment. Furthermore, the proposed method allows evaluating and comparing OHS risks before and after the mitigation plan. A case study is used to prove the workability, credibility of the risk evaluation approach and uncomplicated integration of OHS risks at a construction project. This approach enables continual revaluation of criteria over the direction of the project or when new information is obtained. This model enables the decision makers such as project managers to integrate OHS risks toward schedule plan and compare them before and after the mitigation plan. The mentioned model is found to be useful for predicting OHS risks in construction industries and thus avoiding accidents over the path of the project.

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Innovation & Prosperity Fund (IPfund) in Iran as a governmental organization aims to develop new technology-based firms (NTBF) by its available resources through financing these firms. The innovative projects which refer to IPfund for financing are in a stage which can receive both fixed rate facilities and partnership in the projects, i.e. profit loss sharing (PLS). Since this fund must protect its initial and real value of its capital against inflation rate, therefore, this study aims to examine the suitable financing methods with considering risk. For this purpose we study on risk assessment models to see how to use risk adjusted net present value for knowledge based projects. On this basis, the NPV of a project has been analyzed by taking into account the risk variables (sales revenue and the cost of fixed investment) and using Monte Carlo simulation. The results indicate that in most cases for a project, the risk adjusted NPV in partnership scenario is more than the other scenario. In addition to, partnership in projects which demand for industrial production facilities is preferable for the IPfund than projects calling for working capital.

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Supply chain management is one of the requirements for achieving economic growth in any supply chain. If managers' decisions are optimally allocated, it will be possible for companies and industries with a competitive and profitable advantage to grow and develop. The main desire of any company for survival is to minimize costs and maximize profitability. Due to the increasing complexity and dynamics of the situation, decision-making in this area requires more advanced analytical methods. Accordingly, the Real options theory has emerged, which introduces a new way of thinking about investing, especially in conditions of uncertainty. In this paper, a multi-period model is considered that examines the demand uncertainty in each period and also uses the Real options theory to seek the optimal strategy for investors in conditions of uncertainty and the effect of investors’ discretion on it. Using a decision tree to estimate the probable demand in each period and using Monte Carlo simulations to identify the lowest cost scenario in each period, the model has been solved in this research. In the case of the uncertainty parameter, sensitivity analysis is performed, and under different values ​​of this parameter, the obtained result is evaluated and validated. And the extension of outsourcing will increase the company’s profitability and meet higher demand and lower costs.

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This paper proposes a data-driven method, using Artificial Neural Networks, to price financial options and compute volatilities, which speeds up the corresponding numerical methods. Prospects of the Stock Market are priced by the Black Scholes model, with the difference that the volatility is considered stochastic. So, we propose an innovative hybrid method to forecast the volatility and returns in Stock Market indices, which declare a model with a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity framework. In addition, this research analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on the option, return, and volatility of the stock market indices. It also incorporates the long short-term memory network with a traditional artificial neural network and COVID-19 to generate better volatility and option pricing forecasts. We appraise the models' performance using the root second-order quadratic function means of the out-of-sample returns powers. The results illustrate that the autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity forecasts can serve as informative features to significantly increase the predictive power of the neural network model. Integrating the long short-term memory and COVID-19 is an effective approach to construct proper neural network structures to boost prediction performance. Finally, we interpret the sensitivity of option prices concerning the market or model parameters, which are essential in practice.

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This article analyses what determines remittance inflows into Malaysia. Using Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) approach, the study used time-series data for the period 1987-2018. The study the validated theory that says remittance inflows ought to be encouraged through determinants such as real wages, inflation, financial development, exchange rate among others. Variables like exchange rate, inflation, gross domestic product growth, financial development and real wages significantly determine the remittance received into Malaysia. Precisely, inflation and real wages significantly impacted and positively encouraged remittance inflows into Malaysia from abroad. On the other hand, remittance inflows reacted negatively to gross domestic products growth, exchange rate and financial development. Furthermore, the significance of the determinants differs. Precisely, real wages happen to be additionally responsive in comparison to inflation and the reason is that its elasticity is greater. In addition, both inflation and real wages have great impact in Malaysia. This study recommends that the determinants of migrants’ remittances in the country should be given attention which will strongly aid in employing remittances for the reduction of poverty, rising investment at the national level and therefore, aid in boosting growth and enhancing sustainable development to Malaysia.