Journal of Optimization in Industrial Engineering
Volume:15 Issue: 32, Winter and Spring 2022

For a production business, the measurement of safety inventory to be maintained during each step of a supply chain is a key concern and requires providing the clients an irregular state of management. The stock held should be small to reduce holding costs and capacity while maintaining the capacity to service customers in time to satisfy much, if not all, the demand. This paper discusses this issue by using a deterministic time structure and provides a measure of the security position of stock in supply chains for the overall network. First, prove that the overall problem is NP-hard. Then set up a couple of parameters that characterize an optimal overall network structure. To take care of these problems, a polynomial approximation is considered. An arrangement of computational tests to survey the execution of the general-network calculation and to decide how to set different parameters for the calculation is selected. In addition to the general network case, the two-layer network issues are considered. Also, a nonlinear model for determining the level of safety stock in different components of the supply chain to minimize the related safety stock costs is developed.

Nowadays, the main attention and tendencies of tourists are towards ecotourism and its related activities. Ecotourism centers are an active business in the ecotourism industry that provides necessary services for tourists. Today, the number of ecotourism centers in some areas is increasing and it caused an intensively competitive environment between these centers to attract customers. In other words, the big concern of the manager and owners of these centers is knowing the variables which affect the decisions of tourists to choose an ecotourism center. From what we know, no research has been done on this subject. Therefore, these matters encouraged us to do an essential investigation. In this paper, firstly, the factors affecting a tourist's decision to choose an ecotourism center are identified. Three types of customers (tourists) are considered for ecotourism centers and the weight of each of the considered factors is calculated using the fuzzy DEMATEL method based on the opinion of each customer group. Then, the factors are ranked using the TOPSIS method. The outcomes manifest that the personnel of the centers and the brand of each center have the most and the least impact on the selection process by the tourist, respectively.

As air transportation has increased in recent years, it is necessary for airport planners to optimally manage aircraft ground traffic on stands, taxiways and runways in order to minimize flight delay and passenger dissatisfaction. A closer look at the literature in this area indicates that most studies have merely focused on one of these resources which in a macroscopic level may result in aircrafts’ collision and ground traffic at the airport. In this paper, a new bi-objective Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is developed to help airport management to integrate Gate Assignment Problem (GAP) and Runway Scheduling Problem (RSP) considering taxiing operation for departing flights. The proposed model aims to help airport planners to 1) minimize any deviation from preferred schedule and 2) minimize transit passengers’ walking distance. Due to the complexity of the research problem, a Normalized Weighted Sum Method (NWSM) is applied to solve small-sized problems and two meta-heuristics, namely NSGA-II and MOGWO, are used for large-scale instances to generate Pareto optimal solutions. The performance of these algorithms is assessed by well-known coverage and convergence measures. Based on the most criteria, the results indicate that MOGWO outperforms NSGA-II.

Classical EOQ models can help us decide on the terms of how much to order, to manage an inventory. Any company dealing with physical products needs to manage an inventory to improve and avoid shortages occurring. Many times the lots come with defective items due to which there is a loss in the effectiveness of the model. In the present study, we consider two types of carrying costs for good and defectives items, and also proportionate discount is being considered for defective items. We use the Pythagorean fuzzy environment (PFS) and analyze the score functions with help of  cuts of the fuzzy parameters. The problem is optimized to get the best solution, utilizing Yager’s Ranking. The numerical results obtained from crisp and fuzzy environments are also compared. Lastly graphical and sensitivity illustrations are being used to justify the models.

Ethiopia's industrial development strategy is characterized by manufacturing-led and expansion labor-intensive industrialization. The country expects to generate more income from the exported market. However, the case company is still known not to become productive as much as possible due to different reasons. One of the big challenges of the company has the problem with holding inappropriate inventory and with determines their optimal cost due to poor production planning. So that to solve this problem objective of the paper is to minimize total cost through the integration of seasonal forecasting and integer programming model without violating demand fulfillments. This technique improves resource utilization and enhances inventory control or stock control system. Currently, the company produces different kinds of products grouped into four common types of products (knitted garment, knitted fabric, woven garment, and woven fabric). The data survey system was both primary and secondary system and classified the products using A B C (always better classification) classification. The optimal solution was settled through the integration of seasonal forecasting and integer programming. As the Sensitivity analysis indicated the a big gap between production capacity and actual demand of the products. As the optimized solution indicated that total cost of production cost and inventory cost was minimized and the optimal production plan as well safety stock levels in each quarter was settled. Seasonal demand forecasting is a key activity for a garment which more or less controls all activities of production processes since garment products are affected by seasonal. As the result and discussion have shown that after optimized increase profit of the company through minimizing production cost and inventory costs since both costs are the big constraint of the company. Based on the optimized solution finding annually total cost needs for each A, B, and C – categories products are 57,225,920 BIRR 4,733,013 BIRR, 8,229,309 BIRR, respectively for production and inventory costs. The optimized solution indicated that if the company implemented exactly the proposed solution it will get an additional,4,219,788.8 BIRR,772,055.8 BIRR,2,119,824.2 BIRR respectively for A, B, C categories products totally around 7,111,668.8 BIRR profit per year will get. To end, it was concluded that this remarkable profit increment of the case company can certainly enhance its productivity and worldwide competitiveness. This research will create further pathways for other researchers to accomplish substantial studies on other garment sectors or other manufacturing industries based on local and international perspectives.

In this paper, a framework for effective factors on the occurrence of economic corruption is presented. Corruption issues as an existing challenge need to be addressed comprehensively and accurately. Various factors affect this issue, and the lack of precise and comprehensive identification of these factors can create a constraint, in which the main causes of corruption may not be addressed and efforts may focus on less important issues. The existence of a framework of factors helps by examining the level of these factors and makes it possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses of context and personal factors to design and implement corrective solutions and eliminating weaknesses, so the probability of economic corruption decreases. To achieve this framework, the factors affecting the economic corruption occurring at both individual and national levels in the literature are studied and carefully rooted to find the basic causes of corruption. The basic causes can be classified into three levels of individual, organizational and social. By gathering and categorizing these factors, a framework for the factors affecting economic corruption is presented.

The main aim of this research is to find the best inventory review policy for different types of items in group B in ABC analysis through minimizing the total cost of the system and maximizing the service level. Moreover, this study has considered several operational constraints such as limitations on storage space, number of orders, and allowable shortage. To solve this problem, first, an individual optimization method is utilized to obtain optimal solutions. Then, two classic and novel multi-objective optimization methods have been used to convert the bi-objective problem to a single-objective and reach the near-optimal solutions for both objectives simultaneously. Finally, the proposed methods are compared in terms of objective function values and computational time to find the better method.

The healthcare sector is one of the largest service industries with the highest potential to improve environmental performance. Hospitals as an important part of the healthcare system must act in a way that reduces their environmental consequences, which requires having a green supplier. The aim of this study was to identify the effective factors on the green supplier selection (GSS) in the hospital and to present an excellent model for analyzing the relationships between these factors. In this study, 14 concepts that effect the green supplier selection of a hospital have been extracted from in-depth literature and interviews entailing: financial capability, creativity and innovation, green technology, flexibility, organizational capability, commitment, trust on supplier, green quality, green transportation, environmental cooperation with customers, hazardous materials management, buy green, green warehouse and green packaging.In addition Intuitive fuzzy cognitive mapping approach was also used for data analysis and conclusion. The results showed that green technology index with 0.43 degree was the most influential and organizational capability index with 0.29 degree had the most influence over the other concepts. In addition, focusing on concepts like financial capability, trust on supplier and creativity and innovation process of green supplier selection of hospital. Taking these in consideration these factors should be given specific attention.

n the scope of center location problem, transfer point location problems (TPLP) are the ones which have been studied more recently to make models more applicable in real world. The contribution of this work is to develop a model in which demand points are weighted and have a normal distribution. As an assumption, there is no transformation directly from a demand point to the service facility location. This means that the transfer point is always engaged. The contribution of work is summarized in two models. In the first model, all the points are considered in an area while in the second one the points are considered in several areas. The problem is to find out the best location for the transfer point so that the maximum expected weighted distance to all demand points through the transfer point is minimized. A mathematical solution is employed when demand points follow normal distribution, with some points of demands being in regions. Then, this model was solved by replacing real number in a real condition. We used Maple software to solve this objective function as well as MATLAB software to solve this model numerically.

This paper describes the investigation of different reliability measures of a complex system consisting of two subsystems with controllers in a series configuration, which is a useful opportunity for specific design problems. Subsystem-1 consisting n units functioning under the policy k-out-of-n: G; policy, and subsystem-2 has m units and operating under r-out-of-m: G; policy. The system failure rates of both subsystems are constant and assumed to obey an exponential distribution; two types of distribution are allowed to repair: general distribution and Gumbel-Hougaard family copula distribution. The system's partially failed states/ completely failed states are repaired using General/ copula distribution. After repair, the units in both the subsystems are "as good as new." The controller control both subsystems and the failure of controllers brings the subsystem in the complete failed state. The operator may fail the system deliberately if not satisfied with the organization. The system is analyzed employing the supplementary variable technique, and Laplace transforms implications and traditional system reliability measures, such as the system's availability, system reliability, and profit analysis, have been computed for particular values of failure and repair parameters.

Product safety affects the health of the citizens of a society and improves the quality of life. Improved product safety will increase the competitive power, reduce warranty costs, and prevent the claims of liability and return of goods, compensation. Accordingly, the current study presents a conceptual model for the perception of product safety home appliances consumers. The research method in this study is the Mixed Method. This research is involved three Cognitive, Design, Evaluation Phases. Statistical Population is home appliances, consumers. Sampling in the quality phase is Targeted Sampling and in quantity phase, is systematic sampling. The cognitive phase began with library research and exploratory interviews were conducted with 20 academic experts of sales, exclusive representation, repair, and warranty of home appliances. In the design phase, using a structured questionnaire compatible with the interpretive structural modeling technique. Finally, in the quantitative model evaluation phase, a researcher-made questionnaire, suitable for structural equations using partial minimum squares, was used. The questionnaire was distributed among 384 consumers of home appliances. The fit indicators confirmed the fit of the theoretical model with the data. On the other hand, the significance level was 0.0001. Therefore, the model of perception of safety for home appliance consumers is accepted with 95% reliability. Designing a conceptual model for perception product safety of home appliances based on a comprehensive set of the effective factors, developing the theoretical literature in the field of the factors affecting consumer s perceived product safety, and presenting valuable results for academicians, marketing managers, and producers.

Critical path method (CPM) is categorized as a popular tool for scheduling mega projects. In this paper, to enjoy the advantages of interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) and better address uncertainty for the activities’ attributes, a new analysis model is presented to determine the critical path under an IT2F-environment. Also, new efficient factors on specifying critical paths, such as time, cost, risk, safety, and quality (TCRSQ), are presented to achieve a more robust plan assisting in megaproject success. Moreover, an IT2F weighting approach is suggested for specifying the weights of TCRSQ factors. Furthermore, a new IT2F-approach employing the relative preference relation is expressed for identifying the importance of each expert. Consequently, a new model for critical path determination procedure by considering efficient factors is developed under the IT2FSs environment. Finally, to demonstrate the suggested model's capability and the calculation process, an application from the previous research is solved.

Nowadays, the internationalization of supply chains makes the management of operation affairs face a great challenge. On the other hand, vague parameters have challenged decision-makers to drive decision-making. To cope with these challenges, this study tries to model a green SCM (GSCM) model which considers fuzzy parameters. The objective function of our model is to minimize total fuzzy cost including fuzzy establishment costs of the plants and distribution centers, fuzzy transportation costs among the suppliers, facilities, and customers, fuzzy hiring cost of the transportation facilities, and miscellaneous fuzzy environmental impact costs. The developed model also includes facilities location constraints, material flow constraints, open transportation routing from plants to customers and from distribution centers to customers. Also, determining alternative products for customers has not been addressed in the literature.  Therefore, this paper tries to focus on the mentioned complex problem and develop a comprehensive model. Because of the level of complexity of the developed model, two empowered meta-heuristic approaches, named fuzzy hybrid genetic algorithm (FHGA) and fuzzy hybrid biogeography-based optimization algorithm (FHBBO), are implemented to solve the NP-hard developed problem. According to the best of our knowledge, the proposed FHGA is not addressed in the literature in this way. For instance, most of the fuzzy algorithms either are not hybrid or get out of the fuzzy environment in one of their complex evolution processes. However, our fuzzy hybrid algorithms follow a fuzzy environment from beginning test initialization to calculating the objective function and presenting the convergence plots and none of our parameters are defuzzied in all steps of these processes. Besides, miscellaneous Figures, illustrations, and tables support the explanations of results.

In recent years, medical images have played an essential role in diagnosis, treatment, and training areas. Thus, any advancement in this field can help doctors in diagnosing. On the other hand, statistical process control (SPC) is now widely used in monitoring healthcare processes. In this research, using the image processing techniques and feature extraction methods (two-dimensional discrete wavelet), we propose some multivariate control charts to diagnose the type of bone marrow of the patients suspected of bone marrow metastasis in the pelvic region with early breast tumors. For this, 76 features (energy and histogram of oriented gradient) are extracted from the image. Next, using the GA, six features are selected and constitute a feature vector. Based on the feature vector, Hotelling’s T2 multivariate control charts are developed. Moreover, considering the high sensitivity of the classic estimators to outliers and contaminated data, we provide a robust Hotelling’s T2 control chart. Finally, we compare the ARL performance of the robust and the classic Hotelling’s T2 control charts in Phase II in the presence of local outliers in the Phase I data. The results confirmed the superiority of the robust version.

Rainfall is a natural climatic phenomenon and prediction of its value is crucial for weather forecasting. For time series data forecasting, the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network is shown to be superior as compared to other machine learning algorithms. Therefore, in this research work, a LSTM network is developed to predict daily average rainfall values using meteorological data obtained from the Malaysian Meteorological Department for Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Six daily meteorology data, namely, minimum temperature (°C), maximum temperature (°C), mean temperature (°C), mean wind speed (m/s), mean sea level pressure (hPa) and mean relative humidity (%) from the year 2009 to 2013 were used as the input of the LSTM prediction model. The accuracy of the predicted daily average rainfall was assessed using coefficient determinant (R2) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). Contrary to the common practice of dividing the whole available data set into training, validation and testing sub-sets, the developed LSTM model in this study was applied to forecast the daily average rainfall for the month December 2013 while training was done using the data prior of this month. An analysis on the testing data showed that, the data is more spread out in the testing set as compared to the training data. As LSTM requires the right setting of hyper-parameters, an analysis on the effects of the number of maximum epochs and the mini-batch size on the rainfall prediction accuracy were carried out in this study. From the experiments, a five layers LSTM model with number of maximum epoch of 10 and mini-batch size of 100 managed to achieve the best prediction at an average RMSE of 20.67 mm and R2 = 0.82.

The present study aimed to provide an optimal model of affective attitude in customers' purchasing decisions in industrial markets. In the present study, the researcher used a mixed approach. For this purpose, in the first study, to identify the components of affective attitude in customer purchasing decisions in industrial markets, grounded approach was used. In the second study, the model was tested using a quantitative method. The data collection tools in the first study included protocol and in-depth interviews with fifteen sales managers and CEOs of producers and university professors. In the next step, the required data were distributed among 320 customers and the results were analyzed in AMOS software. The present study was conducted by performing fifteen interviews to reach theoretical saturation and finally, 100 open codes were extracted. Based on the theoretical literature, axial and selective coding was done and the results were presented in the form of six main dimensions and twenty-eight sub-dimensions. The present study model included main dimensions including satisfaction with industrial brand, decision-making process, satisfaction with industrial marketing channel, industrial brand loyalty, heuristics, and organizational purchasing, and twenty-eight sub-dimensions. The results show that the researcher’s paradigm model has a good fit for generalizing its results to a larger population.

RIPEMD-160 hash functions are widely used in many applications of cryptography such as digital signature, Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC) and other data security application. There are three proposed RIPEMD-160 design namely RIPEMD-160 iterative design, RIPEMD-160 unfolding with factor two and RIPEMD-160 unfolding design with factor four. These techniques were applied to RIPEMD-160 designs to examine the inner structure of RIPEMD-160 in terms of area, maximum frequency and throughput of the design. In this project, RIPEMD-160 hash function using unfolding transformation technique with factor four provided high throughput implementation. The throughput of the RIPEMD-160 unfolding design increase significantly. The objective of this project is to enhance the performance of RIPEMD-160 in terms of throughput. By using unfolding transformation factor four technique, the throughput of RIPEMD-160 can be improved which is about 1753.50 Mbps. The percentage of performance to area ratio of RIPEMD-160 unfolding with factor four designs increase 1.51% if compared with RIPEMD-160 design. The results show performance of proposed designs give the highest value compare with other designs. The simulation results were obtained from ModelSim Altera-Quartus II to verify the correctness of the RIPEMD-160 designs in terms of functional and timing simulations.

A web-based Consolidated Geotechnical Site Investigation (CoGSI) of the Sarawak Soils is aim to presents a well-organized, systematic and easy to access digital geotechnical database. This database system was developed to allow users to search, view, and digitally download boreholes of the available Sarawak subsurface information with data entry functionality. This CoGSI provides many opportunities to explore the data, and web-based can be accessed anywhere through the computer and smart phones with internet access, where all SI information is stored in a digital format and function as a database management system. This will ensure that the CoGSI database can be used by the engineering community, especially practitioners and academics by making the data freely available in digital form. The user-friendly digitized CoGSI database would be valuable contributor for future planning of infrastructure developments; making preliminary design estimates for earthwork/foundation assessment; and future decision making with early identification of potential areas for construction purposes, which will produce an economic and safe design

Mobile crowd steering application has received much attention nowadays to steer crowds during fire or disaster evacuation. As reported in many studies, real drill experiments have been conducted to validate the mobile crowd steering application. However, simulations have also been undertaken to overcome the limitation of practical drill experiments when testing the application. Although there are algorithms reported for agent-based mobile crowd simulations, not many studies have adopted the social notion during mobile crowd steering simulations. As mobile crowd steering applications require user interaction during fire evacuation, we have foreseen a gap in current simulation algorithms, which leads to unrealistic simulation. This paper introduced a new insight into the agent-based crowd simulation through integration of communication strategy into the state of the art of social force for crowd management. The model was presented, formulated, and validated through a fire evacuation simulation. From the simulation results, the proposed model can reduce evacuation time and crowd density at the door opening area as compared to the original Social Force Model in a similar experimental setup

In the present study, the machining performance of titanium grade-1 alloy is evaluated in terms of resultant cutting force, machined surface roughness, and material removal rate (MRR) through a multi-objective optimization approach. Turning experiments were performed with CVD-coated TiCN-Al2O3 carbide inserts using vegetable oil-based nanofluid under minimum quantity lubrication. The nanofluid was prepared using coconut oil as a base fluid mixed with boron nitride (hBN) nanoparticles. Experiments were performed by varying the cutting speed, feed, depth of cut, and nanoparticles concentration in a base fluid. The Desirability Function Approach (DFA), a Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Grey Relational Analysis (GRA), and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) are used to optimize the machining performance. The optimized solutions from different optimization techniques are observed in better agreement. The results show optimum performance at the higher cutting speed, higher depth of cut, lower feed, and lower concentration of nanoparticles. Lowest values for resultant force and surface roughness of 387 N and 0.47 µm, respectively, and maximum MRR of 9375 mm3/min could be obtained using the cutting speed, feed, depth of cut, and nanoparticles concentration of 125 m/min, 0.1 mm/rev, 0.75 mm, and 0.3%, respectively. However, little compromising the surface roughness to a higher value of 0.83 µm with almost the same resultant force, the higher MRR of 15000 mm3/min could be obtained using higher cutting parameters. It has been observed that the resultant force and surface roughness are significantly affected by the depth of cut and feed, respectively. However, the concentration of nanoparticles has been observed to have a lower prominent effect on the surface roughness and resultant force.

The paper outlines the essence, components, and features of globalization from the viewpoint of manifestations in society, development priorities, and possible threats. The processes taking place in the globalized environment are proven to require market participants to adapt to changes in the external environment, including through the expansion of the spheres of transnational business influence. A significant increase in the influence of geopolitical, geosocial, geo-economic, and environmental factors on a global level is emphasized. The paper proves that the development of the world economy, individual states, and regions of the world should be focused on a set of global factors that determine potential opportunities and the priority threats of market entities. A significant advantage of modern activity management is the timely identification of priority approaches to adapting solutions in order to prevent threats, conduct analytical assessments, and predict (plan) the activities of entities in the context of the growing influence of transnational business using appropriate methodological approaches to economic analysis. The authors argue that the development of business ideas, the formation of business plans, and forecasting the results of market entities’ activities should take into account the relevant capabilities and input conditions that will allow a timely response to ensure the adequacy of actions and forecasts. The efficiency of forecasting (planning) activities and adjusting managerial decisions is emphasized. The calculations are based on the method of extrapolating trends according to the equation of the line to predict the activities of a market entity. The paper proves that expansion of the activity domain of the transnational business fosters the maintenance of efficient management mechanisms that allow quick change of approaches to holding the domestic and external policy of business processes.

It is substantiated that the quality problems of economic growth, interregional differentiation, which are primarily related to the structural economy transformation are relevant for both economically developed countries and for countries with economies in transition. The study of the disproportions of economic growth of the regions based on the tools using "backwardness funnels" is carried out in the paper. Backwardness funnels are characterized by the presence of certain quantitative lag parameters such as the depth of the funnel and the speed of dragging into the funnel. The calculations make it possible to estimate and summarize the corresponding time lag of the regions, the degree of inter-regional differentiation by the level of development and, to a certain extent, the availability of reserves to ensure the process of economic growth of the territories. The increase in the number of regions that have been trapped in backwardness funnels indicates an increase in interregional differentiation within Ukraine. The analysis makes it possible to conclude that in most regions the indicators of the lag period from the average Ukrainian GDP by one person up to four years, and in some regions up to five to six years are increasing. A model of regional economic policy formation is proposed, which is aimed at solving strategic issues of socio-economic development of the regions that form the mission (goal) of this policy (ensuring quality economic growth). The strategic targets of regional economic policy in Ukraine are offered. Among the most important strategic goals in the context of decentralization reform in Ukraine is increasing the internal potential of the socio-economic regions development and exploiting the territorial competitive advantages.

The paper suggests the methodological approaches to evaluation of the efficiency of the housing and utilities sector’s (HUS) functional domain for a region (territory, consolidated territorial community) that can be used to make adjusting decisions in the management of the HUS investment framework. The existing slight misbalances of the HUS development efficiency in urban settlements among Ukrainian regions are revealed. The paper proves the fact that the suggested methodological approaches can be used to carry out the comparative evaluation of the functioning efficiency of the housing and utilities sector for certain agglomerations and consolidated territorial communities in order to define main vectors of the investment policy of agglomerations and territorial communities and priority directions of infrastructure development and services range optimization. Based on the АВС analysis, the investment sources of the HUS development are allocated. The ranging of projects and directions for securing the modernization of HUS in urban agglomerations according to the ABC analysis principle is suggested. Based on foreign experience in utility management, the paper generalizes that most countries vastly attract private business to management and investment in certain HUS areas, thus contributing to the release of local budgets’ investment resources to implement larger projects in the sector. The paper recommends introducing and improving a set of alternative forms of funding successfully used in the countries with the developed economy to attract investment to the development of the HUS areas (including the local territorial projects) and modernization of their infrastructure, namely leasing, corporatization, project funding, forfeiting, debt financing, concessional investment, mixed funding, etc.

The housing and utility sector’s functioning is directed at maintaining the life and work of the country’s population under normal conditions as well as providing enterprises and various types of economic activity with water, gas, heat, and electricity resources. Therefore, the housing and utility sector (HUS) remains to be one of the most resource-intensive domains of economic activity. Its unprofitability undermines the attraction of investment to the development of resource-saving technology. In particular, resource losses in the housing and utility sector of Ukraine amount to 50-60%, while the level of their use is 2-3 times lower than the rates of the developed countries worldwide. The paper reveals the unsolved problems in heat supply peculiar to most settlements in Ukraine, leading to the catastrophic condition when the losses from the low energy efficiency of residential buildings are substantial. Main principles and functions of resource efficiency directed at maintenance of balance between social, environmental, and economic components of society’s life are determined. The interregional asymmetries in the development of the road transport enterprises are evaluated with the calculation of standardized coefficients for the selected indicators. The need to introduce the resource-saving activities in the HUS is emphasized as the use of the capacity to reduce the cost of water, gas, heat, and electricity will increase the profitability of economic entities, thus improving their investment attractiveness for domestic and foreign investors.

Microblogging, like Twitter, has become a popular platform of human expressions, through which users can easily produce content on breaking news, public events, or products. The massive amount of microblogging data is a useful and timely source that carries mass sentiments, beliefs and opinions on various topics. Users express themselves freely with varying levels of uncertainty, which makes exploiting microblogs as a source of data a tedious task requiring this aspect to be taken into consideration. Here we talk about the uncertainty expressed in microblogs not the uncertainty relative to the claimed information factuality. This aspect that we approach has received little attention in the context of microblogging, whereas it is important to know with which degree of uncertainty the users intend to provide information. The research works carrying out the retrieval of information or investigation in microblogs, are particularly concerned by this subject. In this paper we present a state of the art on the identification of uncertainty in microblogs with the aim of identifying this issue and describing the current knowledge through the study of similar or related work. We mainly constated that, to adapt to the characteristics of social media, it is necessary to identify the uncertainty based on the contextual uncertain semantics rather than the traditional cue-phrases, and considering multiple sub-classes could provide more information for research on handing uncertainty in social media texts.

The article deals with marketing aspects of key problems of industrial enterprises of Ukraine. The current situation requires manufacturers to focus their activities on long-term profit and business efficiency. This can only be achieved by improving the quality of products. Accordingly, to increase the competitiveness of products and to formulate and use a flexible mechanism for managing the marketing activities of enterprises based on the development of a successful pricing strategy. The authors noted that the system of forming competitiveness is a complex process that occurs under the influence of a large number of factors. It is noted that the analysis of the organization of their sales network is important in the study of competitors and means of stimulating the sale of goods. The emphasis is placed on the key factors for the success of price policy: price changes, and therefore the consumer agrees to increase prices only if he is convinced of the fairness of this growth and vice versa.

The present research is based on the design of packaging based on the golden ratio technique and its effect on attracting cosmetic and cosmetic products customers using conjoint analysis. The sample size of this study was 385 women over 18 years old in Tehran. Data were collected by interview and questionnaire. The results of this study showed that the golden ratio has a significant effect on the attractiveness of packaging and the increasing intention to buy customers, as well as the level of education people, have on the choice of packages that have a golden ratio in them is very effective. They have a direct relationship with each other. Also, features of geometric shape, color and writing language are influential in choosing the package and intention to buy customers.