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Purpose: The present study aimed at developing and validating a self-development training package and determining self-development's effectiveness on job variables and human capital agility among secondary school principals in Isfahan. Design/methodology/approach: In the first phase, the researcher conceived a full version of the self-development training package by studying the theoretical evidence of research and interviewing experts as well as using content analysis. The questionnaire was presented to several experts (n = 8) in that field of study for evaluation after compiling the initial version of the self-development training package, with the aim of determining the face and content validity. In the second phase of the study, the effectiveness of the self-development training package was experimented on secondary school principals using a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test design and follow-up with a control group. Findings: The evaluation results were suitable for the training package based on the proposed Lawshe method. The results also indicated that the implementation of a self-development training package in the experimental group had a significant effect on job performance and its dimensions, as well as human capital agility. The effect of the training package on increasing job performance in the post-test stage was 55.3% and was 50.2% in the follow-up stage. Also, the effect of this package on increasing the agility of human capital in the post-test phase was equal to 34.8% and was equal to 28.9% in the follow-up stage. Originality/value: Question 1: What are the components of a self-development training package? Question 2: What is the credibility of the developed training package from the experts' point of view? Question 3: Does the self-development training package have an effect on job performance and its dimensions? Question 4: Does the self-development training package have an effect on human capital agility?.

In recent years, the way that maintenance is carried out has evolved due to the incorporation of digital tools and Industry 4.0 concepts. By connecting to and communicating with their production system, companies can now gather information about the current and future health of the equipment, enabling more efficient control through a process called predictive maintenance (PdM). The goal of PdM is to reduce unplanned downtimes and proactively address maintenance needs before failures occur. However, it can be challenging for industrial practitioners to implement an intelligent maintenance system that effectively manages data. This paper presents a methodology for developing and implementing a PdM system in the automotive industry, using open standards and scalable data management capabilities. The platform is validated through the presentation of two industry use cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the social undermining is increasing important in organizational literature both because of its relation with job performance and because of its collective cost to individuals and organizations. This article argued that social undermining can effect on co-creation among faculty members. The study adopted a descriptive-correlational method. The statistical population of the study consisted university faculty members in Iran, that 235 members were selected as the participants using stratified random sampling consistent with the sample size. Social undermining was examined using Duffy et al. (2002) Questionnaire and co-creation were examined using researcher-made questionnaire based on co-creation DART model. Also the reliability of the questionnaire were computed using Cronbach's alpha (0.94 for social undermining and 0.96 for co-creation questionnaire). Results based on data from a sample of university faculty members showed a negative relationship between social undermining and co-creation and were meaningful at 0.05 level of significance.

The objective of the present study is considering the relationship between EQ & constructive and non-constructive problem solving styles among students. The applied methodology is cross-correlation method. The statistical population in this study is all the educational sciences' students of Payame Noor university of Abadan in the year 2014 and the sampling is taken totally randomly and voluntary. Two surveys of EQ which proposed by Siryashring (1988) have used in this study that contain 33 questions. This study will measure 5 components of emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, self-control, self-motivation, social awareness and social skills. In addition the problem solving styles' survey that proposed by Velang (1996) has been applied that has made in two stages and has 24 questions, 12 items measure the problem-oriented style and rest of them measure the excitement-orientation. According to Cronbach's alpha the reliability coefficient of EQ is reported about 0.84. The validity of 0.63 is confirmed in Shirng's test of EQ. reliability coefficient of solving problem style is reported about 87%. Either reliability coefficient or factor content are confirmed by the faculty. Data analysis is done in two level of descriptive statistical (frequencies, percentages mean) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation, chi-square test). The obtained results of assumptions show that there is no significant relationship between EQ and constructive problem solving; also there is no significant relationship between EQ and non-constructive problem solving. Moreover there is significant relationship between EQ in creative styles, avoidance and style tendencies. Nevertheless there is no relationship between EQ and distress styles. And the confidence style shows an inverse relationship.

Artificial intelligence is the current trend in the world, which has taken the opportunity to advance in all its fields, particularly in scientific research. In materials engineering, the results obtained from classic methods such as experimentation, homogenization methods, or finite element methods have become input and validation elements for intelligent models to obtain more effective results in an optimal time frame. In this article, we discuss the use of artificial neural networks to determine the mechanical properties of biocomposites, which are the subject of much research due to the advantages they represent. The properties of these complex materials depend on various parameters, such as the behavior of the constituent materials, the percentage of the mixture, and the manufacturing process. In this work, our goal is to predict how polypropylene behaves elastically when reinforced with 15% various natural fillers. and we will study the impact of bamboo on polypropylene to test and validate our model. By exploiting the results of the Mori-Tanaka model, we were able to generate our dataset, with which we feed our feedforward backpropagation neural network and demonstrate that our biocomposite gained in terms of stiffness, marked by an increase in Young's modulus to 550.3 MPa, with better performance validation and a very good regression coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article synthesises the return of experience of performing a product variety analysis for a (supplier in the automotive sector) that haven't had yet a product variety management strategy. This paper is part of a multi-year research project on the design of reconfigurable production systems. The contribution is (i) to present at a glance the developed strategy of product similarity assessment and (ii) to underline the industrial benefits of this similarity assessment obtained as a result of the industrial case studies. First, the article reminds, in the context of product variety, a developed methodology to assess product similarities by four indices. These consider the functions, product structures and the way to assemble them. Second, the focus is put on the benefits of their application through three industrial use cases: during the design of a new product identifying its impact on the manufacturing system, identifying the fittest production line for a new product to assemble and generating a new adapted production line by gathering products belonging to the same product family. All benefits are illustrated through the results of the industrial case studies. These are anonymised due to confidentiality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Previous research has managed to clearly define lean technical competencies. However, the behavioral competencies remain underestimated, and the roles of lean experts are not clearly stated: are they teachers, facilitators or technical experts? The present paper investigates lean behavioral competencies and their relationship to lean experts' roles. Design/methodology/approach: This article serves as an exploratory study built on interviews, observations and focus groups conducted during a three-year longitudinal study accompanied by a three-year follow-up. The case takes place in an international automotive company in partnership with Toyota in which lean adoption was part of a consistent strategy over a period of 20 years. Findings: The study clarifies lean behavioral competencies related to organizational efficiency (nominal management, improvement management and respect for people) and relational efficiency (problem resolution, competencies development and systemic interactions). The study helped create a typology of lean experts' roles related to the maturity level of the environment in which they intervened. Moreover, Lean experts' roles in congruence with the environment seem to positively influence the creation of emerging human relationships that are beneficial to process improvement and competencies development. Originality/value: This paper is the first to clarify behavioral competencies with respect to lean experts' roles and to study the temporality of the introduction of lean practices. The findings recommend that researchers better acknowledge the influence of lean behavioral competencies during lean adoption and their relationship to contextual factors and organizational performance. A practical methodology is proposed to measure the necessary behavioral adjustments of lean experts or employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic and complex nature of development processes calls for improvements in risk management methods. To deal with the risks, the authors advocate for a paradigm shift. The focus is moving from individual risk to risk interactions. Standards suggest integrating methods to address the limitations imposed by existing approaches. As a result, new strategies are needed to express and assess risk connections. The paper proposes a global framework and its simulator for: (a) representing individual risk events and including them in a product development, (b) expressing risk interactions, (c) integrating risks hierarchically and (d) evaluating risks. The solution is based on distinction between individual risk events and global process and its risk behaviour. Risk behaviour is characterised on task level. Process behaviour enables the integration of task risk into the development process. Risk management is viewed as a part of the development process, with final risk assessed bottom-up from individual risk to process risk. Consequently, the main contribution is not only in taking risk interactions into account but also in contextualising risk assessment in relation to development processes. Simulation is conducted for hair dryer design. However, the solution is global and can be used for other manufacturing and development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study has examined the characteristics of physics teachers, their professional competences, supplies of equipments and technologies, appropriate textbooks and motivational factors in students' learning of physics from female physics teacher's points of view. The population included all female physics teachers in Isfahan city and a total of 88 teachers were selected as sample of study. The study was a descriptive survey that used researcher made questionnaire consists of 46 items. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for this scale was set to be 0.95. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, t-tests and ANOVA test were used. The results showed that in the present state, physics teachers have a low level of scientific knowledge. In terms of professional skills, their abilities were average and educational equipments and technologies were available at low level. Moreover the satisfaction of female physics teachers of books and educational texts was moderate. Meanwhile, the motivation for learning the lessons of physics was moderate. Also the results in desired state showed that all components of study could be effective in learning physics. Accordingly, it is recommended to enhance learning and teaching physics education, school should be equipped to supplies and technologies for teaching physics, including virtual laboratory.

In this paper, a two-stage robust optimisation is presented for an uncapacitated hub location problem in which demand is uncertain and the level of conservatism is controlled by an uncertainty budget. In the first stage, locations for establishing hub facilities were determined, and allocation decisions were made in the second stage. An accelerated Benders decomposition algorithm was used to solve the problem. Computational experiments showed better results in terms of number of iterations and computation time for Benders decomposition with Pareto-optimal cuts in comparison with the classical Benders decomposition algorithm. According to numerical analysis, it was concluded that increasing the uncertainty budget also increased total costs for more established hubs. To determine the uncertainty budget in an appropriate manner, a new expected aggregate function was introduced. The numerical studies demonstrated the usefulness of the proposed method in defining the appropriate uncertainty budget in the presence of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]