Organizations around the world are looking for new approaches to maintain or develop competitive advantage. Outsourcing can be such an approach and one of the strategies that can lead to greater competitiveness. Maintaining and developing core competences as a way of providing barriers to protect against present and future competitors; make full use of external capabilities, innovation and investment; and finally, provide better service, quality and cost to the customer. In this study we determined variables and factors involved in maintenance outsourcing process and developed a generic model for the maintenance outsourcing process by three main factors such as characteristics of organization, characteristics of Environment / Industry and characteristics of Contractors. Then the proposed model has been tested in an electric company by the use of gray theory in order to determine that the organization do complete outsourcing or outsourcing with non-decisions.

Knowledge is now considered as a strategic property and ability of an organization classified as an intangible resource to gain competitive advantage. To prioritize the knowledge management (KM) and identify the current situation of an organization, it seems essential to determine the factors influencing the successful implementation of KM. This study intends to identify the factors affecting the successful implementation of KM and develop a growth model based on the priorities of these factors. It also seeks to evaluate the performance of the organization in terms of KM. Investigation, validation and prioritization of the factors are carried out by the experts and the collected data is analyzed by statistical methods. Using a questionnaire to develop a KM growth model, the current situation of Yazd Regional Electric Company has been then evaluated. Additionally, the weakness and strength points of the organization in relation to the desirable state are identified and finally some suggestions are provided to resolve the weakness points.

The purpose of this study is to design a mechanism for evaluating business activities with focus on the inventory system through supply chain approach and to implement it in the energy industry. It is necessary to identify the main business purposes through supply chain approach for achieving purpose of the study. In order to design the rational mechanism for evaluating business activities, the characteristics of the markets in which the energy industry is working should be recognized. Also supply chain strategies, their relations with the related measures and supply chain goals, and operationalizing the purposes through a four-step process have been described. Finally, a model has been described that facilitates the continuous improvement process of inventory system through measuring efficiency and effectiveness indexes.