TQM is a set of management practices throughout the organisation, geared to ensure the organisation consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. This research tries to investigate the most important barriers to successful TQM implementation in Iranian manufacturing organisations. The authors have studied samples of manufacturing organisations, comprising those that have invested on TQM after the end of March 2009 and were located in Iran. This descriptive and cross-sectional research is carried out via two questionnaires -general questionnaire for success of TQM principles and specific questionnaire for barriers to successful TQM implementation. The statistical population of this research consists of all managers of manufacturing organisations who implemented TQM in their organisations. Results showed that the main root causes of unsuccessful implementation of TQM were the lack of management commitment, resource problem and failure to use the right framework for TQM. In addition, there is a significant coincidence between the results of two questionnaires. Finally, regarding the findings of this research, we offer a relation between TQM principles and barriers to successful TQM implementation. Therefore, in order to reduce the barriers to successful TQM implementation, some suggestions were proposed.

This paper presents a review of decision criteria reported in the literature for supporting the supplier selection process. The review is based on an extensive search in the academic literature. After a literature review of decision criteria, we discuss the most important criteria: quality. Then different methods and factors for assessing the quality of supplier are discussed. Results showed that all methods and factors mentioned in this paper are not appropriate tools for quality evaluation. Moreover, we propose a novel method (using loss functions) in order to assess the quality of suppliers.

This paper presents an analytical literature review on fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD) of papers published between 2000 and 2011. In this review, publications were divided into two main groups. First group included publications which proposed some models to develop FQFD. The second one was related to new applications of FQFD models. Next, publications were analyzed and research gaps and future directions were presented. We reached some conclusions including the following. (i) Most of studies were focused on quantitative methods to accomplish phase 1 of QFD or House of Quality (HoQ). The most employed techniques were multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods. (ii) Although main purpose of using QFD was product development, other factors such as risk and competiveness analysis should be considered in product development process. (iii) A promising approach is using of metaheuristic methods for solving complicated problems of FQFD. (iv) There are a few studies on completing all phases of FQFD.

The index Cpmk is a well-known loss-based process capability index. It can reveal more information about the location of the process mean compared with other classic process capability indices. This index is also more sensitive than other capability indices to any deviations from process mean. When there are some uncertainties in observations, fuzzy logic can be employed to manage these uncertainties. There is some research on different fuzzy process capability indices and this paper is an extension of Tsai and Chen (2006), Chen, Lin, and Chen (2003) for the process capability index Cpmk of fuzzy numbers. In order to find the membership function of process capability index Cpmk, the α-cuts of the fuzzy observation were employed. An example of fuzzy process capability Cpmk calculator was illustrated and compared with other classic fuzzy process capability indices Cp,Cpl,Cpu,Cpk and Cpm . Results showed that fuzzy Cpmk has the advantages of both Cpk and Cpm . Since the index Cpmk is a more sensitive index compared with other classic indices, the fuzzy process capability index Cpmk can be a more sensitive fuzzy index compared with Cp,Cpl,Cpu,Cpk and Cpm.

Satisfaction in life and everyday work is important in everyone's life. We spend most of our time working or being involved in some economic activity to make a living. This paper focuses on the relative importance of job satisfaction factors and their impact on the overall job satisfaction of employees. The present study is a cross-sectional type of research performed in 2015. The study population is senior executives of the Asgariyeh and MehrIran Banks in Qazvin and Alborz. The research instruments included two questionnaires based on individual characteristics and proprietary. The Individual characteristics questionnaire consists of 4 questions and the Proprietary questionnaire consists of 70 items, including a dependent variable of Job satisfaction. SPSS software was used for data analysis. One-sample t-Test was used to investigate the condition of each of the dependent and independent variables in the research. In conclusion, it can be said that the colleagues, upgrade, and compensation variables are respectively in the first, second, and third place influencing job satisfaction.