Supplier Selection and Relationship Management: An Application of Machine Learning Techniques

Managing supply chains is an extremely challenging task due to globalization, short product life cycle, and recent advancements in information technology. These changes result in the increasing importance of managing the relationship with suppliers. However, the supplier selection literature mainly focuses on selecting suppliers based on previous performance, environmental and social criteria and ignores supplier relationship management. Moreover, although the explosion of data and the capabilities of machine learning techniques in handling dynamic and fast changing environment show promising results in customer relationship management, especially in customer lifetime value, this area has been untouched in the upstream side of supply chains. This research is an attempt to address this gap by proposing a framework to predict supplier future value, by incorporating the contract history data, relationship value, and supply network properties. The proposed model is empirically tested for suppliers of public works and government services Canada. Methodology wise, this thesis demonstrates the application of machine learning techniques for supplier selection and developing effective strategies for managing relationships. Practically, the proposed framework equips supply chain managers with a proactive and forward-looking approach for managing supplier relationship

Management Science Letters Canonical correlation analysis between collaborative networks and innovation: A case study in information technology companies in province of Tehran, Iran

The increase competitions as well as technological advancements have created motivation among business owners to look for more innovative ideas from outside their organizations. Many enterprises collaborate with other organizations to empower themselves through innovative ideas. These kinds of collaborations can be observed as a concept called Regional Innovation System. These collaborations include inter-firm collaborations, research organizations, intermediary institutions and governmental agencies. The primary objective of this paper is to evaluate relationships between Collaborative Networks and Innovation in information technology business units located in province of Tehran, Iran. The research method utilized for the present study is descriptive-correlation. To evaluate the relationships between independent and dependent variables, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is used. The results confirm the previous findings regarding the relationship between Collaborative Networks and Innovation. Among various dimensions of Collaboration, Collaboration with governmental agencies had a very small impact on the relationship between collaboration networks and innovation. In addition, the results show that in addition to affecting product innovation and process innovation, collaboration networks also affected management innovation

APPLE PECTIN (AP) INDUCED APOPTOSIS VIA NITRIC OXIDE (NO) IN HUMAN PROSTATE CANCER CELLS DU145

Objective: Apoptosis or programmed cell death is a physiological process in which cells die. Many cancer chemical drugs induce apoptosis to omit cancer cells. Since prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men, it is important to develop some natural ways to stop it. Plant derivatives are capable of inducing apoptosis in cancer cells. Pectin, a carbohydrate-rich compound of plant cells, is one of these derivatives which show apoptotic effects on cancer cells. Here, we studied the effect of apple pectin (AP) to induce apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells.Methods: The cellular viability was investigated with MTT, cell cycle analysis and AO/EB double staining. The amount of NO release was determined and apoptosis was studied through western blotting of the proteins which takes part in the cell death pathway.Results: The results indicated that AP strongly suppressed Du145 cells proliferation. It also caused significant increase of NO release compared with control group. Treatment by different concentrations of AP led to the enhancement of active caspase-3 levels and Bax/Bcl2 Ratio.Conclusion: These finding suggest that AP has the potential to induce apoptosis in prostate cancer cells (DU145) through increasing the release of NO which may be related to the mitochondrial apoptosis pathway.Â