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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effect of the ISO 9001 quality management system on customer satisfaction and show an application of an analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-based method for measuring the customer satisfaction index (CSI). This will be useful to anyone who wants to have an ISO 9001 quality management system in his or her organization.

This paper describes an ISO 9001 quality management implementation process based on ISO 9001 requirements, and uses the AHP method for weighting effective criteria on customer satisfaction. All data were obtained via questionnaires and assessed with EXPERT CHOICE 11 software.

According to the results of the weighting, the factors influencing the satisfaction of a kitchen worktops customer, price and sales terms of this product has a significant impact on customer satisfaction and, in competitive conditions, this criterion has a determining role in the creation of utility for customers. ISO 9001 quality management system has been able to increase the CSI within an 11-month period of study.

This paper is the first to use the AHP method with a new approach in a case study, offering a complete, comprehensive method for assessing customer implications.

Considering the importance of knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) in communities toward COVID-19 and the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination in the control of this disease, this study aims to evaluate and compare the KAP level toward COVID-19 and the acceptance rate of COVID-19 vaccination between the Afghan immigrant population and Iranians

This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in 2021 on Afghan immigrants, Afghan-neighboring Iranians and Afghan nonneighboring Iranians. Of the 885 people who participated in the survey, 295 from each group were randomly selected. Data collection tools were the following questionnaires: KAP toward COVID-19 and acceptance and attitude toward COVID-19 vaccination.

A total of 837 participants were included for data analysis. According to the findings, the KAP score on COVID-19 in Afghan immigrants was lower than the group of Iranians. Compared with Iranians, the score of nonneighboring Iranians was higher than the neighboring Iranians with Afghan immigrants. This difference in the mean scores suggests a statistically significant difference in the three groups (p < 0.0001). Among demographic data, the relationship between gender, education, type of job, income level and age with KAP indicated a significant difference in the total population studied. In the group of Afghan immigrants, the most likely reason for accepting the vaccination was the employer’s recommendation (55.63%). In comparison, the neighboring and nonneighboring Iranian groups with Afghan immigrants stated that they would receive the vaccine as soon as possible (49.22% and 63.22%, respectively).

Considering the low KAP score in the immigrant population in this study, these people are more vulnerable to the health and socioeconomic effects of COVID-19; therefore, the host countries have more challenges and responsibilities to protect these populations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (social responsibility, economic responsibility and environmental responsibility) on Jordanian Pharmaceutical Manufacturing (JPM) industry’s business performance.

This study follows a quantitative descriptive design. The data were collected from 116 managers working at seven JPM organizations by questionnaire. After confirming validity and reliability of the tool, the statistical analysis means, standard deviations and t-values were used to test implementation and finally multiple regressions were used to test the hypothesis.

Results show that there are relationships between CSR variables, and all the three variables are strongly related to business performance. The results also indicate that the three sub-variables together affect JPM industry’s business performance. The environmental responsibility has the highest effect on JPM industry’s business performance, followed by the economic responsibility, and then the social responsibility.

This study was directed toward pharmaceutical industry in Jordan. Generalizing the results to other industries and countries is questionable. Therefore, further research on other industries and countries will help mitigate the issue of generalizing conclusions.

CSR should be formulated clearly within JPM corporate strategy. The elements of CSR need to be integrated with the present performance management criteria, leadership development programs and organizational development programs, and a champion for CSR needs to be assigned.

The CSR initiatives should be derived from local culture and match with international initiatives because CSR is the responsibility of every person.

Still the topic of CSR is not well implemented and does not have priority by Jordanian companies; therefore, this study may be considered as one of the few studies dedicated to study this topic and create awareness about it in Jordan.

The advancement of medical care during the late 19th century and the rising importance of public health led to the creation of a healthcare infrastructure in Iran in the early decades of the 20th century. The study focuses on the formation of this infrastructure through the study of historical materials as well as the study of case studies built in the Gilan region in the north of Iran.

This paper begins with a review of medical, sociological and historical resources, then turns to field studies and interviews as methods to focus on the medical transformations in the Gilan region.

This study offers four key findings: First of all, most studies tend to focus more on traditional medicine in Iran than on the initiation and spread of modern medicine. Secondly, foreign physicians and missionaries played an influential role in shaping the culture of Iranian hospital care. Thirdly, the interactions with and influences coming from Iran’s northern neighbors in Gilan transformed the province into an educated, freedom-seeking society. And finally, in its early stages, hospital construction in Iran followed local architectural traditions.

In the case of Gilan, the core structures of urban hospitals were similar in their pavilion typology to those that had been common in Gilan for centuries.

This study aims to identify the main factors affecting export competitiveness and its barriers, focusing on the minerals industry so that a scale is achieved for measuring export competitiveness in this industry.

The research was conducted with a mixed method approach in the minerals industry. Among the active companies involved in this industry, 34 export companies and export management companies were selected and evaluated. In the qualitative phase, 18 experts and managers of the industry were interviewed to identify the factors affecting the export competitiveness of these companies and the barriers ahead of them. In the quantitative phase, a questionnaire was distributed among 412 managers and experts in this industry to categorize the identified factors and to measure the relationships among them. For data analysis in the qualitative phase, theme analysis was used. For the quantitative phase, factor analysis and structural equation modeling were adopted.

In addition to identifying the main components affecting the competitiveness of companies in exporting minerals as well as the main barriers ahead of them, the findings of the current research categorized these components using factor analysis. These components were categorized into factors, such as manufacturing factors, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, structural factors, competitive strategy and governmental supports. Afterward, their impacts on export competitiveness were measured and supported.

Although some studies have been conducted to examine the competitiveness in different industries, no research has been found that has examined and identified the main factors affecting export competitiveness and their impacts in the minerals industry with a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach. The findings of this research may help managers and policymakers, at the industrial and national levels, to reach a scale for assessing the export companies involved in this industry by identifying the most essential factors of export competitiveness of minerals. Furthermore, the findings of this research can act as a model for future researchers to develop a scale for export competitiveness in other industries.

The rising awareness of the significance of protecting the environment and reducing the carbon footprints of buildings has led to the development of sustainable or green office buildings that are believed to be more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Despite this, not many have studied the extent of impacts between green classification and rental depreciation in Malaysia, besides the other traditional causes. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to identify the relationship of building characteristics and location factors, namely, green building classifications (BCLs), location and site (LOT), building engineering and services (BES) and building appearance and design (BAD) that contribute to rental depreciation in the Golden Triangle Area of Kuala Lumpur.

A survey using a questionnaire was used in the data collection targeting the selected Kuala Lumpur commercial purpose built office building property managers. To establish the significance and relevance of the model, this study employed the PLS algorithm and bootstrapping procedures.

This research suggests that there were significant impacts of LOT, BAD, and BES towards rental depreciation. On the contrary, sustainable classifications were found insignificant towards rental depreciation.

The novelty of this study is that it proposes the sustainable classifications as one of the components in analysing the commercial property depreciation.

This paper aims to propose a new housing finance mechanism through gold price as an alternative to interest rate in Islamic home financing, especially on Bai’Bithaman Ajil (BBA) contract.

This study using simulation approach to calculate the monthly installments for home financing using gold price references. In simple terms, propose a financing formula in the BBA contract by converting the selling price of the house to the gold price, and then the monthly installments also follow the actual gold price. The authors provide an example by simulating this formula using historical data and cases of housing financing at Indonesian Islamic banks. The authors compare housing financing models based on gold prices and interest rates. Finally, The authors can compare the two housing financing models that are affordable for low-income people.

The results show that in the initial period, monthly installments of BBA based on gold price were lower than home financing based on interest rate. This result makes it possible for low-income people who cannot access financing based on interest rates to access financing based on gold price. However, the total installments of financing based on gold prices are higher than the financing model based on interest rates.

The paper confines one contract, namely, BBA, as it is claimed to be more Shariah-compliant than others.

These findings suggest an alternative model for Islamic banks and regulatory authorities in Indonesia to replace the interest rate reference with the gold price in BBA contract housing financing. This model can offer competitive advantages for Islamic banks, including lower initial installments and inflation-protected profits, serving as a means of differentiating them from conventional banks.

Gold price-based housing financing model in Islamic banks will increase the affordability of housing financing for low-income people.

This paper tries to solve two problems, namely, first, the problem of assuming that Islamic and conventional banks are the same, and second, the problem of housing finance affordability. This study needs to be explored.

Taking into consideration the current human need for agricultural produce such as rice that requires water for growth, the optimal consumption of this valuable liquid is important. Unfortunately, the traditional use of water by humans for agricultural purposes contradicts the concept of optimal consumption. Therefore, designing and implementing a mechanized irrigation system is of the highest importance. This system includes hardware equipment such as liquid altimeter sensors, valves and pumps which have a failure phenomenon as an integral part, causing faults in the system. Naturally, these faults occur at probable time intervals, and the probability function with exponential distribution is used to simulate this interval. Thus, before the implementation of such high-cost systems, its evaluation is essential during the design phase.

The proposed approach included two main steps: offline and online. The offline phase included the simulation of the studied system (i.e. the irrigation system of paddy fields) and the acquisition of a data set for training machine learning algorithms such as decision trees to detect, locate (classification) and evaluate faults. In the online phase, C5.0 decision trees trained in the offline phase were used on a stream of data generated by the system.

The proposed approach is a comprehensive online component-oriented method, which is a combination of supervised machine learning methods to investigate system faults. Each of these methods is considered a component determined by the dimensions and complexity of the case study (to discover, classify and evaluate fault tolerance). These components are placed together in the form of a process framework so that the appropriate method for each component is obtained based on comparison with other machine learning methods. As a result, depending on the conditions under study, the most efficient method is selected in the components. Before the system implementation phase, its reliability is checked by evaluating the predicted faults (in the system design phase). Therefore, this approach avoids the construction of a high-risk system. Compared to existing methods, the proposed approach is more comprehensive and has greater flexibility.

By expanding the dimensions of the problem, the model verification space grows exponentially using automata.

Unlike the existing methods that only examine one or two aspects of fault analysis such as fault detection, classification and fault-tolerance evaluation, this paper proposes a comprehensive process-oriented approach that investigates all three aspects of fault analysis concurrently.

In this advanced era of Industrial Revolution 4.0, as an element of cyber physical systems, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been applied in many different industries; however, its adoption in the construction industry is still limited to a few applications. This study uncovers, identifies and assesses the challenges of adopting IOT in construction projects. The challenges have been identified through the briefed literature review and a survey instrument from construction industries in Malaysia.

In this study, the quantitative research approach has been used and data have been collected through a questionnaire survey for construction practitioners. Whereas, respondents to the questionnaire are practitioners from the Malaysian construction industry. The method of sampling implied is random sampling technique whereby the final sample size is 132 participants. Moreover, the gathered data has been analysed using univariate approach via standard deviation and average index in SPSS Software 22.0.

The results of this study indicated the most dominant challenges are lack of safety and security, lack of documented standards, lack of benefit awareness, improper introduction of IOT and lack of robustness in connectivity. This study also examined that the awareness of construction practitioners toward the understanding of IOT and its possibility to be applied and extended in construction projects and determined that construction practitioners are aware of IOT benefits to improve the efficiency of construction projects.

The study presents a better understanding of IOT in the construction industry and their potential challenges, which helps the construction policymakers to avoid encounters related to challenges and provide education-based campaigns to educate construction practitioners on the concept and importance of using IOT in the construction sector.

This is a unique study because of its nature in this advance era of industry 4.0. Furthermore, it is specifying the latest trend associated with IOT in the construction industry and addressing the challenges of implementation, which is crucial to exploit and take advantage of the full potential of IoT benefits.

The objective of this study is to present a binary-valued data envelopment analysis (DEA) theory. The authors’ proposed approach, for the first time, combines binary-valued and integer-valued theories concurrently in the DEA context. To do so, new production possibility sets (PPSs) with some distinguished features are developed.

The authors address integer inputs and outputs in the proposed approach by introducing a new PPS.

To take into account the binary data, the authors develop axiomatic DEA principles. The binary production principles guarantee any combination of convexity and feasibility. Furthermore, the authors develop a new DEA model to consider integer and real data. A case study is presented to show the usefulness of the developed models. Using the proposed models, the authors obtained benchmarks to solve the sustainable supplier selection problems.

(1) For the first time, binary-valued and integer-valued theories are presented in an integrated DEA model. (2) To deal with the pure binary data, a new PPS is proposed. (3) To consider real, integer and binary data, a new PPS is introduced. (4) New technologies are developed to propose feasible solutions. (5) The proposed models can project inefficient decision-making units (DMUs) on efficiency frontier given binary, integer and real data. (6) A case study is given for the performance evaluation of sustainable suppliers.