Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to create a model called "Balanced score for the balanced score card" and to provide an objective benchmarking indicator for evaluating the achievement of the strategic goals of the company. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses the concepts of "Balanced scorecard" proposed by Robert. S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. This paper also adopts the model given by Brown P.A. and Gibson D.F. and the extension to the model provided by P.V. Raghavan and M. Punniyamoorthy. Preference theory is used to calculate the relative weightage for each factor, using the process of pair wise comparison. The balanced score for balanced scorecard provides a single value by taking into account all the essential objective and subjective factors -be it financial or non-financial. It also provides a suitable weightages for those parameters. The target performance and the actual performance are compared and the analysis is made. Findings -Information from a leading organization was obtained and the balanced score for a balance scorecard was calculated for that organization. The variations were analyzed through this model. The depth and objectivity in the analysis is highlighted. Research limitations/implications -This provides a single bench marking measure to evaluate how far the firm had been successful in achieving the strategies. The paper has adopted the preference theory which limits the weightage to be accorded to the factors concerned. However, further refinement can be provided by the usage of analytic hierarchy process for arriving suitable weightages. Practical implications -The organization can calculate the balanced score by themselves, by assigning appropriate importance to the activities -as they deem fit. It is a tailor made benchmarking information system created by the firm for itself. Originality/value -This is of value to the top management to identify the important activities and setting suitable target measures to be achieved in those activities. The variations are arrived by comparing the targeted performance with the actual. This will help the firm to take suitable actions under those parameters where there are significant deviations.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to provide a reliable and accurate instrument to assess the supply chain risk of similar comparable industries. This enables the firms which fall in this category of industry to identify and incorporate suitable risk sources under various risk constructs. This paper also provides a framework to the top management to prioritize the various risk constructs. Design/methodology/approach -A systematic approach is used to develop and validate an instrument for assessing overall risk of supply chain. This includes specifying the domain and dimensionality of a construct, generation of initial pool of items, refinement of the initial items by the expert group, assessment of content validity, evaluation of reliability and construct validity of the scale items. Also a higher order measurement model of structural equation modeling is used to prioritize the various risk constructs. Findings -The process yielded a robust instrument to assess overall risk of the supply chain. Through empirical verification, this instrument is shown to exhibit high levels of reliability and validity. The framework for prioritization of risk constructs revealed the importance of various supply chain risk constructs. Practical implications -The framework is intended to be useful in practice for assessment of overall risk of heavy engineering industries supply chain. The procedure will be extended for development of risk assessment instrument for other industries which shares a common risk profile. Prioritization of various risk constructs with respect to the overall risk enables the top management to focus their attention to plan and manage the supply chain risks based on their relative importance. Originality/value -This paper fulfils an identified need for the development of an empirically validated instrument by identifying the significant supply chain risk sources under major supply chain risk constructs for assessing the supply chain risk of industries which are similar in their risk profiles. Also provides a higher order model to identify the most influential risk constructs.

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has experience in the newspaper industry, research and academia. He has published papers on brand architecture and brand loyalty in Indian journals. He teaches marketing research, consumer behaviour and services marketing at the Bharathidasan Institute of Management (BIM), India. He has presented research papers at various international and national conferences, and is also pursuing a PhD in brand loyalty measurement at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Trichirapalli. Keywords brand loyalty , perceived value , customer satisfaction , commitment , brand trust , analytical hierarchy process (AHP)Abstract This study attempts to develop the empirical model for measuring brand loyalty in English newspapers. The model has been developed by using factor analysis, multiple regression analysis and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) model. It describes the results of a survey of 180 respondents in three dominant cities of India. The work focuses on the factors that infl uence loyalty. The model has been built based on the factors found which infl uence loyalty. The study also examines the loyalty behaviour of customers, especially from an Indian perspective, and measures the brand loyalty score of three major English newspapers by using the developed model, concluding with suggestions for mounting high loyalty among customers.

Evolutionary algorithms are stochastic search methods that mimic the principles of natural biological evolution to produce better and better approximations to a solution and have been used widely for optimization problems. A general problem of continuous-time aggregate production planning for a given total number of changes in production rate over the total planning horizon is considered. It is very important to identify and solve the problem of continuous-time production planning horizon with varying production rates over the interval of the planning period horizon. Some of the researchers have proposed global search methods for the continuous-time aggregate productionplanning problem. So far, less work is reported to solve the problem of continuous-time production planning using local search methods like genetic algorithms (GA) and simulated annealing (SA). So in this work, we propose a modified single objective evolutionary program approach, namely GA, SA, and hybrid genetic algorithms-simulated annealing (GA-SA) for continuoustime production plan problems. The results are compared with each other and it was found that the hybrid algorithm performs better.

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Commodity product marketers are increasingly resorting to branding in response to growing competition. Despite this commodity branding issues have not been adequately addressed. In this article we propose an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based model to assess customer loyalty scores for commodity brands. We also propose a methodology using Structural Equation Modeling to systematically collect data from customers and suitably incorporate it into AHP for computing the loyalty scores. The scores of the constructs in the model could be used by the commodity marketers to ascertain customers brand preference pattern and the relative importance of the factors in the purchase decision. From such an understanding, the commodity marketers could adjust the elements of the marketing and delivery process and incentivize the customer to Punniyamoorthy et al

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