---

Time and uncertainty play a crucial role in the strategic planning process [1]. Many industries have collapsed or been knocked out of the competition due to unforeseen able changes in the environment and their forecast about the future failed. Organizations are faced with unpredictable changes in new technologies, products and market places and their planned strategies are not able to respond to such a dynamic and changeable environment. These sorts of pressures are increasing in future because of the rapid developments of technology, economics and community. Needless to say, the future is not predictable but it is noteworthy that organizations can prepare themselves to face such changes and this readiness results in competitive advantages. The more the uncertainties, the more considerable the competitive advantages of organizations devised robust and stable strategies against uncertainty will be. This paper aims at introducing a method that enables organizations to draw up robust strategies in uncertain situations and leads to formulation of strategies to immunize them against environment changes. The method put forth in this paper has combined 'scenario planning method' and 'fuzzy inference system' with traditional strategic planning by adopting a novel and creative approach. Using the values of uncertain factors in the external environment, this method designs some probable forthcoming scenarios of the organization and then based on fuzzy information defined by experts for fuzzy inference systems, defines a robust strategy to deal with the designed scenarios. This method assists a manager and an organizational strategic planner in their evaluations of future environment and provides them with deep understanding of their planned strategies to keep their competitive advantages in the unstable and unsettled future.

---

Holding companies differ in nature from commercial companies. Adopting a specific policy towards products and services, holding companies support and control their subsidiaries. Competition and strategic planning conceptually differ in companies and ordinary commercial companies owing to the fact that no two holding companies, which provide similar products and services can be found, even at the international level. Information systems strategic planning (ISSP) is accomplished to develop an orientation toward the investment in information and communications technologies that aligns with the strategic objectives of the organization. As mentioned earlier, due to the differences between parent companies and ordinary commercial companies with single- or multi-products/services in terms of strategic planning and competition, the information systems strategic planning process in holding companies follows quite different steps. This distinguishing nature leads us to take considerations into account in ISSP steps. Applying balanced scoredcard method, this article concentrates the limited resources of investment on the processes that fulfill an essential role in accomplishing the strategic objectives of holding companies.

---

In this paper, multi objective genetic algorithm is applied to optimize one type of recuperator in a 200 kW microturbine by considering two key parameters such as recuperator efficiency and cost. ε-NTU method is selected for the recuperator efficiency and pressure drop calculation. The recuperator total cost consists of capital cost, operational cost and maintenance cost. A plate-fin heat exchanger with offset strip fin for counter and cross flow arrangements is chosen for optimization. Fin pitch, fin height, fin offset length, cold stream flow length, non-flow stream length and hot stream flow length are considered as six design parameters. NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm) is conducted to maximize recuperator efficiency and minimize its total cost. Results of the optimization are presented as a set of designs, called ‘Pareto-optimal solutions’. The results reveal the confliction between the two objective functions. It can be concluded that any change in the geometry of the recuperator increasing the efficiency also increases the total cost and vice versa. Finally, the optimal designs are compared together based on non-dominated sorting concept and the final optimal designs are obtained.

---

---