In response to increasing inflexible customer demands and to improve the competitive advantage, industrial organizations have to adopt strategies to achieve cost reduction, continual quality improvement, increased customer service and on-time delivery performance. Selection of the most suitable plant or facility layout design for an organization is one among the most important strategic issues to fulfill all these above-mentioned objectives. Nowadays, many industrial organizations have come to realize the importance of proper selection of the plant or facility layout design to survive in the global competitive market. Selecting the proper layout design from a given set of candidate alternatives is a difficult task, as many potential qualitative and quantitative criteria need to be considered. This paper proposes a Euclidean distance based approach (WEDBA) as a multiple attribute decision making method to deal with the complex plant or facility layout design problems of the industrial environment. Three examples are included to illustrate the approach.

Evaluation of proper supplier for manufacturing organizations is one of the most challenging problems in real time manufacturing environment due to a wide variety of customer demands. It has become more and more complicated to meet the challenges of international competitiveness and as the decision makers need to assess a wide range of alternative suppliers based on a set of conflicting criteria. Thus, the main objective of supplier selection is to select highly potential supplier through which all the set goals regarding the purchasing and manufacturing activity can be achieved. Because of these reasons, supplier selection has got considerable attention by the academicians and researchers. This paper presents a combined multi-criteria decision making methodology for supplier evaluation for given industrial applications. The proposed methodology is based on a compromise ranking method combined with Grey Interval Numbers considering different cardinal and ordinal criteria and their relative importance. A ‘supplier selection index’ is also proposed to help evaluation and ranking the alternative suppliers. Two examples are illustrated to demonstrate the potentiality and applicability of the proposed method.

Continuous generation of electricity of a power plant depends on the higher availability of its components/equipments. Higher availability of the components/equipments is inherently associated with their higher reliability and maintainability. This paper investigates the reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) characteristics of a 210 MW coal-fired thermal power plant (Unit-2) from a thermal power station in eastern region of India. Critical mechanical subsystems with respect to failure frequency, reliability and maintainability are identified for taking necessary measures for enhancing availability of the power plant and the results are compared with Unit-1 of the same Power Station. Reliability-based preventive maintenance intervals (PMIs) at various reliability levels of the subsystems are estimated also for performing their preventive maintenance (PM). The present paper highlights that in the Unit-2, Economizer (ECO) & Furnace Wall Tube (FWT) exhibits lower reliability as compared to the other subsystems and Economizer (ECO) & Baffle Wall Tube (BWT) demands more improvement in maintainability. Further, it has been observed that FSH followed Decreasing Failure Rate (DFR) and Economizer (ECO) is the most critical subsystem for both the plants. RAM analysis is very much effective in finding critical subsystems and deciding their preventive maintenance program for improving availability of the power plant as well as the power supply.

In this article, a production inventory model is developed to determine the retailer’s optimal replenishment decisions under two levels of trade credit and limited storage space. Two levels of trade credit refers that the supplier provides to his/her retailer a permissible delay period to settle the account and the retailer also in turn provides a delay period to his/her customer for paying of purchasing goods. The retailer’s credit period M offered by supplier is greater than customers credit period N provides by the retailer. This paper investigates retailer optimal replenishment policy under finite replenishment rate by minimizing the total annual inventory cost. Three theorems are developed to determine optimal cycle time, optimal relevant cost and optimal order quantity for retailers accurate and rapidly. A numerical example is used to analyze the validity of propose model, Sensitive analysis shows managerial decisions for retailer.

The fast industrial development increases different types of risks for the industries. Many risk factors are inherent in the implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs). Industries are developing methodologies for risk prevention and protection. The present research focuses to identify various risks that could influence the implementation of AMTs, and develop a framework to mitigate them. For this framework, interpretive structural modeling(ISM) has been used to depict the relationship and priority among the various risks. This research provides a path for managers and indicates the dominant risks on the basis of higher driving power. Also, this research classifies the relationship among various risks in AMTs implementation according to their driving power and dependence. The risks have been categorized into four categories as autonomous risks, linkage risks, dependent risks and independent risks. The proposed hierarchal model would help the management to effectively handle and develop strategies against the risks and hence new and latest technologies can be adopted with ease and effectiveness.

Highly automated CNC end milling machines in manufacturing industry requires reliable model for prediction of tool flank wear. This model later can be used to predict the tool flank wear (VBmax) according to the process parameters. In this investigation an attempt was made to develop an empirical relationship to predict the tool flank wear (VBmax) of carbide tools while machining LM25 Al/SiCp incorporating the process parameters such as spindle speed (N), feed rate (f), depth of cut (d) and various % wt. of silicon carbide (S). Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimizing the end milling process parameters to attain the minimum tool flank wear. Predicted values obtained from the developed model and experimental results are compared, and error & LT; 5 percent is observed. In addition, it is concluded that the flank wear increases with the increase of SiCp percentage weight in the MMC.

A paper published by Maniya and Bhatt (2011) (An alternative multiple attribute decision making methodology for solving optimal facility layout design selection problems, Computers & Industrial Engineering, 61, 542-549) proposed an alternative multiple attribute decision making method named as “Preference Selection Index (PSI) method” for selection of an optimal facility layout design. The authors had claimed that the method was logical and more appropriate and the method gives directly the optimal solution without assigning the relative importance between the facility layout design selection attributes. This note discusses the mathematical validity and the shortcomings of the PSI method.

This paper presents some findings of Indian manufacturing sectors viz. automobile (especially two-wheeler), tractor and general manufacturing industry. Various manufacturing strategy issues such as competitive priorities, improvement activities, and performance measures, have been identified and assessed in Indian context. Sector wise comparison of competitive priorities, improvement activities i.e. advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), integrated information systems (IIS), and advanced management systems (AMS), and performance measure, is provided. Our results showed that most of the Indian companies are still emphasizing on quality. However, automobile sector has set to compete globally with high innovation rate, faster new product development, and continuous improvement. It is also observed that Indian companies are investing more in AMS as compared to IIS and AMT. Manufacturing competence index is also computed for each sector.

This paper explains theoretical approach of the four theories of General system Theory (GST) developed by Yourdon (1989) [Yourdon, E. (1989). Modern Structured Analysis. Yourdon Press, Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Senge] while applying it in information technology and subsequently used by caddy (2007) [Caddy I.N., & Helou, M.M. (2007). Supply chains and their management: Application of general systems theory. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 14, 319–327.] in field of supply chain and management. JIT philosophy in core activities of supply chain i.e. procurement, production processes, and logistics are discussed through general system theory. The growing structure of the supply chain poses the implication restrictions and requires a heavy support system, many times a compromise is done while implementing JIT. The study would be useful to understand the general trends generated naturally regarding the adoption of the JIT philosophy in the supply chain.

In this article, an efficient, environmentally benign, solvent-free synthesis of diethyl-2,6-dimethyl-4-(1-phenyl-3-aryl-1H-pyrazol-4-yl)-1,4-dihydropyridine-3,5-dicarboxylates and their simple oxidative aromatization in presence of selected hypervalent iodine (III) reagents under solvent-free condition at room temperature is demonstrated. All reactions were carried out by grinding the reactant pyrazole substituted Hantzch-1,4-dihydropyridines and hypervalent iodine (III) reagent in a mortar with pestle. [Hydroxy(tosyloxy)iodo]benzene act as an more efficient oxidizing reagent in comparison to phenyliodine bistrifluoroacetate and iodobenzene diacetate in terms of reaction time and yields. The advantages of present protocol are the environment friendly, short reaction time, mild reaction conditions, and high yields of the products.