For today’s high competitive market, when immensity purchasing of inventory becomes convenient or obligatory, to discover an alternative market in order to maximize the revenue earned is a tradition. In this paper, we considered an inventory model for seasonal products with Weibull rate of deterioration having two potential markets, say, primary and alternate. To handle the inventory up to the next season will result an increase in total cost. So it is a favorable task to transfer the remaining stock to the alternate market even at a slightly differ in selling price. Solution procedure, numerical examples and sensitivity analysis for different variables are presented to illustrate the model.

There is an overwhelming need to focus on the human capital and the role of this important resource on organizations’ systems. In addition, there is a need for study on human resource development and participative management system. This would not be an interesting topic for study, if it were not a comparative study in the field of human capital and participative management system. Two important sectors were selected for the study i.e., Gas and Car parts companies. Gas Indian Ltd in Delhi (GAIL) and the National Gas Company of Isfahan, Iran; and also, two manufacturers of car parts in India and Iran, named Sona Group Company (in India) and Atlas Pump Sepahan (in Iran) were selected. The objectives of the study were associated with the role of some important human resource factors in participative management system. Objectives of the study are as follows: The role of communication, employees compassion, employees sentiment, reward system and training in participative management system, also if there were any significant difference on the impact of mentioned variables in Indian and Iranian organizations from the perspective of employees. The questionnaires were distributed among randomly selected employees and the researcher collected responses through the questionnaires of employees. Analysis of data was based on the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Three levels of analyses were computed: 1. Descriptive analyses 2. T-Test 3. Correlation analyses. The general observations associated with attitudes of Indian and Iranian employees about hypotheses are presented in this paper.

The principal objective of this paper is to conceptualize the scope of improving the responsiveness of logistics by eradicating the restrictions posed by unnecessary delays and human factors, in conjunction with underscoring the positive externalities that will emerge as societal benefits. Various attributes like ‘idle time’, ‘geographical & regional aspects’, ‘truckers limitations’, and ‘uncertainties’ have been taken into consideration to expand the outlook of logistics operations. This paper assembles knowledge to propose an approach to establish the convergence of various relevant aspects of the operational dimension of trade & transport facilitation. Furthermore, these are the aspects which although studied disjointedly were hitherto ignored as interrelated while planning logistics operations.

With ever increasing demand for manufactured products of hard alloys and metals with high surface finish and complex shape geometry, more interest is now being paid to non-traditional machining (NTM) processes, where energy in its direct form is used to remove material from workpiece surface. Compared to conventional machining processes, NTM processes possess almost unlimited capabilities and there is a strong believe that use of NTM processes would go on increasing in diverse range of applications. Presence of a large number of NTM processes along with complex characteristics and capabilities, and lack of experts in NTM process selection domain compel for development of a structured approach for NTM process selection for a given machining application. Past researchers have already attempted to solve NTM process selection problems using various complex mathematical approaches which often require a profound knowledge in mathematics/artificial intelligence from the part of process engineers. In this paper, four NTM process selection problems are solved using an integrated PROMETHEE (preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation) and GAIA (geometrical analysis for interactive aid) method which would act as a visual decision aid to the process engineers. The observed results are quite satisfactory and exactly match with the expected solutions.

In the global competitiveness and growing market environment, “Actual competition is not between firms against firm, than supplier against supplier”. Globally in the fastest market development world gets closer and closer. Consumers prefer fast delivery, economical product, excellent service and high quality product with desired service level. For successful management of this supply chain, supplier considered as the base source for all processes. Therefore, an efficient supplier selection and evaluation process needs to be incorporate. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an extensive state-of-the-art literature review and critique of the studies related to various aspects of supplier selection problem over the past two decades. Research papers appearing in the reputed and leading international journals from 1991 to 2011 are gathered and analyzed. Primary focus is given on more than 200 published and unpublished works. It has been referred extensively to carry out state-of-the-art review for supplier selection problem. Finally, paper provides future perspective based on current research trends available in the published literature.

An organization has to make the right decisions in time depending on demand information to enhance the commercial competitive advantage in a constantly fluctuating business environment. Therefore, estimating the demand quantity for the next period most likely appears to be crucial. Manufacturing companies consider forecasting a crucial process for effectively guiding several activities, and research has devoted particular attention to this issue. The objective of the paper is to propose a new forecasting mechanism which is modeled by integrating Fuzzy Delhi Method (FDM) with Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques to manage the demand with incomplete information. Artificial neural networks has been applied as it is capable to model complex, nonlinear processes without having to assume the form of the relationship between input and output variables. The effectiveness of the proposed approach to the demand forecasting issue is demonstrated for a 20/25 MVA Distribution Transformer from Energypac Engineering Limited, a leading power engineering company of Bangladesh.

With the change of education policy in 1991, more and more technical institutions are being set up in India. Some of these institutions provide quality education, but others are merely concentrating on quantity. These stakeholders are in a state of confusion about decision to select the best institute for their higher educational studies. Although various agencies including print media provide ranking of these institutions every year, but their results are controversial and biased. In this paper, the authors have made an endeavor to find the critical factors for technical institution evaluation from literature survey. A Pareto analysis has also been performed to find the intensity of these critical factors in evaluation. This will not only help the stake holders in taking right decisions but will also help the management of institutions in benchmarking for identifying the most important critical areas to improve the existing system. This will in turn help Indian economy.

Inconel 600 is a super alloy known for its properties like low thermal conductivity and work hard-ening. The work hardening property of this alloy makes it harder and harder during successive passes of the tool during machining. Therefore, machining of this type of material demands inno-vation in tool material, selection of proper combination of parameters and their levels for economical machining. Coated carbide tool inserts are most widely used for machining Inconel alloys. These inserts are coated with special materials by PVD or CVD technique to reduce flank wear, improve surface finish of machined components and increase the material removal rate (MRR). In this work carbide insert coated with nanocomposite coatings like AlTiN and TiAlSiN commercially known as Hyperlox and HSN2 were used and their performance during machining of Inconel 600 was studied. As improper selection of process parameter influences on the quality of products and productivity, it is important to identify the optimum combination of input process parameters. Most of the time the influence of the input process parameters on the output parameters like MRR, surface roughness and flank wear is studied independently. Information obtained through single objective optimization may not be sufficient because industries desire to optimize all the output parameters, simultaneously. Multi-objective optimization is the only solution to satisfy the requirements of industries and genetic algorithm based multi-objective optimization is adopted in this work in order to get the optimum combination of input process parameters to obtain maximum material removal rate, minimum surface roughness and minimum flank wear simultaneously.

We know that Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) is one of the measures of liquidity management. In this paper, we made an attempt to analyse the impact of CCC on the cash management. In this study we selected five companies from Pharmaceutical Sector, including, Alchemist, Lupin, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratory, Cipla and Ranbaxy. In this study, we used the secondary data for analysis and retrieved from Capitaline database for ten years period from 2002 to 2011. Through cash conversion cycle we can easily determine the working capital requirement. Because, it considers the time gap between expenditure for the purchases of raw materials and collection from sales of finished goods prepared with such raw materials, CCC plays an important role in firm’s short term assets and liabilities as well as success of the firm.

Epoxy material being a key in a wide range of applications has become a center of attraction for interdisciplinary research. However, the limitations so far reported in using this material has led to the development of some new pitches such as Polyacetal and Araldite. Polyacetal being currently employed in bushes, wipers, gears, etc. while Araldite composites with a potential of delivering some august properties can be an alternative approach to the former. In this work, a comparative study is carried out on the me-chanical attributes of Polyacetal and Araldite (Epoxy) material. Various ASTM standard specimens casted with these materials are subjected to some exploratory assessments such as Tensile Test, Izod Impact Test, Charpy Impact Test, Three-point Bending Test and Vicker’s Hardness Test in order to determine the respective properties.