In these studies, we had observed polyaniline (PANI) supported p-toluene sulfonic acid (TsOH) and FeCl3 (PANI- TsOH, PANI-FeCl3) as excellent reusable solid acid catalysts for the synthesis of 1, 8-dioxo-octahydroxanthene derivatives 4(a-g) under solvent-free grinding method at mild conditions. Additionally, in the same optimized condition ferric nitrate nonahydrate also acted as (non-reusable) very reactive inexpensive Lewis acid catalyst. The ferric nitrate nonahydrate lost its activity in the form of Clayfen (Clay-supported ferric nitrate) catalyst.

A series of some new (E)-2-(arylbenzylidene)-2-((4-methoxyphenyl)amino)acetohydrazides 4(a-j) have been conveniently synthesized by intermolecular oxidative cyclization of (E)-2-(arylbenzylidene)-2-[(4-methoxyphenyl)amino]acetohydrazides promoted by iodobenzene diacetate as an oxidant. The structures of the synthesized compounds have been confirmed by 1H NMR, IR, MS and elemental analysis. All the synthesized compounds were tested for their inhibitory action against clinically isolated strains i.e., Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Xanthomonas campestris, Escherichia coli and Fusarium oxysporum. Compounds 4f (21-28 mm, 73.8 %), 4i (20-24 mm, 72.4 %) and 4j (21-27 mm, 71.6 %) demonstrated good antimicrobial activity against all the tested bacterial and fungal strains.

This paper derives a deterministic inventory model for deteriorating items with inventory dependent demand rate. This study develops an order level inventory model with single warehouse where shortages are allowed and it is completely backlogged. The planning horizon is finite. This paper shows that there exists a unique optimal cycle time to minimize the total inventory cost per cycle. Truncated Taylor’s series expansion is used for finding closed form optimal cycle time, optimal time to finish positive inventory and optimal total inventory cost per cycle. The numerical example is given to validate the proposed model. The sensitivity analysis of the solution with the changes of the values of parameters associated with the model has also been discussed.

The improvement in manufacturing process is never ending effort, which is being derived by the culture of the organization. Therefore, an attitude of perfection, innovation and devotion is an essential part for the process improvement of an organization. Recently, innovations in the field of engineering help an entrepreneur sell the products through competitive environment. Moreover, the timely delivery of goods and cost effective product is the yardstick, which contributes to the performance index. These improvements resulted from continued performance enhancement efforts, helps in producing right quality in the right times which means providing stability to the organization performance. The role of lean thinking and supply chain characteristics is to create an effective marked on the organizational performance including bonding of all the participants where-so-ever possible. The purpose of this work is to examine the challenges, which integrate the Lean Principles to Supply Chain Characteristics for the real world situation to achieve better utilization of resources, timely delivery to the customer, and deletion of non-value added items including the control on all type of wastages as linked with supply chain systems.

The evaluation of the most appropriate flexibility in the manufacturing sector is one of the strategic issues that may affect the Flexibile Manufacturing System (FMS). In this paper, a Multiple Attribute Decision Making Method (MADM) methodology is structured to resolve this problem. The two decision making methods, which are Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Weighted Product Method (WPM), are integrated with Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) in order to get the best use of information available. The aim of using AHP is to give the weights of the attributes and these weights are used in SAW & WPM method for ranking of flexibility in FMS. Furthermore, the method uses fuzzy logic to change the qualitative attributes into the quantitative attributes. 15 factors are taken to evaluation of 15 flexibility. In this report, we concluded that Product Flexibility has the most impact in 15 flexibilities and Programme Flexibility has the least impact in these 15 flexibilities by this methodology.

In this paper, we have modeled a decision making problem of a tea industry as a multi-objective optimization problem in interval environment. The goal of this problem is to maximize the overall profit as well as to minimize the total production cost subject to the given resource constraints depending on budget, storage space and allotted processing times in different machines. For this purpose, the problem has been formulated as a multi-objective integer linear programming problem with interval objectives. To solve the problem, we have proposed extended elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (ENSGA-II) for integer variables with interval fitness, crowded tournament selection, intermediate crossover, one neighborhood mutation and elitism. To develop this algorithm, we have proposed modified non-dominated sorting and crowding distance based on interval mathematics and interval order relations. Finally, to test the performance of the proposed algorithm, a numerical example has been solved.

There are many opportunities and challenges in the area of Indian technical education due to liberalization and globalization of economy. One of these challenges is how to assess the performance of technical institutions based on multiple criteria. The purpose of this paper is to describe and illustrate an application of a structured approach to determine relative performance and ranking of seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) under multi-criteria environment. To evaluate the alternatives in respect to stakeholders’ preference we suggest a new methodology consisting of fuzzy AHP, DEA and TOPSIS. Fuzzy AHP technique is used to determine the weights of criteria and some linguistic terms are applied to assess performance under each criterion, then in order to determine the value of linguistic terms we use the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. Finally TOPSIS method is used to aggregate performance scores under different criteria into an overall performance score for each institution and ranking the institution according to their overall performance score. The proposed fuzzy AHP–DEA–TOPSIS methodology is applicable to any multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem due to its generic nature.

Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) and Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (FSSP) are strong NP-complete combinatorial optimization problems among class of typical production scheduling problems. An improved Sheep Flock Heredity Algorithm (ISFHA) is proposed in this paper to find a schedule of operations that can minimize makespan. In ISFHA, the pairwise mutation operation is replaced by a single point mutation process with a probabilistic property which guarantees the feasibility of the solutions in the local search domain. A Robust-Replace (R-R) heuristic is introduced in place of chromosomal crossover to enhance the global search and to improve the convergence. The R-R heuristic is found to enhance the exploring potential of the algorithm and enrich the diversity of neighborhoods. Experimental results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, whose optimization performance is markedly superior to that of genetic algorithms and is comparable to the best results reported in the literature.

Supplier evaluation and selection has been a vital issue of strategic importance for long time. Different multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches have been proposed by the researchers in past, to solve the supplier evaluation and selection problem. In this paper, we present a review of various MCDM methodologies reported in the literature for solving the supplier evaluation and selection process. The review is solely based on sixty-eight research articles, including eight review articles in the academic literature from 2000 to 2011. We try to find out the most prevalent approach in the articles and thereby present the future scope of arriving at an optimal solution to the problem, based on the specifications, the strategies and the requirements of the buyers. The study presents that with the change in processes and the requirements, how the approach of the manufacturing industry has shifted from striving for operational effectiveness to the strategic partnership in the dyadic relationship.

In the current global economic scenario, inflation plays a vital role in deciding optimal pricing of goods in any business entity. This paper develops a two-echelon (manufacturer-buyer) supply chain model taking into account inflation and time value of money. The present value of the total cost of the supply chain is derived when the manufacturer produces a number of lots, the sum of which is equal to the buyer’s total demand over a finite time horizon and the manufacturer’s each production lot is delivered to the buyer in n shipments. The optimal solution of the model is obtained for a numerical example after some adjustments (required to exhibit feasibility) in the derived solution. Sensitivity analysis is also carried out in order to examine the effects of changes in model-parameters on the optimal solution.