Six-Sigma approach is a systematic and scientific operations management methodology aimed at achieving major enhancements in production process through the elimination of waste. In this case, a casting unit manufacturing cylinder blocks has been selected which was experiencing a rejection rate as high as 30% due to formation of blowholes, other than the surface. The main objective of this paper is to identify various causes of occurrence of blow-holes and recommend corresponding remedies to counter these defects by systematic imple-mentation of DMAIC cycle. Both preventive and corrective actions have been recommended to reduce the blowholes and overall improvement is validated through two-proportion test. Results of investigation demonstrated the net significant reduction of blowholes defect from 28,111 to 9,708 parts per million, which results in the net annual savings of INR 12,56,640.

Measuring actual project progress and comparing it with the planned time schedule is essential in controlling of a project. The outcome of the latter follows the s-curve diagram, which compares actual progress with the planned amount and finally analyzing any gap between them to draw directions for project scheduling. However, final duration of the project cannot be either estimated or predicted through conventional methods. The new method, using Rules of kinematics, can calculate the final duration of the project. This novel approach is successfully implemented on a construction project. The first objective in new method is forecasting final duration of the project, finding equation path and draw a new s-curve diagram for actual status during the execution process. The second objective is to evaluate schedule performance of the project and report the status of the project at each period which is a useful tool for managers.

The electricity generation policy is a strategic policy that drives development in a community. Energy policies are often analyzed with the aim of generating a reliable and affordable electricity for a community. There is a high probability of achieving this aim when energy policy is combined with a community social, technical, economic and environmental needs. This paper determines a hybrid renewable energy source (HRESs) for a rural community using technical, economic, and techno-economic criteria. The selection process combines Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) as a solution method. This approach applicability was tested using six HRESs under economic and technical criteria. Ten technical and nine economic criteria were simulated for the HRESs using HOMER. The results from the HOMER software show that A5(PV/wind/battery) and A6 (PV/battery) had a renewable fraction of 1. The results obtained from the CRITIC method showed that the most important technical and economic criteria were diesel generator and total fuel cost, respectively. From an economic perspective, the best HRES for the case study was A4 (diesel/batteries), while A3 (wind/diesel generator/batteries) was the best HRES from a technical and techno-economic perspectives.

Risk management in construction industry in several cases is not only incomplete regarding the unification of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) hazards, but it is also incomplete in not having a systematic and innovative method to assess the impacts of these risks on the objectives of a project. An integrated hybrid Fuzzy Inference System-Latin Hypercube Simulation for the evaluation of OHS risks in construction projects is presented in this paper. Prioritization of safety risks systematically without human interference with fuzzy inference system gives the appropriate response to the identified risks. An advanced Monte Carlo simulation is also used for the evaluation of quantitative objectives of a project. This approach allows us to get away from discrimination and simulate the risks with high impacts but with low probabilities. In order to measure the relationship between the occurrences of each of the risks impacts on project objectives, the sensitivity analysis based on Pearson correlation coefficient is used to determine the usefulness of the proposed integrated hybrid method.

Due to the importance and complexity of the portfolio management issue, over 100 different techniques have already been presented. In general, the final result of these tools is to create a prioritized list of the projects that must be selected for allocating resources. The use of financial strategies may be misleading in some cases, and it is necessary to combine these methods with other methods such as strategic approaches in order to guarantee a balanced portfolio toward the organizational strategies. On the other, categorizing projects into different baskets allows the organizations to select, evaluate and prioritize the projects in a subset using a set of similar criteria and techniques. In this article, by choosing agriculture sector as a case study, an attempt has been made to study the evaluation, ranking and management of projects with investment classifying strategy of the projects using Delphi, TOPSIS and AHP methods. The results reveal that in similar cases we can use the presented model by determining the type of activity and investment and localization of the indexes.

Construction projects are always problematic and difficult to manage in certain stages. Management in construction industry has been characterized as being weak, insufficient, nebulous, backward and slow to react against changing conditions. This study aims to identify risk and cost managed in the change management of the construction projects. Quantitative study is organized and questionnaire as an instrument is used to collect the information from the construction experts in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Random sampling techniques is used to collect the data, 105 questionnaires are distributed and 90 ones are returned. The correlation analysis shows significant relationship between cost, risk and change management. The reliability test indicates satisfactory result to continue the questionnaire where Cronbach coefficient alpha value exceeds the level of 0.70. The study finds that design changes, client and contractor related changes are mostly occurred in change management of construction projects. Tendering on the basis of an incomplete design, which then changes during the course of the construction has been found as the key reason of the changes. Through a paper based exercise, site memorandums (SM), quoted rates (QR), variation orders (VO) and monthly payment certificates (MPC) are the activities managed by the engineers. Proper planning is the most leading change management in the risk management. Implementation of risk man-agement was found the applied risk management in practice to hindrances. Since this is very vast debated subject, the study has recommended further investigation to include consultant firms for better understanding of the design changes leading to the cost and risk associated.

In project management, a schedule is considered as a list a project's milestones, activities, and deliverables, normally with some start and finish time schedule, which are estimated by some information incorporated in the project schedule including resource allocation, budget, task duration, and linkages of dependencies and scheduled events. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the studies associated with project scheduling. The study uses Scopus database as a primary search engine and covers 3370 records over the period 1963-2019. The records are statistically analyzed and categorized in terms of different criteria. Based on the survey, "decision support systems" is the keyword which has carried the highest densities followed by heuristics methods. Among the most cited articles, papers published by researchers in Germany have received the highest citations (9084), followed by United States (7058) and Belgium with 4853 citations.

In order to manage a project seamlessly, there is a need to establish effective communication be-tween different departments and identify the risks in the project, determine the affected or influ-encing stakeholders, provide timely resources and logistics, and manage the available resources to make a framework for project implementation. In order to successfully complete the project it is also necessary to focus on approved costs, project completion time and quality within the specified range. Project management is the coordination among different parts of the project to achieve the main goals of the project and the stakeholders’ expectations. To achieve this, there are several standards and one of the most recognized standards is the Project Management Knowledge Facility (PMBOK), which has come with the assistance of Project Managers for professional, targeted and comprehensive management. PMBOK is not just a guideline and a methodology for project management. Building Information Modeling (BIM), a project man-agement methodology has been adopted in recent years to design a project integrated as a 3-D information model, which adds all project information in the various phases of the project to a 3-D information model. The purpose of this research is to gather some date from experts using some questionnaires in the area of project management to build an information modeling. The study determines that each of the basic BIM capabilities had positive effects on different domains of PMBOK knowledge. Moreover, using SAW analysis, the study suggests that BIM had the greatest impact on project integration management, and finally, the BIM general process model is introduced to implement each of the areas of knowledge.

The real-time scheduling of automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) in flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is observed to be highly critical and complex due to the dynamic variations of production requirements such as an imbalance of AGVs loading, the high travel time of AGVs, variation in jobs, and AGV routes to name a few. The output from FMS considerably depends on the effi-cient scheduling of AGVs in the FMS. The multi-objective scheduling decisions for AGVs by nature inspired algorithms yield a considerable reduction throughput time in the FMS. In this paper, investigations are carried out for the multi-objective scheduling of AGVs to simultaneously balance the workload of AGVs and to minimize the travel time of AGVs in the FMS. The multi-objective scheduling is carried out by the application of nature-inspired grey wolf optimization algorithm (GWO) to yield a balanced workload for AGVs and also to minimize the travel time of AGVs simultaneously in the FMS. The output yield of the GWO algorithm is compared with the results of benchmark problems from the literature. The resulting yield of the proposed algorithm for the multi-objective scheduling of AGVs is observed to outperform the existing algorithms for scheduling of AGVs.

This paper presents a review of human resource planning methods, related techniques, and their effects on cellular manufacturing systems (CMS). In-depth analysis has been conducted through a review of 43 dominant research papers available in the literature. The advantages, limitations, and drawbacks of material transferring methods have been discussed as well. The domains of the examined studies include some of the important problems in staff planning, such as worker assigning, hiring and firing, optimum number of workers, skilled workers, cross-functional experts, worker satisfaction and outsourcing. The results of this study can fill research gaps and clarify many related questions in CMS problems.