Sustainability through disassembly modeling, planning, and leveling: a case study

The increasing environmental and economic pressures have contributed to the practice of recycling and remanufacturing. Product disassembly is a vital strategy of industrial recycling and remanufacturing which retrieves the desired parts and/or subassemblies by separating a product into its constituents. In this context, decision for disassembly gains importance. Disassembly modeling and planning is a critical activity rather than assembly, because the terminal goal is not vitally fixed, but depends on the product usage and market demands for used parts and recycled materials. Disassembly involves more uncertainties in system structures and components rather than in assembly. This article applies the recent methods for modeling and process planning the disassembly to an industrial product, i.e., rotary switch. The disassembly approach has been practically validated in industrial scenario.     

Application of fuzzy analytic network process for agile concept selection in a manufacturing organisation

Twenty-first century manufacturing organisations are capable of satisfying the varied requirements of modern customers called agile manufacturing (AM). AM enables an organisation to produce a variety of products within a short period of time in a cost-effective manner. Few researchers have brought out models for enabling organisations to improve their agility level. Total agile design system (TADS) is a model that is analogous to the technology integrated agile product development cycle. Concept selection is an important phase of TADS which is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. Selection of the best concept from agile perspective gains vital importance. Analytical network process (ANP) is a holistic approach that considers interactions and dependencies of various attributes and alternatives in a hierarchical framework used in MCDM problems. The concepts of fuzzy logic have been integrated with ANP in order to overcome the vagueness and uncertainty associated with opinions of the decision makers. Fuzzy ANP has been used to enable the selection of best concept. The case study has been carried out in an Indian traditional manufacturing organisation. The results of the validation indicate that fuzzy ANP is an effective approach for selecting best concept thereby improving agility of product development process.     

Agility evaluation using the IF–THEN approach

The recent trend in the manufacturing sector is to develop highly customised products to satisfy niche needs of customers. In order to satisfy this requirement, a newer manufacturing technique has been deployed; this is called Agile Manufacturing (AM). AM principles are used to manufacture highly customised products within a shorter period of time. In this article, the IF–THEN rules approach has been used to evaluate the current agile position of the firm. The assessment has been carried out in an Indian modular switches manufacturing company. The assessment revealed that the organisation is fairly agile. Besides computing agility level, the gaps that impede agility have been identified, and proposals for agility improvement have been derived. The identified proposals are subjected to implementation in the case organisation.     

Evaluation of agility in supply chains using multi-grade fuzzy approach

Modern business organisations recognise agility in supply chains to be a vital strategy for survival in a competitive scenario. The assessment of agility in supply chains is quite important as it is an indicator of strategic agile position. There exists a need for evaluating agility in supply chains for the case organisation. This study begins by developing a conceptual model for evaluation. This is followed by gathering single factor assessment vector and weights by experts. Then multi-grade fuzzy approach has been used for the evaluation of agility in the supply chain. The evaluation exercise indicated that the case organisation is agile; but still there exist chances for improving the agility level. Then the weaker areas have been identified and the improvement proposals have been implemented. The implementation result indicated that there is a significant improvement in the agility level of the case organisation.     

A review on composite materials and process parameters optimisation for the fused deposition modelling process

Fused deposition modelling is the most significant technique in additive manufacturing (AM) that refers to the process where successive layers of material are deposited in a computer-controlled environment to create a three-dimensional object. The main limitations of using fused deposition modelling (FDM) process in the industrial applications are the narrow range of available materials and parts fabricated by FDM are used only as demonstration or conceptual parts rather than as functional parts. Recently, researchers have studied many ways in order to increase the range of materials available for the FDM process which resulted in the increase in the scope of FDM in various manufacturing sectors. Most of the research are focussed on the composite materials such as metal matrix composites, ceramic composites, natural fibre-reinforced composites and polymer matrix composites. This article intends to review the research carried out so far in developing samples using different composite materials and optimising their process parameters for FDM in order to improve different mechanical properties and other desired properties of the FDM components.     

Web personalization for user acceptance of technology: An empirical investigation of E-government services

E-Commerce firms have adopted Web Personalization techniques extensively in the form of recommender systems for influencing user behavior for customer retention. Although there are numerous studies in this area, academic research addressing the role of Web Personalization in user acceptance of technology is very scant. Further, owing to the potential of recommender systems to attract and retain customers, most studies in web personalization have been done in E-Commerce setting. In this research, the ‘Consumer Acceptance and Use of Information Technology’ theory proposed in previous research has been extended to include web personalization as a moderator and has been tested in an E-Government context. Data collection involved conducting a laboratory experiment with the treatment group receiving personalized web forms for requesting an E-Government service. Our analyses show that personalizing the Web by self-reference and content relevance has a significant moderator role in influencing the relationship between determinants of intention to use and behavioral intention in certain cases.     

Environmental impact minimisation in an automotive component using alternative materials and manufacturing processes

Sustainable development is seeking to meet the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations. The need to integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of manufacturing, in order to address the social, economic, cultural and environmental problems is felt widely among the industrialized society. Selecting or identifying a suitable material or manufacturing processes is one way of achieving sustainability of a product by reducing its end of life impacts to a possible extent. But technological changes are unpredictable and so predicting future possible environmental impacts are highly difficult. This paper tries to explore the potential of environmental impact minimisation using alternative materials and alternative manufacturing processes. A case study has been carried out to in this regard in an Indian automotive component manufacturing organization. The results indicate that change in material has higher impact over the manufacturing process in reducing the environmental impact.     

Leanness evaluation using IF–THEN rules

Lean manufacturing is a manufacturing system aimed at waste elimination thereby streamlining the process. Leanness is the performance measure of lean manufacturing. The measurement of leanness necessitates fuzzy logic, due of the existence of impreciseness and vagueness. The calculation of leanness using fuzzy logic manually is a time consuming and highly repetitive job. To overcome this, fuzzy logic-based inference method has been attempted in this research study. A conceptual model consisting of three levels namely enabler, criterion, and attributes has been developed. Then the linguistic variables are assigned and the membership functions are defined. Leanness level has been computed using IF–THEN rules based interface method. This is followed by gap analysis to identify the weaker criteria. Then suitable proposals have been derived to overcome these obstacles towards leanness improvement of the organization.     

Sustainable concept selection using ELECTRE

In the present scenario, industries are implementing sustainability concepts because of the consumers’ awareness regarding the eco-friendly products and services and in need to arrive at a concept that will not be economically beneficial alone but it should be sustainable. While implementing, mostly the sustainability context is discussed from two perspectives such as environmental, economic, and social or in material, product and process orientation in manufacturing units. Since sustainable development is a multi-dimensional concept, Multi Criterion Decision Making (MCDM) method can be used to find out the best alternative among the given alternatives. In this context, one of the MCDM method namely ELECTRE II (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalite) is used to find out the best orientation among the three orientations such as material, product, and process.     

Application of interpretive structural modelling for analysing the factors influencing integrated lean sustainable system

The modern manufacturing systems recognize the importance of adopting lean and sustainable manufacturing principles. Especially, Indian automotive component manufacturing organizations are interested in adopting the integrated lean sustainable manufacturing system. An appropriate methodology is required for enabling the organizations to identify the dominant factors. In this context, this article presents the interpretive structural modelling approach for identifying the mutual relationship among factors influencing the integrated lean sustainable manufacturing system. From the literature study and survey conducted among Indian automotive component manufacturing organizations, 25 influencing factors have been identified. Based on the study, top-management commitment in adopting integrated lean sustainable manufacturing and environmental knowledge occupy the bottom level of model which shows that it has more driving power. Efforts are being taken to implement the factors in the surveyed organizations.