Abstract: Many organisations are nowadays interested to adopt
lean manufacturing strategy that would enable them to compete in
this competitive globalisation market. In this respect, it is necessary
to assess the implementation of lean manufacturing in different
organisations so that the important best practices can be identified.
This paper describes the development of key areas which will be
used to assess the adoption and implementation of lean
manufacturing practices. There are some key areas developed to
evaluate and reduce the most optimal projects so as to enhance their
production efficiency and increase the purpose of the economic
benefits of the manufacturing unit.
Lean manufacturing is becoming lean enterprise by treating its
customers and suppliers as partners. This gives the extra edge in
today-s cost and time competitive markets. The organisation is
becoming strong in all the conventional competition points. They are
Price, Quality and Delivery. Lean enterprise owners can deliver high
quality products quickly, with low price.
Abstract: Silicon is a beneficial element for plant growth. It
helps plants to overcome multiple stresses, alleviates metal toxicity
and improves nutrient imbalance. Field experiment was conducted as
split-split plot arranged in a randomized complete block design with
four replications. Irrigation system include continues flooding and
deficit as main plots and nitrogen rates N0, N46, N92, and N138 kg/ha
as sub plots and silicon rates Si0 & Si500 kg/ha as sub-subplots.
Results indicate that grain yield had not significant difference
between irrigation systems. Flooding irrigation had higher biological
yield than deficit irrigation whereas, no significant difference in grain
and straw yield. Nitrogen application increased grain, biological and
straw yield. Silicon application increased grain, biological and straw
yield but, decreased harvest index. Flooding irrigation had higher
number of total tillers / hill than deficit irrigation, but deficit
irrigation had higher number of fertile tillers / hill than flooding
irrigation. Silicon increased number of filled spikelet and decreased
blank spikelet. With high nitrogen application decreased 1000-grain
weight. It can be concluded that if the nitrogen application was high
and water supplied was available we could have silicon application
until increase grain yield.
Abstract: In the present study, the effects of ultrasound as
emerging technology were investigated on germination stimulation,
amount of alpha-amylase activity on dry barley seeds before steeping
stage of malting process. All experiments were carried out at 20 KHz
on the ultrasonic generator in 3 different ultrasonic intensities (20, 60
and 100% setting from total power of device) and time (5, 10 and 15
min) at constant temperature (30C). For determining the effects of
these parameters on enzyme the Fuwa method assay based on the
decreased staining value of blue starch–iodine complexes employed
for measurement an activity. The results of these assays were
analyzed by Qualitek4 software using the Taguchi statistical method
to evaluate the factor-s effects on enzyme activity. It has been found
that when malting barley is irradiated with an ultrasonic power, a
stimulating effect occurs as to the enzyme activity.
Abstract: The choice of finite element to use in order to predict
nonlinear static or dynamic response of complex structures becomes
an important factor. Then, the main goal of this research work is to
focus a study on the effect of the in-plane rotational degrees of
freedom in linear and geometrically non linear static and dynamic
analysis of thin shell structures by flat shell finite elements. In this
purpose: First, simple triangular and quadrilateral flat shell finite
elements are implemented in an incremental formulation based on the
updated lagrangian corotational description for geometrically
nonlinear analysis. The triangular element is a combination of DKT
and CST elements, while the quadrilateral is a combination of DKQ
and the bilinear quadrilateral membrane element. In both elements,
the sixth degree of freedom is handled via introducing fictitious
stiffness. Secondly, in the same code, the sixth degrees of freedom in
these elements is handled differently where the in-plane rotational
d.o.f is considered as an effective d.o.f in the in-plane filed
interpolation. Our goal is to compare resulting shell elements. Third,
the analysis is enlarged to dynamic linear analysis by direct
integration using Newmark-s implicit method. Finally, the linear
dynamic analysis is extended to geometrically nonlinear dynamic
analysis where Newmark-s method is used to integrate equations of
motion and the Newton-Raphson method is employed for iterating
within each time step increment until equilibrium is achieved. The
obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the
interpolation of the in-plane rotational d.o.f. and present deficiencies
of using fictitious stiffness in dynamic linear and nonlinear analysis.
Abstract: In this paper, the typical exponential method, diamond difference and modified time discrete scheme is researched for self adaptive time step. The second-order time evolution scheme is applied to time-dependent spherical neutron transport equation by discrete ordinates method. The numerical results show that second-order time evolution scheme associated exponential method has some good properties. The time differential curve about neutron current is more smooth than that of exponential method and diamond difference and modified time discrete scheme.
Abstract: In this study, a low temperature sensor highly selective to CO in presence of methane is fabricated by using 4 nm SnO2 quantum dots (QDs) prepared by sonication assisted precipitation. SnCl4 aqueous solution was precipitated by ammonia under sonication, which continued for 2 h. A part of the sample was then dried and calcined at 400°C for 1.5 h and characterized by XRD and BET. The average particle size and the specific surface area of the SnO2 QDs as well as their sensing properties were compared with the SnO2 nano-particles which were prepared by conventional sol-gel method. The BET surface area of sonochemically as-prepared product and the one calcined at 400°C after 1.5 hr are 257 m2/gr and 212 m2/gr respectively while the specific surface area for SnO2 nanoparticles prepared by conventional sol-gel method is about 80m2/gr. XRD spectra revealed pure crystalline phase of SnO2 is formed for both as-prepared and calcined samples of SnO2 QDs. However, for the sample prepared by sol-gel method and calcined at 400°C SnO crystals are detected along with those of SnO2. Quantum dots of SnO2 show exceedingly high sensitivity to CO with different concentrations of 100, 300 and 1000 ppm in whole range of temperature (25- 350°C). At 50°C a sensitivity of 27 was obtained for 1000 ppm CO, which increases to a maximum of 147 when the temperature rises to 225°C and then drops off while the maximum sensitivity for the SnO2 sample prepared by the sol-gel method was obtained at 300°C with the amount of 47.2. At the same time no sensitivity to methane is observed in whole range of temperatures for SnO2 QDs. The response and recovery times of the sensor sharply decreases with temperature, while the high selectivity to CO does not deteriorate.
Abstract: Recent years, adaptive pushover methods have been
developed for seismic analysis of structures. Herein, the accuracy of
the displacement-based adaptive pushover (DAP) method, which is
introduced by Antoniou and Pinho [2004], is evaluated for Irregular
buildings. The results are compared to the force-based procedure.
Both concrete and steel frame structures, asymmetric in plan and
elevation are analyzed and also torsional effects are taking into the
account. These analyses are performed using both near fault and far
fault records. In order to verify the results, the Incremental Dynamic
Analysis (IDA) is performed.
Abstract: The great challenge of the agricultural sector is to
produce more crop from less water, which can be achieved by
increasing crop water productivity. The modernization of the
irrigation systems offers a number of possibilities to expand the
economic productivity of water and improve the virtual water status.
The objective of the present study is to assess the global water
productivity (GWP) within the major irrigation command areas of
I.R. Iran. For this purpose, fourteen irrigation command areas where
located in different areas of Iran were selected. In order to calculate
the global water productivity of irrigation command areas, all data on
the delivered water to cropping pattern, cultivated area, crops water
requirement, and yield production rate during 2002-2006 were
gathered. In each of the command areas it seems that the cultivated
crops have a higher amount of virtual water and thus can be replaced
by crops with less virtual water. This is merely suggested due to crop
water consumption and at the time of replacing crops, economic
value as well as cultural and political factors must be considered. The
results indicated that the lowest GWP belongs to Mahyar and
Borkhar irrigation areas, 0.24 kg m-3, and the highest is that of the
Dez irrigation area, 0.81 kg m-3. The findings demonstrated that
water management in the two irrigation areas is just efficient. The
difference in the GWP of irrigation areas is due to variations in the
cropping pattern, amount of crop productions, in addition to the
effective factors in the water use efficiency in the irrigation areas.
Abstract: Transmission network expansion planning (TNEP) is an important component of power system planning that its task is to minimize the network construction and operational cost while satisfying the demand increasing, imposed technical and economic conditions. Up till now, various methods have been presented to solve the static transmission network expansion planning (STNEP) problem. But in all of these methods, the lines adequacy rate has not been studied after the planning horizon, i.e. when the expanded network misses its adequacy and needs to be expanded again. In this paper, in order to take transmission lines condition after expansion in to account from the line loading view point, the adequacy of transmission network is considered for solution of STNEP problem. To obtain optimal network arrangement, a decimal codification genetic algorithm (DCGA) is being used for minimizing the network construction and operational cost. The effectiveness of the proposed idea is tested on the Garver's six-bus network. The results evaluation reveals that the annual worth of network adequacy has a considerable effect on the network arrangement. In addition, the obtained network, based on the DCGA, has lower investment cost and higher adequacy rate. Thus, the network satisfies the requirements of delivering electric power more safely and reliably to load centers.
Abstract: IETF RFC 2002 originally introduced the wireless
Mobile-IP protocol to support portable IP addresses for mobile
devices that often change their network access points to the Internet.
The inefficiency of this protocol mainly within the handoff
management produces large end-to-end packet delays, during
registration process, and further degrades the system efficiency due to
packet losses between subnets. The criterion to initiate a simple and
fast full-duplex connection between the home agent and foreign
agent, to reduce the roaming duration, is a very important issue to be
considered by a work in this paper. State-transition Petri-Nets of the
modeling scenario-based CIA: communication inter-agents procedure
as an extension to the basic Mobile-IP registration process was
designed and manipulated. The heuristic of configuration file during
practical Setup session for registration parameters, on Cisco platform
Router-1760 using IOS 12.3 (15)T is created. Finally, stand-alone
performance simulations results from Simulink Matlab, within each
subnet and also between subnets, are illustrated for reporting better
end-to-end packet delays. Results verified the effectiveness of our
Mathcad analytical manipulation and experimental implementation. It
showed lower values of end-to-end packet delay for Mobile-IP using
CIA procedure. Furthermore, it reported packets flow between
subnets to improve packet losses between subnets.
Abstract: In this paper we used data mining techniques to
identify outlier patients who are using large amount of drugs over a
long period of time. Any healthcare or health insurance system
should deal with the quantities of drugs utilized by chronic diseases
patients. In Kingdom of Bahrain, about 20% of health budget is spent
on medications. For the managers of healthcare systems, there is no
enough information about the ways of drug utilization by chronic
diseases patients, is there any misuse or is there outliers patients. In
this work, which has been done in cooperation with information
department in the Bahrain Defence Force hospital; we select the data
for Cardiac patients in the period starting from 1/1/2008 to
December 31/12/2008 to be the data for the model in this paper. We
used three techniques for finding the drug utilization for cardiac
patients. First we applied a clustering technique, followed by
measuring of clustering validity, and finally we applied a decision
tree as classification algorithm. The clustering results is divided into
three clusters according to the drug utilization, for 1603 patients, who
received 15,806 prescriptions during this period can be partitioned
into three groups, where 23 patients (2.59%) who received 1316
prescriptions (8.32%) are classified to be outliers. The classification
algorithm shows that the use of average drug utilization and the age,
and the gender of the patient can be considered to be the main
predictive factors in the induced model.
Abstract: The incidence of oral cancer in Taiwan increased year
by year. It replaced the nasopharyngeal as the top incurrence among
head and neck cancers since 1994. Early examination and earlier
identification for earlier treatment is the most effective medical
treatment for these cancers. Although the government fully subsidized
the expenses with tremendous promotion program for oral cancer
screening, the citizen-s participation remained low. Purpose of this
study is to understand the factors affecting the citizens- behavior
intensions of taking an oral cancer screening. Based on the Theory of
Planned Behavior, this study adopted four distinctive variables in
explaining the captioned behavior intentions.700 questionnaires were
dispatched with 500 valid responses or 71.4% returned by the citizens
with an age 30 or above from the eastern counties of Taiwan. Test
results has shown that attitude toward, subjective norms of, and
perceived behavioral control over the oral cancer screening varied
from some demographic factors to another. The study proofed that
attitude toward, subjective norms of, and perceived behavioral control
over the oral cancer screening had positive impacts on the
corresponding behavior intention. The test concluded that the theory
of planned behavior was appropriate as a theoretical framework in
explaining the influencing factors of intentions of taking oral cancer
screening. This study suggested the healthcare professional should
provide high accessibility of screening services other than just
delivering knowledge on oral cancer to promote the citizens-
intentions of taking the captioned screening. This research also
provided a practical implication to the healthcare professionals when
formulating and implementing promotion instruments for lifting the
screening rate of oral cancer.
Abstract: Kombucha Tea Ferment (KT), was given to male
albino rats, (1ml/Kg of body weight), via gavages, during 2 weeks
before intraperitoneal administration of 3.5 mg/Kg body weight
CdCl2 and/or whole body γ-irradiation with 4Gy, and during 4 weeks
after each treatment. Hepatic and nephritic pathological changes
included significant increases of serum alanine transaminase (ALT),
aspartate transaminase (AST), and alkaline phosphatase (ALP)
activities, and creatinine and urea contents with significant decrease
in serum total antioxidant capacity (TAC). Increase in oxidative
stress markers in liver and kidney tissues expressed by significant
increase in malondialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide (NO) contents
associated to significant depletion in superoxide dismutase (SOD)
and catalase (CAT) activities, and reduced glutathione (GSH) content
were recorded. KT administration results in recovery of all the
pathological changes. It could be concluded that KT might protect
liver and kidney from oxidative damage induced by exposure to
cadmium and/ or γ-irradiation.
Abstract: Computer networks are essential part in computerbased
information systems. The performance of these networks has a
great influence on the whole information system. Measuring the
usability criteria and customers satisfaction on small computer
network is very important. In this article, an effective approach for
measuring the usability of business network in an information system
is introduced. The usability process for networking provides us with a
flexible and a cost-effective way to assess the usability of a network
and its products. In addition, the proposed approach can be used to
certify network product usability late in the development cycle.
Furthermore, it can be used to help in developing usable interfaces
very early in the cycle and to give a way to measure, track, and
improve usability. Moreover, a new approach for fast information
processing over computer networks is presented. The entire data are
collected together in a long vector and then tested as a one input
pattern. Proposed fast time delay neural networks (FTDNNs) use
cross correlation in the frequency domain between the tested data and
the input weights of neural networks. It is proved mathematically and
practically that the number of computation steps required for the
presented time delay neural networks is less than that needed by
conventional time delay neural networks (CTDNNs). Simulation
results using MATLAB confirm the theoretical computations.
Abstract: Construction cost in India is increasing at around 50
per cent over the average inflation levels. It have registered increase
of up to 15 per cent every year, primarily due to cost of basic
building materials such as steel, cement, bricks, timber and other
inputs as well as cost of labour. As a result, the cost of construction
using conventional building materials and construction is becoming
beyond the affordable limits particularly for low-income groups of
population as well as a large cross section of the middle - income
groups. Therefore, there is a need to adopt cost-effective construction
methods either by up-gradation of traditional technologies using local
resources or applying modern construction materials and techniques
with efficient inputs leading to economic solutions. This has become
the most relevant aspect in the context of the large volume of housing
to be constructed in both rural and urban areas and the consideration
of limitations in the availability of resources such as building
materials and finance. This paper makes an overview of the housing
status in India and adoption of appropriate and cost effective
technologies in the country.
Abstract: This paper evaluates the dividend payments for general
claim size distributions in the presence of a dividend barrier. The
surplus of a company is modeled using the classical risk process
perturbed by diffusion, and in addition, it is assumed to accrue interest
at a constant rate. After presenting the integro-differential equation
with initial conditions that dividend payments satisfies, the paper
derives a useful expression of the dividend payments by employing
the theory of Volterra equation. Furthermore, the optimal value of
dividend barrier is found. Finally, numerical examples illustrate the
optimality of optimal dividend barrier and the effects of parameters
on dividend payments.
Abstract: Information Retrieval has the objective of studying
models and the realization of systems allowing a user to find the
relevant documents adapted to his need of information. The
information search is a problem which remains difficult because the
difficulty in the representing and to treat the natural languages such
as polysemia. Intentional Structures promise to be a new paradigm to
extend the existing documents structures and to enhance the different
phases of documents process such as creation, editing, search and
retrieval. The intention recognition of the author-s of texts can reduce
the largeness of this problem. In this article, we present intentions
recognition system is based on a semi-automatic method of
extraction the intentional information starting from a corpus of text.
This system is also able to update the ontology of intentions for the
enrichment of the knowledge base containing all possible intentions
of a domain. This approach uses the construction of a semi-formal
ontology which considered as the conceptualization of the intentional
information contained in a text. An experiments on scientific
publications in the field of computer science was considered to
validate this approach.
Abstract: In this study, the effects of biogas fuels on the performance of an annular micro gas turbine (MGT) were assessed experimentally and numerically. In the experiments, the proposed MGT system was operated successfully under each test condition; minimum composition to the fuel with the biogas was roughly 50% CH4 with 50% CO2. The power output was around 170W at 85,000 RPM as 90% CH4 with 10% CO2 was used and 70W at 65,000 RPM as 70% CH4 with 30% CO2 was used. When a critical limit of 60% CH4 was reached, the power output was extremely low. Furthermore, the theoretical Brayton cycle efficiency and electric efficiency of the MGT were calculated as 23% and 10%, respectively. Following the experiments, the measured data helped us identify the parameters of dynamic model in numerical simulation. Additionally, a numerical analysis of re-designed combustion chamber showed that the performance of MGT could be improved by raising the temperature at turbine inlet. This study presents a novel distributed power supply system that can utilize renewable biogas. The completed micro biogas power supply system is small, low cost, easy to maintain and suited to household use.
Abstract: The field of biomedical materials plays an imperative
requisite and a critical role in manufacturing a variety of biological
artificial replacements in a modern world. Recently, titanium (Ti)
materials are being used as biomaterials because of their superior
corrosion resistance and tremendous specific strength, free- allergic
problems and the greatest biocompatibility compared to other
competing biomaterials such as stainless steel, Co-Cr alloys,
ceramics, polymers, and composite materials. However, regardless of
these excellent performance properties, Implantable Ti materials have
poor shear strength and wear resistance which limited their
applications as biomaterials. Even though the wear properties of Ti
alloys has revealed some improvements, the crucial effectiveness of
biomedical Ti alloys as wear components requires a comprehensive
deep understanding of the wear reasons, mechanisms, and techniques
that can be used to improve wear behavior. This review examines
current information on the effect of thermal and thermomechanical
processing of implantable Ti materials on the long-term prosthetic
requirement which related with wear behavior. This paper focuses
mainly on the evolution, evaluation and development of effective
microstructural features that can improve wear properties of bio
grade Ti materials using thermal and thermomechanical treatments.
Abstract: A prototype model of an emulsion separator was
designed and manufactured. Generally, it is a cylinder filled with
different fractal modules. The emulsion was fed into the reactor by a
peristaltic pump through an inlet placed at the boundary between the
two phases. For hydrodynamic design and sizing of the reactor the
assumptions of the theory of filtration were used and methods to
describe the separation process were developed. Based on this
methodology and using numerical methods and software of Autodesk
the process is simulated in different operating modes. The basic
hydrodynamic characteristics - speed and performance for different
types of fractal systems and decisions to optimize the design of the
reactor were also defined.