Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 766-767

Abstract: In Case Industry motorcycles models Head lamp casing is made up of Aluminium and it is manufactured by gravity pressure die casting (GDC) process. The rejections rate and cycle time are very high. These results in frequent line stoppage due to the shortage of Head lamp casing. Hence we have decided to proceed with some other process for the manufacturing of head lamp casing, since the existing GDC process has some limitations it cannot be improved further. To move with other process, we have studied sheet metal, in which our head lamp casing design is so complicated and process would be more tedious. Moreover aesthetics look of the head lamp casing will be affected. So we progressed with other die casting process. We have studied pressure die casting (PDC) process first, but in PDC, head lamp casing cannot be manufactured two halves, due to the size of our head lamp casing. Hence we proceeded with low pressure die casting (LPDC) process, in which sand cores are made and thru which Head lamp casing are manufactured. To move with LPDC process, the present supplier base is not feasible. Hence we decided to move with an alternate source for LPDC process. Three LPDC manufacturing suppliers were shortlisted. Among the three suppliers, based on the quality, cost and delivery time, one supplier is approved. Approved supplier is permitted for die making and manufacturing head lamp casing after the product and process audit. Once die manufacturing is completed, samples were taken and tried out at our end. The new LPDC head lamp casing is found ok and hence rejections at supplier end had minimised and rework at our end had eliminated. These results in eliminating the dispatch constraints and thus our motto of avoiding line stoppage due to the shortage of head lamp casing are eliminated.

Abstract: The selection of a manufacturing method for developing new products with optimal quality, minimal cost in the shortest time possible is a important phase of the industry. This paper uses artificial neural network to facilitate for product manufacturing method selection. Initially, general sorting is employed to select an initial product platform. Then using repertory grids method, designers contribute importance ratings to the design options. These ratings are employed to reduce the number of the derived design options, and thereby used as input data to a neural network. The neural network is then trained by using Levenberg-Marquart Algorithm in Mat lab software. The trained neural network is applied to classify the set of options into different patterns. The classification results can subsequently serve as base for the screening of preferred manufacturing options.

Abstract: Scheduling problems are usually solved using heuristics to get optimal or near optimal solutions because problems found in practical applications cannot be solved to optimality using reasonable resources in many cases. Scheduling problems vary widely according to specific production tasks but most are NP-hard problems. Optimization of three practical performance measures mean job flow time, mean job tardiness and makespan are considered in this work. The Artificial Immune System Shifting Bottleneck Approach is used for finding optimal makespan, mean flow time, mean tardiness values of two benchmark problems. In this Artificial Immune System Shifting Bottleneck Approach (AISSB), initial sequences are generated with Artificial Immune System Algorithm (AIS) and Shifting Bottleneck Algorithm (SB) is used for finding final solutions. The results show that the AISSB Approach is effective algorithm that gives better results than literature results. The proposed AISSB Approach is an efficient problem-solving technique for multi objective job shop scheduling problem.

Abstract: A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case. The agility index is defined as a combination of timeliness and profitability. Both timeliness and profitability refers to the performance of a company at a strategic level. This paper discusses about the key factors to be considered and the procedure to be followed while constructing a questionnaire for evaluating the agility index in an original equipment manufacturing industry.Key words: Agility index, Questionnaires, Statistical Analysis.