Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 813-814

Abstract: Implementation of Lean Manufacturing in Indian Industries is not very successful. Studies have been conducted in this area and the main reason behind this has identified to be Human related issue. But no studies with regard to employees has been done. This Paper deals with a pilot study in a tyre Factory .It is about the level of employee involvement and management commitment in implementing Lean .A survey questionnaire was developed and its validity was tested using Chronbach’s alpha. TThe questionnaire was answered by the employees .It was found that lack of management commitment and improper communication has reduced the employee involvement in lean initiatives. Based on the findings a case study was conducted in Horizontal Bias Cutter. Improving the working conditions based on the study helped to improve employee involvement .This helped in improving the overall efficiency of Horizontal Bias Cutter.

Abstract: An investigation of the factors which affect lead time in spinning mills producing carded and combed counts is reported. Data were collected from 27 mills producing 40 Ne Carded Yarn and 9 mills producing 40 Ne Combed Yarn. A number of 13 parameters which affect lead time were identified and they are FQI (Fibre Quality Index), Roving Production, CSP (Count Strength Product), Yarn Realisation, Spindle Production, Top Arm Roller Pressure (Front), Top Arm Roller Pressure (Middle), Top Arm Roller Pressure (Back), End Breaks, UKG, HOK (the number of Operative Hours required to produce 100 kg of yarn), YQI (Yarn Quality Index), Machine Utilisation. Multiple linear regression analysis have been carried out to find out the dominant parameters which affect lead time. While 71.4% of the variables account for lead time in respect of carded counts, about 78.4% of the variables have dominating influence in combed yarns.

Abstract: Disassembly sequence planning not only reduces product life cycle cost, but also greatly influences environmental impact. Industrial recycling and remanufacturing involves product disassembly to retrieve the desired parts and/or subassemblies by separating a product into its constituents. Disassembly has recently gained a great deal of attention in the literature due to its role in product recovery. Disassembly sequencing and planning is more challenging than assembly because its terminal goal is not necessarily fixed, but may depend on product usage and market demands for used parts and recycled materials. Moreover, disassembly is accompanied by more uncertainty in system structures and component conditions than is assembly. This paper presents recent methods for sequencing and process planning in disassembly and the applications to industrial products. This research is aimed at determining the optimal disassembly sequence as well as the helps to find the sequence dependent cost.

Abstract: In lean manufacturing environment Value Stream Mapping (VSM) & SMED are one of the renewed industrial engineering technique used worldwide. VSM is used for visualizing the system of manufacturing and many other relevant processes and helps in great extend to understand to system itself effectively. Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) helps to reduce the setup time of process. A valve manufacturing company was being selected for Case study. First we draw the current state value stream map. From the current data analysis find out the problems and give some recommendations to improve the production lead time and provide a future state value stream map, we reduced the lead time through VSM, from 46.63 days to 43.03 day. Second we applied SMED techniques & reduced the setup time from 21 min to 16 min in bonnet machining operation of valve.

Abstract: Quality is an important dimension or factor in any process or product. Success of the product or process depends on the application of knowledge assimilated on various subjects from theory into actual application; otherwise it would result into a quality defect, as a consequence of knowledge gap. One such quality defect in the product and the process is conversion of student into an Engineer by the Engineering Educational Institution is lower employability, a concern for society, employers and stake holders of the educational process. Causes for such defect, are multi-dimensional, requiring a multi-pronged approach in developing solutions. Regulatory bodies like AICTE, Industrial bodies like CII etc. in India, are working towards delivering solutions at the macro level of the Nation, while the issue also requires solutions to be deployed at the micro level of Institutions. Focus of this research work is to address one such element related to measurement of Quality dimension, quantify such knowledge gap with practicing professionals of the Industry, identify their significant presence by experience segments and relate them with student’s knowledge gap for similar element / dimension as found in literature. The work delivers a simple model which can be adopted in educational institutions that shall benefit the Industry and Engineering graduates. The scope of this work also includes explaining high level process map of the educational process with SIPOC and COPIS Quality model of Six Sigma in bringing out the complexity in educational process. This research work is a part of the ongoing research of the first author.

Abstract: - Scheduling is an important tool for manufacturing and engineering, where it can have a major impact on the productivity of a process. In manufacturing, the purpose of scheduling is to minimize the production time and costs. Production scheduling aims to maximize the efficiency of the operation and reduce costs. We keep all of our machines well-maintained to prevent any problems, but there is on way to completely prevent down-time. With redundant machines we have the security of knowing that we are not going to be in trouble meeting our deadlines if a machine has any unexpected down-times. Finally we can work to get our batch sizes as small as is reasonably possible while also reducing the setup time of each batch. This allows us to eliminate a sizable portion of each part waiting while the rest of the parts in the batch are being machined.

Abstract: With the advent of latest technology, manufacturing process becomes so sophisticated and complicated that a single response variable (quality characteristic) can not reflect the true product quality and there is intense competition between market participants for cost and delivery (productivity) as well. Any manufacturing process in the present state requires multi objective optimization model to optimize quality, cost and productivity simultaneously. Optimum prediction is critical as it requires lot of experiments for data capturing which involves time and cost. In the present manufacturing set up, it is essential to identify optimum parametric combination for multi objective function real time problems with lesser experiments and lesser effort with better accuracy. Taguchi method is a well known fraction factorial design, which requires minimum number of trials for Identifying optimum parametric combination in real time problems.In this paper an attempt is made to review the literatures of various methods used by researchers for multi - objective optimization problems using Taguchi methods.

Abstract: Recently, Multi-agent system has been considered as an important approach for solving real world industrial problems. JADE based Multi agent system offers wide range of applications in supply chain management. In Particular, sharing and retrieval of information within the agent and between agents in disassembly sequencing and planning in reverse logistic system. This paper proposed a simulation study of implementing Multi-agent system for sequencing and process planning in disassembly problem with various electronics industrial products.

Abstract: The work presented here is carried out in ASHOK LEYLAND Company. The main idea of the work is to find solutions for reducing the rejection of main shafts during its machining operation which is caused due to many factors such as operator carelessness, span undersize/oversize, teeth overlap etc. After thorough analysis of all operations that are carried out in main shaft machining, we proposed and carried out some solutions for PPM reduction of rejections in main shaft that could feasibly reduce the PPM rejections of Main shaft.

Abstract: Stringent legislative, social concerns & clean carbon emissions are constraining companies to take a fresh look at the impact of supply chain operations on environment, society and individuals when designing reverse supply chain networks. A challenging task in today’s globalised environment where companies mandatorily have to collect back goods after its reliable life is making companies integrate supply chain decisions objective here is to minimize transportation cost and distance. In this paper problem of designing a TSP (Travelling Sales man problem) is addressed which is one of the NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization. Computational experiments conducted with GA (Genetic algorithm) on large and small size TSP cases where compared with NNA (Nearest neighboring algorithm) and have proved that the GA provides optimal tour every time in reasonable time by outperforming the NNA solution when number of cities are increased.