JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL
Year:2014 | Volume:10 | Issue:3|Papers Count:9

The present investigation deals with the bulk arrival M/G/1 retrial queue with impatient customers and modified vacation policy. The incoming customers join the virtual pool of customers called orbit if they find the server being busy, on vacation or in broken down state otherwise the service of the customer at the head of the batch is started by the server. The service is provided in k essential phases to all the customers by the single server which may breakdown while rendering service to the customers. The broken down server is sent to a repair facility wherein the repair is performed in d compulsory phases. As soon as the orbit becomes empty, the server goes for vacation and takes at most J vacations until at least one customer is noticed. The incoming customers are impatient and may renege on seeing a long queue of the customers for the service. The probability generating functions and queue length for the number of customers in the orbit and queue have been obtained using supplementary variable technique. Various system characteristics viz. average number of customers in the queue and the orbit, long run probabilities of the system states, etc. are obtained. Furthermore, numerical simulation has been carried out to study the sensitivity of various parameters on the system performance measures by taking an illustration.

Today competitive environment has enforced practitioners and researchers to pay great attention to issues enhancing both production and marketing competitiveness. To do so, it has been obligatory for the firms to consider production side activities while customer requirements are on the other side of competition. In this regard, hybrid make-to-stock (MTS) /make-to-order (MTO) production systems have revealed outstanding results. This paper addresses multi-site production planning of a hybrid manufacturing firm for the first time in the hybrid systems’ body of literature. In this regard, a network of suppliers, manufacturers and customers is considered for which a mixed-integer mathematical model is proposed. Objective function of the proposed mathematical model seeks to maximize profitability of the manufacturing firm. Because of computational complexity of the developed mathematical model, a genetic algorithm is developed upon which numerical experiments are reported in order to show validity and applicability of the proposed model.

In this paper, we study the stability of equilibrium for a foreign trade model consisting of three countries. As the gravity equation has been proven an excellent tool of analysis and adequately stable over time and space all over the world, we further enhance the problem to three masses. We use the basic Structure of Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model. The national income equals consumption outlays plus investment plus exports minus imports. The proposed reformulation of the problem focus on two basic concepts: (1) the delay inherited in our economic variables and (2) the interaction effect along the three economies involved. Stability and stabilizability conditions are investigated while numerical examples provide further insight and better understanding. Finally, a generalization of the gravity equation is somehow obtained for the model.

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Pollution and environmental protection in the present century are extremely significant global problems. Power plants as the largest pollution emitting industry have been the cause of a great deal of scientific researches. The fuel or source type used to generate electricity by the power plants plays an important role in the amount of pollution produced. Governments should take visible actions to promote green fuel. These actions are often called the governmental financial interventions that include legislations such as green subsidiaries and taxes. In this paper, by considering the government role in the competition of two power plants, we propose a game theoretical model that will help the government to determine the optimal taxes and subsidies. The numerical examples demonstrate how government could intervene in a competitive market of electricity to achieve the environmental objectives and how power plants maximize their utilities in each energy source. The results also reveal that the government’s taxes and subsidiaries effectively influence the selected fuel types of power plants in the competitive market.

The objective of this paper is proposing a developed balanced scorecard approach to measure supply chain performance with the aim of creating more value in manufacturing and business operations. The most important metrics have been selected based on experts’ opinion acquired by in-depth interviews focused on creating more value for stakeholders. Using factor analysis method, a survey research has been used to categorize selected metrics into balanced scorecard perspectives. The result identifies the intensity of correlation between perspectives and cause-and-effect chains among them using statistical method based on a real case study in home appliance manufacturing industries.

The survival of any organization depends upon its competitive edge. Even though Lean is one of the most powerful quality improvement methodologies, nearly twothirds of the Lean implementations results in failures and less than one-fifth of those implemented have sustained results. One of the most significant tasks of top management is to identify, understand and deploy the significant Lean practices like quality circle, Kanban, Just-in-time purchasing, etc. The term ‘bundle’ is used to make groups of inter-related and internally consistent Lean practices. Eight significant Lean practice bundles have been identified based on literature reviewed and opinion of the experts. The order of execution of Lean practice bundles is very important. Lean practitioners must be able to understand the interrelationship between these practice bundles. The objective of this paper is to develop framework for sustainable Lean implementation using interpretive structural modelling approach.

In today’s highly rival market, an effective supplier selection process is vital to the success of any manufacturing system. Selecting the appropriate supplier is always a difficult task because suppliers posses varied strengths and weaknesses that necessitate careful evaluations prior to suppliers’ ranking. This is a complex process with many subjective and objective factors to consider before the benefits of supplier selection are achieved. This paper identifies six extremely critical criteria and thirteen sub-criteria based on the literature. A new methodology employing those criteria and sub-criteria is proposed for the assessment and ranking of a given set of suppliers. To handle the subjectivity of the decision maker’s assessment, an integration of fuzzy Delphi with fuzzy inference system has been applied and a new ranking method is proposed for supplier selection problem. This supplier selection model enables decision makers to rank the suppliers based on three classifications including ‘‘extremely preferred’’, ‘‘moderately preferred’’, and ‘‘weakly preferred’’. In addition, in each classification, suppliers are put in order from highest final score to the lowest. Finally, the methodology is verified and validated through an example of a numerical test bed.

Lean production has become an integral part of the manufacturing landscape as its link with superior performance and its ability to provide competitive advantage is well accepted among academics and practitioners. Lean production helps producers in overcoming the challenges organizations face through using powerful tools and enablers. However, most companies are faced with restricted resources such as financial and human resources, time, etc., in using these enablers, and are not capable of implementing all these techniques. Therefore, identifying and selecting the most appropriate and efficient tool can be a significant challenge for many companies. Hence, this literature seeks to combine competitive advantages, lean attributes, and lean enablers to determine the most appropriate enablers for improvement of lean attributes. Quality function deployment in fuzzy environment and house of quality matrix are implemented. Throughout the methodology, fuzzy logic is the basis for translating linguistic judgments required for the relationships and correlation matrix to numerical values. Moreover, for final ranking of lean enablers, a multi-criteria decision-making method (PROMETHEE) is adopted. Finally, a case study in automotive industry is presented to illustrate the implementation of the proposed methodology.