Search results for: low series manufacturing

Authors: Chien-Chung Yuan, Cunqiang Cai, Wu-Hsun Chung, Shu-Te Sung

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A tanker is a critical vessel used to transport or store liquids or gases in bulk in maritime shipping. However, it is more dangerous than other types of vessels. Port State Control (PSC) inspection is an important measure to ensure maritime safety when such vessels traveling between ports. However, the current inspection system lacks a useful tool to observe the inspections for tankers and to identify non-random instances in PSC inspections. This study collects the inspection records in Taiwan’s ports from 2015 to 2018 and utilizes run charts to map the PSC inspections for tankers in terms of deficiencies. Based on these time-series charts, several patterns of deficiencies are identified. The results demonstrate that run charts are a useful tool to observe how the PSC inspections for tankers are performed. Also, the charts can help port administrations to identify abnormal phenomena for further investigation. Furthermore, with valuable information from the analysis, port administrations can take proactive improvement measures to ensure the safety of tanker shipping.

Keywords: port state control, tanker, run chart, deficiency

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Authors: E. Sobhani-Tehrani, K. Khorasani, N. Meskin

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This paper presents a novel integrated hybrid approach for fault diagnosis (FD) of nonlinear systems. Unlike most FD techniques, the proposed solution simultaneously accomplishes fault detection, isolation, and identification (FDII) within a unified diagnostic module. At the core of this solution is a bank of adaptive neural parameter estimators (NPE) associated with a set of single-parameter fault models. The NPEs continuously estimate unknown fault parameters (FP) that are indicators of faults in the system. Two NPE structures including series-parallel and parallel are developed with their exclusive set of desirable attributes. The parallel scheme is extremely robust to measurement noise and possesses a simpler, yet more solid, fault isolation logic. On the contrary, the series-parallel scheme displays short FD delays and is robust to closed-loop system transients due to changes in control commands. Finally, a fault tolerant observer (FTO) is designed to extend the capability of the NPEs to systems with partial-state measurement.

Keywords: hybrid fault diagnosis, dynamic neural networks, nonlinear systems, fault tolerant observer

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Authors: Syed Toqueer Akhter, Muhammad Awais

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Pakistan is a country which is gifted by naturally abundant resources these resources are a pioneer towards a prospect and developed country. Pakistan is the fourth largest exporter of the textile in the world and with the passage of time the competitiveness of these exports is subject to a decline. With a lot of International players in the textile world like China, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka, Pakistan needs to put up a lot of effort to compete with these countries. This research paper would determine the impact of Foreign Direct Investment upon technological diffusion and that how significantly it may be affecting on export performance of the country. It would also demonstrate that with the increase in Foreign Direct Investment, technological diffusion, strong property rights, and using different policy tools, export competitiveness of the country could be improved. The research has been carried out using time series data from 1995 to 2013 and the results have been estimated by using competing Econometrics modes such as Robust regression and Generalized least squares so that to consolidate the impact of the Foreign Investments and Technological diffusion upon export competitiveness comprehensively. Distributed Lag model has also been used to encompass the lagged effect of policy tools variables used by the government. Model estimates entail that 'FDI' and 'Technological Diffusion' do have a significant impact on the competitiveness of the exports of Pakistan. It may also be inferred that competitiveness of Textile Sector requires integrated policy framework, primarily including the reduction in interest rates, providing subsides, and manufacturing of value added products.

Keywords: high technology export, robust regression, patents, technological diffusion, export competitiveness

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Authors: Majid Vafaeipour, Mohamed El Baghdadi, Florian Verbelen, Peter Sergeant, Joeri Van Mierlo, Kurt Stockman, Omar Hegazy

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The Electrical Variable Transmission (EVT), an electromechanical device, can be considered as an alternative solution to the conventional transmission system utilized in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). This study present comparisons in terms of fuel consumption, power split, and state of charge (SoC) of an HEV containing an EVT to a conventional parallel topology and a series topology. To this end, corresponding simulations of these topologies are all performed in presence of control strategies enabling battery charge-sustaining and efficient power split. The power flow through the components of the vehicle are attained, and fuel consumption results of the considered cases are compared. The investigation of the results indicates utilizing EVT can provide significant added values in HEV configurations. The outcome of the current research paves its path for implementation of design optimization approaches on such systems in further research directions.

Keywords: Electrical Variable Transmission (EVT), Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV), parallel, series, modeling

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Authors: Yuzuru Mitsui, Takashi Ikegami

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The exponents of Taylor’s law in deterministic chaotic systems are computed, and their meanings are intensively discussed. Taylor’s law is the scaling relationship between the mean and variance (in both space and time) of population abundance, and this law is known to hold in a variety of ecological time series. The exponents found in the temporal Taylor’s law are different from those of the spatial Taylor’s law. The temporal Taylor’s law is calculated on the time series from the same locations (or the same initial states) of different temporal phases. However, with the spatial Taylor’s law, the mean and variance are calculated from the same temporal phase sampled from different places. Most previous studies were done with stochastic models, but we computed the temporal and spatial Taylor’s law in deterministic systems. The temporal Taylor’s law evaluated using the same initial state, and the spatial Taylor’s law was evaluated using the ensemble average and variance. There were two main discoveries from this work. First, it is often stated that deterministic systems tend to have the value two for Taylor’s exponent. However, most of the calculated exponents here were not two. Second, we investigated the relationships between chaotic features measured by the Lyapunov exponent, the correlation dimension, and other indexes with Taylor’s exponents. No strong correlations were found; however, there is some relationship in the same model, but with different parameter values, and we will discuss the meaning of those results at the end of this paper.

Keywords: chaos, density effect, population dynamics, Taylor’s law

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Authors: Hyacinth Dawam Dakwang

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Outsourcing is growing at a rapid rate throughout the world because organizations view it as a way to achieve strategic goals, improve customer satisfaction and provide other efficiency and effectiveness improvements. With the increasing globalization, outsourcing has become an important business approach, and a competitive advantage may be gained as products or services are produced more effectively and efficiently by outside suppliers. Several organizations have embarked on outsourcing strategies over the years but many still suffer in terms of their goal achievement; some have experienced low productivity both in terms of quality and quantity, their profitability has not been stable, and their capacities are grossly underutilized. This research work determined the effect of outsourcing strategies on the performance of manufacturing firms in Kaduna State. The study adopted descriptive research design. The questionnaire for the study was subjected to test- re-test reliability assessment. The data collected was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 20). Results were presented on frequency distribution tables and graphs. The findings reveal that firms that outsourcing strategy reduce average cost, increased productivity and profitability improved quality, improves customer satisfaction and save time for core activities. This study therefore recommended that firms should embark more on outsourcing strategies to attain the benefits of cost savings/restructuring which results in better customer service at profit; also, outsourcing strategy should come from the workers themselves. Also, organisations should ensure that, the costs of managing the outsourcing process is not greater than the benefits generated by the outsourcing program.

Keywords: Manufacturing Firms, Outsourcing , Performance, Strategies

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Authors: Bin Ji, Kai Xu, Shunyu Yao, Jingjing Liu, Ye Pan

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Human pose estimation is a popular research area in computer vision for its important application in human-machine interface. In recent years, 2D human pose estimation based on convolution neural network has got great progress and development. However, in more and more practical applications, people often need to deal with tasks based on video. It’s not far-fetched for us to consider how to combine the spatial and temporal information together to achieve a balance between computing cost and accuracy. To address this issue, this study proposes a new spatiotemporal model, namely Spatiotemporal Net (STNet) to combine both temporal and spatial information more rationally. As a result, the predicted keypoints heatmap is potentially more accurate and spatially more precise. Under the condition of ensuring the recognition accuracy, the algorithm deal with spatiotemporal series in a decoupled way, which greatly reduces the computation of the model, thus reducing the resource consumption. This study demonstrate the effectiveness of our network over the Penn Action Dataset, and the results indicate superior performance of our network over the existing methods.

Keywords: convolutional long short-term memory, deep learning, human pose estimation, spatiotemporal series

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Authors: Andreas Lind, Aitor Iriondo Pascual, Dan Hogberg, Lars Hanson

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Factory setup lifecycles are most often described and prepared in CAD environments; the preparation is based on experience and inputs from several cross-disciplinary processes. Early in the factory setup preparation, a so-called block layout is created. The intention is to describe a high-level view of the intended factory setup and to claim area reservations and allocations. Factory areas are then blocked, i.e., targeted to be used for specific intended resources and processes, later redefined with detailed factory setup layouts. Each detailed layout is based on the block layout and inputs from cross-disciplinary preparation processes, such as manufacturing sequence, productivity, workers’ workplace requirements, and resource setup preparation. However, this activity is often not carried out with all variables considered simultaneously, which might entail a risk of sub-optimizing the detailed layout based on manual decisions. Therefore, this work aims to realize a digital method for assembly manufacturing layout planning where productivity, area utilization, and ergonomics can be considered simultaneously in a cross-disciplinary manner. The purpose of the digital method is to support engineers in finding optimized designs of detailed layouts for assembly manufacturing factories, thereby facilitating better decisions regarding setups of future factories. Input datasets are company-specific descriptions of required dimensions for specific area reservations, such as defined dimensions of a worker’s workplace, material façades, aisles, and the sequence to realize the product assembly manufacturing process. To test and iteratively develop the digital method, a demonstrator has been developed with an adaptation of existing software that simulates and proposes optimized designs of detailed layouts. Since the method is to consider productivity, ergonomics, area utilization, and constraints from the automatically generated block layout, a multi-objective optimization approach is utilized. In the demonstrator, the input data are sent to the simulation software industrial path solutions (IPS). Based on the input and Lua scripts, the IPS software generates a block layout in compliance with the company’s defined dimensions of area reservations. Communication is then established between the IPS and the software EPP (Ergonomics in Productivity Platform), including intended resource descriptions, assembly manufacturing process, and manikin (digital human) resources. Using multi-objective optimization approaches, the EPP software then calculates layout proposals that are sent iteratively and simulated and rendered in IPS, following the rules and regulations defined in the block layout as well as productivity and ergonomics constraints and objectives. The software demonstrator is promising. The software can handle several parameters to optimize the detailed layout simultaneously and can put forward several proposals. It can optimize multiple parameters or weight the parameters to fine-tune the optimal result of the detailed layout. The intention of the demonstrator is to make the preparation between cross-disciplinary silos transparent and achieve a common preparation of the assembly manufacturing factory setup, thereby facilitating better decisions.

Keywords: factory setup, multi-objective, optimization, simulation

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Authors: Shamraiz Ahmad, Riaz Ahmad, Adnan Maqsood

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This paper describes the application of 2k-design of experiment in order to screen the geometric parameters and experimental refinement of ceiling fan blades. The ratio of the air delivery to the power consumed is commonly known as service value (SV) in ceiling fan designer’s community. Service value was considered as the response for 56 inch ceiling fan and four geometric parameters (bend position at root, bend position at tip, bent angle at root and bent angle at tip) of blade were analyzed. With two levels, the 4-design parameters along with their eleven interactions were studied and design of experiment was employed for experimental arrangement. Blade manufacturing and testing were done in a medium scale enterprise. The objective was achieved and service value of ceiling fan was increased by 10.4 % without increasing the cost of production and manufacturing system. Experiments were designed and results were analyzed using Minitab® 16 software package.

Keywords: parametric screening, 2k-design of experiment, ceiling fan, service value, performance improvement

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Authors: Zahra Asgharpour, Eric Renteria, Sebastian De Boodt

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There is a growing trend towards personalization of medical care, as evidenced by the emphasis on outcomes based medicine, the latest developments in CT and MR imaging and personalized treatment in a variety of surgical disciplines. 3D Printing has been introduced and applied in the medical field since 2000. The first applications were in the field of dental implants and custom prosthetics. According to recent publications, 3D printing in the medical field has been used in a wide range of applications which can be organized into several categories including implants, prosthetics, anatomical models and tissue bioprinting. Some of these categories are still in their infancy stage of the concept of proof while others are in application phase such as the design and manufacturing of customized implants and prosthesis. The approach of 3D printing in this category has been successfully used in the health care sector to make both standard and complex implants within a reasonable amount of time. In this study, some of the clinical applications of 3D printing in design and manufacturing of a patient-specific hip implant would be explained. In cases where patients have complex bone geometries or are undergoing a complex revision on hip replacement, the traditional surgical methods are not efficient, and hence these patients require patient-specific approaches. There are major advantages in using this new technology for medical applications, however, in order to get this technology widely accepted in medical device industry, there is a need for gaining more acceptance from the medical device regulatory offices. This is a challenge that is moving onward and will help the technology find its way at the end as an accepted manufacturing method for medical device industry in an international scale. The discussion will conclude with some examples describing the future directions of 3D Medical Printing.

Keywords: CT/MRI, image processing, 3D printing, medical devices, patient specific implants

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Authors: Ashneel Ajay Singh, Kazumi Sakuramoto, Naoki Suzuki, Kalla Alok, Nath Paras

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Bluefin (Thunnus orientalis) tuna is one of the most economically valuable tuna species in the world. In recent years the stock has been observed to decline. It is suspected that the stock-recruitment relationship and population structure is influenced by environmental and climatic variables. This study was aimed at investigating the influence of environmental and climatic conditions on the trajectory of the different life stages of the North Pacific bluefin tuna. Exploratory analysis was performed for the North Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on the time series of the bluefin tuna cohorts (age-0, 1, 2,…,9, 10+). General Additive Modeling (GAM) was used to reconstruct the recruitment (R) trajectory. The spatial movement of the SST was also monitored from 1953 to 2012 in the distribution area of the bluefin tuna. Exploratory analysis showed significance influence of the North Pacific Sea Surface temperature (SST) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on the time series of the age-0 group. Other age group (1, 2,…,9, 10+) time series did not exhibit any significant correlations. PDO showed most significant relationship in the months of October to December. Although the stock-recruitment relationship is of biological significance, the recruits (age-0) showed poor correlation with the Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB). Indeed the most significant model incorporated the SSB, SST and PDO. The results show that the stock-recruitment relationship of the North Pacific bluefin tuna is multi-dimensional and cannot be adequately explained by the SSB alone. SST and PDO forcing of the population structure is of significant importance and needs to be accounted for when making harvesting plans for bluefin tuna in the North Pacific.

Keywords: pacific bluefin tuna, Thunnus orientalis, cohorts, recruitment, spawning stock biomass, sea surface temperature, pacific decadal oscillation, general additive model

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Authors: Philipp Zopf, Franz Haas

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Manufacturing of very hard and refractory materials like ceramics, glass or carbide poses particular challenges on tools and machines. The company Sauer GmbH developed especially for this application area ultrasonic tool holders working in a frequency range from 15 to 60 kHz and superimpose the common tool movement in the vertical axis. This technique causes a structural weakening in the contact area and facilitates the machining. The possibility of the force reduction for these special materials especially in drilling of carbide with diamond tools up to 30 percent made the authors try to expand the application range of this method. To make the results evaluable, the authors decide to start with existing processes in which the positive influence of the ultrasonic assistance is proven to understand the mechanism. The comparison of a grinding process the Institute use to machine materials mentioned in the beginning and steel could not be more different. In the first case, the authors use tools with geometrically undefined edges. In the second case, the edges are geometrically defined. To get valid results of the tests, the authors decide to investigate two manufacturing methods, drilling and milling. The main target of the investigation is to reduce the cutting force measured with a force measurement platform underneath the workpiece. Concerning to the direction of the ultrasonic assistance, the authors expect lower cutting forces and longer endurance of the tool in the drilling process. To verify the frequencies and the amplitudes an FFT-analysis is performed. It shows the increasing damping depending on the infeed rate of the tool. The reducing of amplitude of the cutting force comes along.

Keywords: drilling, machining, milling, ultrasonic

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Authors: Jinhoa Lee

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The relationships between environmental quality, energy use and economic output have created growing attention over the past decades among researchers and policy makers. Focusing on the empirical aspects of the role of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and energy use in affecting the economic output, this paper is an effort to fulfill the gap in a comprehensive case study at a country level using modern econometric techniques. To achieve the goal, this country-specific study examines the short-run and long-run relationships among energy consumption (using disaggregated energy sources: crude oil, coal, natural gas, electricity), CO2 emissions and gross domestic product (GDP) for Egypt using time series analysis from the year 1980-2010. To investigate the relationships between the variables, this paper employs the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test for stationarity, Johansen maximum likelihood method for co-integration and a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) for both short- and long-run causality among the research variables for the sample. The long-run equilibrium in the VECM suggests some negative impacts of the CO2 emissions and the coal and natural gas use on the GDP. Conversely, a positive long-run causality from the electricity consumption to the GDP is found to be significant in Egypt during the period. In the short-run, some positive unidirectional causalities exist, running from the coal consumption to the GDP, and the CO2 emissions and the natural gas use. Further, the GDP and the electricity use are positively influenced by the consumption of petroleum products and the direct combustion of crude oil. Overall, the results support arguments that there are relationships among environmental quality, energy use, and economic output in both the short term and long term; however, the effects may differ due to the sources of energy, such as in the case of Egypt for the period of 1980-2010.

Keywords: CO2 emissions, Egypt, energy consumption, GDP, time series analysis

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Authors: Shahrazed Medeghri, Saad Hamzaoui, Mokhtar Zerdali

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The metallurgical grade silicon (MG-Si) is obtained from the reduction of silica (SiO₂) in an induction furnace or an electric arc furnace. Impurities inherent in reduction process also depend on the quality of the raw material used. Among the applications of the silicon, it is used as a substrate for the photovoltaic conversion of solar energy and this conversion is wider as the purity of the substrate is important. Research is being done where the purpose is looking for new methods of manufacturing and purification of silicon, as well as new materials that can be used as substrates for the photovoltaic conversion of light energy. In this research, the technique of production of silicon in an induction furnace, using a high vacuum for fusion. Diatomaceous Silica (SiO2) used is 99 mass% initial purities, the carbon used is 6N of purity and the particle size of 63μm as starting materials. The final achieved purity of the material was above 50% by mass. These results demonstrate that this method is a technically reliable, and allows obtaining a better return on the amount 50% of silicon.

Keywords: induction furnaces, amorphous silica, carbon microstructure, silicon

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Authors: Mohsin Talib Mohammed, Zahid A. Khan, Arshad N. Siddiquee

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Biometallic materials are the most important materials for use in biomedical applications especially in manufacturing a variety of biological artificial replacements in a modern worlds, e.g. hip, knee or shoulder joints, due to their advanced characteristics. Titanium (Ti) and its alloys are used extensively in biomedical applications based on their high specific strength and excellent corrosion resistance. Beta-Ti alloys containing completely biocompatible elements are exceptionally prospective materials for manufacturing of bioimplants. They have superior mechanical, chemical and electrochemical properties for use as biomaterials. These biomaterials have the ability to introduce the most important property of biochemical compatibility which is low elastic modulus. This review examines current information on the recent developments in alloying elements leading to improvements of beta Ti alloys for use as biomaterials. Moreover, this paper focuses mainly on the evolution, evaluation and development of the modulus of elasticity as an effective factor on the performance of beta alloys.

Keywords: beta alloys, biomedical applications, titanium alloys, Young's modulus

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Authors: Luphumlo Ncanywa, Paul Watts

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Malaria is a disease that kills approximately one million people annually. Children and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa lost their lives due to malaria. Malaria continues to be one of the major causes of death, especially in poor countries in Africa. Decrease the burden of malaria and save lives is very essential. There is a major concern about malaria parasites being able to develop resistance towards antimalarial drugs. People are still dying due to lack of medicine affordability in less well-off countries in the world. If more people could receive treatment by reducing the cost of drugs, the number of deaths in Africa could be massively reduced. There is a shortage of pharmaceutical manufacturing capability within many of the countries in Africa. However one has to question how Africa would actually manufacture drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients or medicines developed within these research programs. It is quite likely that such manufacturing would be outsourced overseas, hence increasing the cost of production and potentially limiting the full benefit of the original research. As a result the last few years has seen major interest in developing more effective and cheaper technology for manufacturing generic pharmaceutical products. Micro-reactor technology (MRT) is an emerging technique that enables those working in research and development to rapidly screen reactions utilizing continuous flow, leading to the identification of reaction conditions that are suitable for usage at a production level. This emerging technique will be used to develop antimalarial drugs. It is this system flexibility that has the potential to reduce both the time was taken and risk associated with transferring reaction methodology from research to production. Using an approach referred to as scale-out or numbering up, a reaction is first optimized within the laboratory using a single micro-reactor, and in order to increase production volume, the number of reactors employed is simply increased. The overall aim of this research project is to develop and optimize synthetic process of antimalarial drugs in the continuous processing. This will provide a step change in pharmaceutical manufacturing technology that will increase the availability and affordability of antimalarial drugs on a worldwide scale, with a particular emphasis on Africa in the first instance. The research will determine the best chemistry and technology to define the lowest cost manufacturing route to pharmaceutical products. We are currently developing a method to synthesize Lumefantrine in continuous flow using batch process as bench mark. Lumefantrine is a dichlorobenzylidine derivative effective for the treatment of various types of malaria. Lumefantrine is an antimalarial drug used with artemether for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria. The results obtained when synthesizing Lumefantrine in a batch process are transferred into a continuous flow process in order to develop an even better and reproducible process. Therefore, development of an appropriate synthetic route for Lumefantrine is significant in pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, if better (and cheaper) manufacturing routes to antimalarial drugs could be developed and implemented where needed, it is far more likely to enable antimalarial drugs to be available to those in need.

Keywords: antimalarial, flow, lumefantrine, synthesis

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Authors: Catherine Maware, Olufemi Adetunji

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The paper is aimed at developing a model to measure the impact of Lean manufacturing deployment on organizational performance. The model will help industry practitioners to assess the impact of implementing Lean constructs on organizational performance. It will also harmonize the measurement models of Lean performance with the house of Lean that seems to have become the industry standard. The sheer number of measurement models for impact assessment of Lean implementation makes it difficult for new adopters to select an appropriate assessment model or deployment methodology. A literature review is conducted to classify the Lean performance model. Pareto analysis is used to select the Lean constructs for the development of the model. The model is further formalized through the use of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in defining the underlying latent structure of a Lean system. An impact assessment measurement model developed can be used to measure Lean performance and can be adopted by different industries.

Keywords: impact measurement model, lean bundles, lean manufacturing, organizational performance

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Authors: Chih Chin Yang, Chung Shan Sun

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In this paper, the relationships between professional competences and school curricula in IC design industry are explored. The semi-structured questionnaire survey and focus group interview is the research method. Study participants are graduates of microelectronics engineering professional departments who are currently employed in the IC industry. The IC industries are defined as the electronic component manufacturing industry and optical-electronic component manufacturing industry in the semiconductor industry and optical-electronic material devices, respectively. Study participants selected from IC design industry include IC engineering and electronic & semiconductor engineering. The human training with IC design professional competence in microelectronics engineering professional departments is explored in this research. IC professional competences of human resources in the IC design industry include general intelligence and professional intelligence.

Keywords: IC design, curricula, competence, task, duty

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Authors: Poojan Vora, Hardik Pancholi, Sanket Tajane, Harsh Shah, Elias Keedy

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The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected the industry drastically in many ways. Even though the vaccine is being distributed quickly and despite the decreasing number of positive cases, testing is projected to remain a key aspect of the ‘new normal’. Improving existing plant layout and improving safety within the facility are of great importance in today’s industries because of the need to ensure productivity optimization and reduce safety risks. In practice, it is essential for any manufacturing plant to reduce nonvalue adding steps such as the movement of materials and rearrange similar processes. In the current pandemic situation, optimized layouts will not only increase safety measures but also decrease the fixed cost per unit manufactured. In our case study, we carefully studied the existing layout and the manufacturing steps of a new Texas start-up company that manufactures COVID testing kits. The effects of production rate are incorporated with the computerized relative allocation of facilities technique (CRAFT) algorithm to improve the plant layout and estimate the optimization parameters. Our work reduces the company’s material handling time and increases their daily production. Real data from the company are used in the case study to highlight the importance of colleges in fostering small business needs and improving the collaboration between college researchers and industries by using existing models to advance best practices.

Keywords: computerized relative allocation of facilities technique, facilities planning, optimization, start-up business

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Authors: Zahid Ahmad, Nosheen Imran, Nauman Ali, Farah Amir

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The objective of the study is to forecast the US Dollar and Pak Rupee exchange rate by using time series models. For this purpose, daily exchange rates of US and Pakistan for the period of January 01, 2007 - June 2, 2017, are employed. The data set is divided into in sample and out of sample data set where in-sample data are used to estimate as well as forecast the models, whereas out-of-sample data set is exercised to forecast the exchange rate. The ADF test and PP test are used to make the time series stationary. To forecast the exchange rate ARIMA model and GARCH model are applied. Among the different Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models best model is selected on the basis of selection criteria. Due to the volatility clustering and ARCH effect the GARCH (1, 1) is also applied. Results of analysis showed that ARIMA (0, 1, 1 ) and GARCH (1, 1) are the most suitable models to forecast the future exchange rate. Further the GARCH (1,1) model provided the volatility with non-constant conditional variance in the exchange rate with good forecasting performance. This study is very useful for researchers, policymakers, and businesses for making decisions through accurate and timely forecasting of the exchange rate and helps them in devising their policies.

Keywords: exchange rate, ARIMA, GARCH, PAK/USD

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Authors: Huseyin Guler, Cigdem Kosar

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The aim of this study is to propose Bridge estimator for seasonal unit root tests. Seasonality is an important factor for many economic time series. Some variables may contain seasonal patterns and forecasts that ignore important seasonal patterns have a high variance. Therefore, it is very important to eliminate seasonality for seasonal macroeconomic data. There are some methods to eliminate the impacts of seasonality in time series. One of them is filtering the data. However, this method leads to undesired consequences in unit root tests, especially if the data is generated by a stochastic seasonal process. Another method to eliminate seasonality is using seasonal dummy variables. Some seasonal patterns may result from stationary seasonal processes, which are modelled using seasonal dummies but if there is a varying and changing seasonal pattern over time, so the seasonal process is non-stationary, deterministic seasonal dummies are inadequate to capture the seasonal process. It is not suitable to use seasonal dummies for modeling such seasonally nonstationary series. Instead of that, it is necessary to take seasonal difference if there are seasonal unit roots in the series. Different alternative methods are proposed in the literature to test seasonal unit roots, such as Dickey, Hazsa, Fuller (DHF) and Hylleberg, Engle, Granger, Yoo (HEGY) tests. HEGY test can be also used to test the seasonal unit root in different frequencies (monthly, quarterly, and semiannual). Another issue in unit root tests is the lag selection. Lagged dependent variables are added to the model in seasonal unit root tests as in the unit root tests to overcome the autocorrelation problem. In this case, it is necessary to choose the lag length and determine any deterministic components (i.e., a constant and trend) first, and then use the proper model to test for seasonal unit roots. However, this two-step procedure might lead size distortions and lack of power in seasonal unit root tests. Recent studies show that Bridge estimators are good in selecting optimal lag length while differentiating nonstationary versus stationary models for nonseasonal data. The advantage of this estimator is the elimination of the two-step nature of conventional unit root tests and this leads a gain in size and power. In this paper, the Bridge estimator is proposed to test seasonal unit roots in a HEGY model. A Monte-Carlo experiment is done to determine the efficiency of this approach and compare the size and power of this method with HEGY test. Since Bridge estimator performs well in model selection, our approach may lead to some gain in terms of size and power over HEGY test.

Keywords: bridge estimators, HEGY test, model selection, seasonal unit root

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Authors: Bahaa Eltahawy, Mikko Ylihärsilä, Reino Virrankoski, Esko Petäjä

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Sheet metal processing is automated, but the step from product models to the production machine control still requires human intervention. This may cause time consuming bottlenecks in the production process and increase the risk of human errors. In this paper we present a system, which automatically recognizes features from the CAD-model of the sheet metal product. By using these features, the system produces a complete model of the particular sheet metal product. Then the model is used as an input for the sheet metal processing machine. Currently the system is implemented, capable to recognize more than 11 of the most common sheet metal structural features, and the procedure is fully automated. This provides remarkable savings in the production time, and protects against the human errors. This paper presents the developed system architecture, applied algorithms and system software implementation and testing.

Keywords: feature recognition, automation, sheet metal manufacturing, CAD, CAM

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Authors: Phutthiwat Waiyawuththanapoom

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This research is objected to study the pattern and channel of distribution of Ang Thong’s court doll OTOP product and try to develop the quality of distribution of the court doll product. The population of this research is 50 court doll manufacturers of Ang Thong’s court doll. The data and information was collected by using the questionnaire and use percentage, mean and standard deviation as an analysis tools. The distribution channel of Ang Thong’s court doll can be separated into 3 channels which are direct distribution from the manufacturer, via the middleman and via the co-operated manufacturing group. In the direct distribution from the manufacturer channel, it was found that the manufacturer is given the highest rate of importance to how they keep the inventory. In the distribution via the middleman channel, it was found that the manufacturer is given the highest rate of importance to the distribution efficiency. But in the distribution via the co-operated manufacturing group, it was found that the manufacturer is given the highest rate of importance to the public relationship.

Keywords: distribution, court doll, Ang Thong province, business and social sciences

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Authors: Somayeh Lotfi, Manuel Eggimann, Eckhard Wagner, Radosław Mróz, Jan Deja

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One of the main environmental challenges in the construction industry is a strong social force to decrease the bulk transport of the building materials in urban environments. Considering this fact, applying more in-situ recycling technologies for Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) is an urgent need. The European C2CA project develops a novel concrete recycling technology that can be performed purely mechanically and in situ. The technology consists of a combination of smart demolition, gentle grinding of the crushed concrete in an autogenous mill, and a novel dry classification technology called ADR to remove the fines. The feasibility of this recycling process was examined in demonstration projects involving in total 20,000 tons of End of Life (EOL) concrete from two office towers in Groningen, The Netherlands. This paper concentrates on the second demonstration project of C2CA, where EOL concrete was recycled on an industrial site. After recycling, the properties of the produced Recycled Aggregate (RA) were investigated, and results are presented. An experimental study was carried out on mechanical and durability properties of produced Recycled Aggregate Concrete (RAC) compared to those of the Natural Aggregate Concrete (NAC). The aim was to understand the importance of RA substitution, w/c ratio and type of cement to the properties of RAC. In this regard, two series of reference concrete with strength classes of C25/30 and C45/55 were produced using natural coarse aggregates (rounded and crushed) and natural sand. The RAC series were created by replacing parts of the natural aggregate, resulting in series of concrete with 0%, 20%, 50% and 100% of RA. Results show that the concrete mix design and type of cement have a decisive effect on the properties of RAC. On the other hand, the substitution of RA even at a high percentage replacement level has a minor and manageable impact on the performance of RAC. This result is a good indication towards the feasibility of using RA in structural concrete by modifying the mix design and using a proper type of cement.

Keywords: C2CA, ADR, concrete recycling, recycled aggregate, durability

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Authors: Saja M. Nabat Al-Ajrash, Charles Browning, Rose Eckerle, Li Cao

Abstract:

A process that utilizes a combination of additive manufacturing (AM), a preceramic polymer, and a chopped carbon fiber precursorto fabricate Silicon Carbon/ Carbon fibers (SiC/C) composites have been developed. The study has shown a promising, cost-effective, and efficient route to fabricate complex SiC/C composites using additive manufacturing. A key part of this effort was the mapping of the material’s microstructure through the thickness of the composite. Microstructural features in the pyrolyzed composites through the successive AM layers, such as defects, crystal size and their distribution, interatomic spacing, chemical bonds, were investigated using high-resolution scanning and transmission electron microscopy. As a result, the microstructure developed in SiC/C composites after printing, cure, and pyrolysis has been successfully mapped through the thickness of the derived composites. Dense and nearly defect-free parts after polymer to ceramic conversion were observed. The ceramic matrix composite displayed three coexisting phases, including silicon carbide, silicon oxycarbide, and turbostratic carbon. Lattice fringes imaging and X-Ray Diffraction analysis showed well-defined SiC and turbostratic carbon features. The cross-sectional mapping of the printed-then-pyrolyzed structures has confirmed consistent structural and chemical features within the internal layers of the AM parts. Noteworthy, however, is that a crust-like area with high crystallinity has been observed in the first and last external layers. Not only do these crust-like regions have structural characteristics distinct from the internal layers, but they also have elemental distributions different than the internal layers.

Keywords: SiC, preceramic polymer, additive manufacturing, ceramic

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Authors: Guoliang Fan, Aiping Li, Xuemei Liu, Liyun Xu

Abstract:

The performance of the tightening equipment will decline with the working process in manufacturing system. The main manifestations are the randomness and discretization degree increasing of the tightening performance. To evaluate the degradation tendency of the tightening performance accurately, a complexity measurement approach based on Kolmogorov entropy is presented. At first, the states of performance index are divided for calibrating the discrete degree. Then the complexity measurement model based on Kolmogorov entropy is built. The model describes the performance degradation tendency of tightening equipment quantitatively. At last, a study case is applied for verifying the efficiency and validity of the approach. The research achievement shows that the presented complexity measurement can effectively evaluate the degradation tendency of the tightening equipment. It can provide theoretical basis for preventive maintenance and life prediction of equipment.

Keywords: complexity measurement, Kolmogorov entropy, manufacturing system, performance evaluation, tightening equipment

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Authors: Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Sanjay Sharma

Abstract:

Textile manufacturing industry uses a substantial amount of chemicals not only in the production processes but also in manufacturing the raw materials. Dyes are the most significant raw material which provides colour to the fabric and yarn. Dyes are produced by using a large amount of chemicals both organic and inorganic in nature. Dyes are further classified as Reactive or Vat Dyes which are mostly used in cotton textiles. In the process of application of dyes to the cotton fiber, yarn or fabric, several auxiliary chemicals are also used in the solution called dyebath to improve the absorption of dyes. There is a very little absorption of dyes and auxiliary chemicals and a residual amount of all these substances is released as the spent dye bath effluent. Because of the wide variety of chemicals used in cotton textile dyes, there is always a risk of harmful effects which may not be apparent immediately but may have an irreversible impact in the long term. Colour imparted by the dyes to the water also has an adverse effect on its public acceptability and the potability. This study has been conducted with an objective to assess the feasibility of reuse of the spent dye bath. Studies have been conducted in two independent industries manufacturing dyed cotton yarn and dyed cotton fabric respectively. These have been referred as Unit-I and Unit-II. The studies included assessment of reduction in pollution levels and the economic benefits of such reuse. The study conclusively establishes that the reuse of spent dyebath results in prevention of pollution, reduction in pollution loads and cost of effluent treatment & production. This pollution prevention technique presents a good preposition for pollution prevention in cotton textile industry.

Keywords: dyes, dyebath, reuse, toxic, pollution, costs

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Authors: Li-Hsueh Chen

Abstract:

Efficient operation is more and more important for managers of hotels. Unlike the manufacturing industry, hotels cannot store their products. In addition, many hotels provide room service, and food and beverage service simultaneously. When efficiencies of hotels are evaluated, the internal structure should be considered. Hence, based on the operational characteristics of hotels, this study proposes a DEA model to simultaneously assess the efficiencies among the room production division, food and beverage production division, room service division and food and beverage service division. However, not only the enhancement of efficiency but also the adjustment of scale can improve the performance. In terms of the adjustment of scale, scale elasticity or returns to scale can help to managers to make decisions concerning expansion or contraction. In order to construct a reasonable approach to measure the efficiencies and scale elasticities of hotels, this study builds an alternative variable-returns-to-scale-based two-stage network DEA model with the combination of parallel and series structures to explore the scale elasticities of the whole system, room production division, food and beverage production division, room service division and food and beverage service division based on the data of international tourist hotel industry in Taiwan. The results may provide valuable information on operational performance and scale for managers and decision makers.

Keywords: efficiency, scale elasticity, network data envelopment analysis, international tourist hotel

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Authors: Veronika Lesáková, Silvia Slezáková, František Štěpánek

Abstract:

Additive manufacturing technologies producing drug dosage forms aimed at personalized medicine applications are promising strategies with several advantages over the conventional production methods. One of the emerging technologies is 3D printing which reduces manufacturing steps and thus allows a significant drop in expenses. A decrease in material consumption is also a highly impactful benefit as the tested drugs are frequently expensive substances. In addition, 3D printed dosage forms enable increased patient compliance and prevent misdosing as the dosage forms are carefully designed according to the patient’s needs. The incorporation of multiple drugs into a single dosage form further increases the degree of personalization. Our research focuses on the development of 3D printed tablets incorporating multiple drugs (candesartan, losartan) and thermoplastic polymers (e.g., KlucelTM HPC EF). The filaments, an essential feed material for 3D printing,wereproduced via hot-melt extrusion. Subsequently, the extruded filaments of various formulations were 3D printed into tablets using an FDM 3D printer. Then, we have assessed the influence of the internal structure of 3D printed tablets and formulation on dissolution behaviour by obtaining the dissolution profiles of drugs present in the 3D printed tablets. In conclusion, we have developed tablets containing multiple drugs providing modified release profiles. The 3D printing experiments demonstrate the high tunability of 3D printing as each tablet compartment is constructed with a different formulation. Overall, the results suggest that the 3D printing technology is a promising manufacturing approach to dual tablet preparation for personalized medicine.

Keywords: 3D printing, drug delivery, hot-melt extrusion, dissolution kinetics

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Authors: Johannes Dregger, Michael Schmidt, Christian Prasse, Michael ten Hompel

Abstract:

Most of the today’s companies face increasing need to operate efficiently. Driven by global trends like shorter product cycles, mass customization and the rising speed of delivery, manufacturing value chains are becoming more and more distributed. Manufacturing processes are becoming highly integrated, e.g. 3D printing. All these changes are affecting companies´ organization. They are leading towards individual, small scale, and ad-hoc logistics processes and structures, and finally, towards a significant increase in the importance of logistics itself since traditional value chains transform into agile value networks. In the past logistics has been following manufacturing but in the future industry, this role allocation might change. With this increase in the logistics practice of companies and businesses, the relevance of logistics research as the methodological foundation of logistics networks and processes is gaining importance. Logistics research is evolving into a central and highly interdisciplinary science for the future industry. Using the example of Germany, this paper discusses ways to establish logistics as a central scientific discipline of the future industry. About three million people work in the logistics sector in Germany. Only automotive and retail industry have more employees. Even though there is a bunch of logistics degree programs at more than 100 institutions of higher education, a common understanding of logistics as a research discipline is missing. In this paper an innovative approach will be presented, including; identified perspectives on logistics, such as process orientation, IT orientation or employees orientation, relevant scientific disciplines for logistics science, a concept for interdisciplinary research approaches to unify the perspectives of the different scientific disciplines on logistics and the methodological base of logistics science.

Keywords: logistics, logistics science, logistics management, future challenges

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