Journal Of Industrial Engineering International
Volume:10 Issue: 3, Summer 2014

The survival of any organization depends upon its competitive edge. Even though Lean is one of the most powerful quality improvement methodologies, nearly two-thirds 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 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.

This paper is an extension of Hsu and Hsu(Int J Ind Eng Comput 3(5):939–948, 2012) aiming todetermine the optimal order quantity of product batchesthat contain defective items with percentage nonconformingfollowing a known probability density function.The orders are subject to 100 % screening process at arate higher than the demand rate. Shortage is backordered,and defective items in each ordering cycle arestored in a warehouse to be returned to the supplierwhen a new order is received. Although the retailer doesnot sell defective items at a lower price and only tradesperfect items (to avoid loss), a higher holding costincurs to store defective items. Using the renewalrewardtheorem, the optimal order and shortagequantities are determined. Some numerical examples aresolved at the end to clarify the applicability of theproposed model and to compare the new policy to anexisting one. The results show that the new policyprovides better expected profit per time.

Repairable standby system’s study and analysisis an important topic in reliability. Analytical techniquesbecome very complicated and unrealistic especially formodern complex systems. There have been attempts in theliterature to evolve more realistic techniques using simulationapproach for reliability analysis of systems. Thispaper proposes a hybrid approach called as Markov systemdynamics (MSD) approach which combines the Markovapproach with system dynamics simulation approach forreliability analysis and to study the dynamic behavior ofsystems. This approach will have the advantages of bothMarkov as well as system dynamics methodologies. Theproposed framework is illustrated for a standby systemwith repair. The results of the simulation when comparedwith that obtained by traditional Markov analysis clearlyvalidate the MSD approach as an alternative approach forreliability analysis.

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.

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.

In today’s highly rival market, an effectivesupplier selection process is vital to the success of anymanufacturing system. Selecting the appropriate supplier isalways a difficult task because suppliers posses variedstrengths and weaknesses that necessitate careful evaluationsprior to suppliers’ ranking. This is a complex processwith many subjective and objective factors to considerbefore the benefits of supplier selection are achieved. Thispaper identifies six extremely critical criteria and thirteensub-criteria based on the literature. A new methodologyemploying those criteria and sub-criteria is proposed for theassessment and ranking of a given set of suppliers. To handlethe subjectivity of the decision maker’s assessment, anintegration of fuzzy Delphi with fuzzy inference system hasbeen applied and a new ranking method is proposed forsupplier selection problem. This supplier selection modelenables decision makers to rank the suppliers based on threeclassifications including ‘‘extremely preferred’’, ‘‘moderatelypreferred’’, and ‘‘weakly preferred’’. In addition, ineach classification, suppliers are put in order from highestfinal score to the lowest. Finally, the methodology is verifiedand validated through an example of a numerical test bed.

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.