Nowadays, industrial robots are being pervasively used in almost every manufacturing organization for improving operational quality, safety and productivity. Depending on the nature of task to be performed, many varieties of robots are now commercially available from different manufacturers. For efficiently carrying out the designed task, a number of functional attributes of an industrial robot are also simultaneously responsible. Therefore, selection of an appropriate and competitive robot alternative becomes a complicated and equally challenging task for the decision makers. A quite strong model of multi-criteria decision-making is needed to deal with this problem of industrial robot evaluation and selection. In this paper, the applicability of fuzzy axiomatic design (FAD) principles is explored for solving a real time robot selection problem. Seven candidate robots which are commercially available for light assembly operations are evaluated with respect to a mix of nine criteria. All these criteria are either qualitative in nature or expressed as a range of numerical values. Suitability rankings of all the feasible alternatives are derived using FAD methodology, thus establishing it as a systematic and dependable tool for solving industrial robot selection problems in fuzzy environment.

With ever-increasing demands for high surface finish and complex shape geometries on various difficult-to-machine materials, conventional metal removal methods are now being replaced by non-traditional machining (NTM) processes. These NTM processes use energy in its direct form to remove material from the workpiece surface. They are also cost effective for a wide range of micro- and nano-level applications. For effective utilization of different NTM processes, it is quite important to study their characteristics and material removal mechanisms in order to identify the most significant control parameters affecting the process responses. In this paper, a data mining approach using classification and regression tree algorithm is employed to identify the most important input parameters of three NTM processes, i.e. micro electro discharge milling process, wire electrical discharge machining process and laser beam machining process. The derived observations are also validated using the analysis of variance results.

With the inception of high-speed internet data services and ever-growing technical advancement in manufacturing technology, the integration of production systems and the internet of things to produce different types of jobs via cloud computing has become possible. The internet-enabled advanced automatic production systems can be referred to as the cyber-physical production systems (CPPS). The use of CPPS via cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT) can offer high productivity and high flexibility for the production of jobs in a dynamic production environment with varying specifications. The aim of this paper is to present a generalized synergic framework between different production facilities locating at different geographical locations to realize an energy-saving and efficient cyber-physical production system for the production of different types of jobs in the context of the industry 4.0 and beyond. In addition to the above, the study also identifies a need to address large scale multi-objective optimization issues to make the best decisions for different combinatorial production scenarios by using CPPS that are functioning in smart production facilities at different geographical locations.

This paper deals with a deterministic inventory model developed for deteriorating items having two separate storage facilities (owned and rented warehouses) due to limited capacity of the existing storage (owned warehouse) with linear time dependent demand (increasing) over a fixed finite time horizon. The model is formulated with infinite replenishment and the successive replenishment cycle lengths are in arithmetic progression. Partially backlogged shortages are allowed. The stocks of rented warehouse (RW) are transported to the owned warehouse (OW) in continuous release pattern. For this purpose, the model is formulated as a constrained non-linear mixed integer programming problem. For solving the problem, an advanced genetic algorithm (GA) has been developed. This advanced GA is based on ranking selection, elitism, whole arithmetic crossover and non-uniform mutation dependent on the age of the population. Our objective is to determine the optimal replenishment number, lot-size of two-warehouses (OW and RW) by maximizing the profit function. The model is illustrated with four numerical examples and sensitivity analyses of the optimal solution are performed with respect to different parameters.

Supplier selection is always found to be a complex decision-making problem in manufacturing environment. The presence of several independent and conflicting evaluation criteria, either qualitative or quantitative, makes the supplier selection problem a candidate to be solved by multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. Even several MCDM methods have already been proposed for solving the supplier selection problems, the need for an efficient method that can deal with qualitative judgments related to supplier selection still persists. In this paper, the applicability and usefulness of measuring attractiveness by a categorical-based evaluation technique (MACBETH) is demonstrated to act as a decision support tool while solving two real time supplier selection problems having qualitative performance measures. The ability of MACBETH method to quantify the qualitative performance measures helps to provide a numerical judgment scale for ranking the alternative suppliers and selecting the best one. The results obtained from MACBETH method exactly corroborate with those derived by the past researchers employing different mathematical approaches.

Ultrasonic machining (USM) process has multiple performance measures, e.g. material removal rate (MRR), tool wear rate (TWR), surface roughness (SR) etc., which are affected by several process parameters. The researchers commonly attempted to optimize USM process with respect to individual responses, separately. In the recent past, several systematic procedures for dealing with the multi-response optimization problems have been proposed in the literature. Although most of these methods use complex mathematics or statistics, there are some simple methods, which can be comprehended and implemented by the engineers to optimize the multiple responses of USM processes. However, the relative optimization performance of these approaches is unknown because the effectiveness of different methods has been demonstrated using different sets of process data. In this paper, the computational requirements for four simple methods are presented, and two sets of past experimental data on USM processes are analysed using these methods. The relative performances of these methods are then compared. The results show that weighted signal-to-noise (WSN) ratio method and utility theory (UT) method usually give better overall optimisation performance for the USM process than the other approaches.

This paper describes computer aided finite element analysis of parabolic leaf spring. The present work is an improvement in design of EN45A parabolic leaf spring used by a light commercial automotive vehicle. Development of a leaf spring is a long process which requires lots of test to validate the design and manufacturing variables. A three-layer parabolic leaf spring of EN45A has been taken for this work. The thickness of leaves varies from center to the outer side following a parabolic pattern. These leaf springs are designed to become lighter, but also provide a much improved ride to the vehicle through a reduction on interleaf friction. The CAD modeling of parabolic leaf spring has been done in CATIA V5 and for analysis the model is imported in ANSYS-11 workbench. The finite element analysis (FEA) of the leaf spring has been carried out by initially discretizing the model into finite number of elements and nodes and then applying the necessary boundary conditions. Maximum displacement, directional displacement, equivalent stress and weight of the assembly are the output targets of this analysis for comparison & validation of the work.

The computer numerical control (CNC) machines are chiefly used for the production of jobs with high accuracy and high speed. The CNC machining centers perform the machining operations according to the given program instructions which are commonly programmed by a CNC programmer. In this paper, a procedure to develop an automatic CNC program for machining of different types of holes by using different machine learning algorithms is developed. The machine learning algorithms namely support vector machine (SVM) and restricted boltzmann machine algorithm (RBM) with deep belief network (DBN) are used for the au-tomatic development of CNC machining programs of different types of holes. Initially, the position and other parameters of machining operations are identified and thereafter the CNC machining program is developed by using the MATLAB application. The automatically de-veloped CNC programs are tested on a CNC simulator. It is found that the application of RBM machine learning algorithm with DBN outperforms the SVM machine learning algo-rithm for the development of automatic CNC machining program for the machining of blind holes, through holes, counterbores and countersink operations.

Customer Demand Information (CDI) sharing plays a vital role in reducing the bullwhip effect as well as in improving the performance of a supply chain. The objective of the present research is to identify the best form of CDI sharing experimentally for a four-stage serial supply chain under lost sales business environment. A supply chain role play game software package is developed for conducting suitable experiments. Different forms of CDI sharing tested in this research are periodic CDI, history of CDI and CDI in the form of distribution. It is found that all forms of CDI sharing have significant impact on the reduction of bullwhip effect compared to non-sharing of information and the upstream stages in the supply chain are benefited the most under CDI sharing. The statistical analysis also confirms that sharing CDI in the form of distribution is the most effective among the various forms of information sharing studied. The percentage reductions in magnitude of order variance under the most benefitted information sharing at distributor and factory stages are 64.43 and 66.04, respectively. It is also found that the performance of a supply chain depends on the degree of customer demand information shared among the stages in the supply chain.

In the present work, Zn(II), Co(II) and Cr(II) metal complexes (3-5) of N-hydroxy-4-[(hydroxyimino)methyl]benzamidine ligand (2) were synthesized and their anti-HIV activity by inhibiting reverse transcriptase was explored. Structural characterization using NMR, FTIR, Mass, UV-Vis spectra, TGA, magnetic moment and elemental analyses were performed. The analyses show that geometry, lipophilicity and steric factor play crucial role. Cell viability test is performed on peripheral blood mononuclear cells to check toxicity of prepared compounds on immune system, shows toxicity only at higher concentration. Antimicrobial activity and DNA cleavage analysis have also been studied and reported.