The paper examines young consumers’ responses towards nutritional labeling, it’s information content and the importance of the functional characteristics of these labels as perceived by young consumers in making informed purchase decisions through personal interviews of 220 respondents using a structured questionnaire. Factor analysis was performed to identify the underlying dimensions among a set of nutritional labeling parameters using principal component analysis. Based on factor analysis, ten factors emerged. Regression analysis and t test indicated that, out the ten factors, only three factors namely ‘Nutritional Belief’, ‘Storage instruction & Information overload’, and ‘Exercise & Nutrition’ were significant. These factors were mainly inclined outside the purview of nutritional labeling purchase influence .It was thus concluded that nutritional labeling had less influence in purchase decisions as far as young consumers were considered. Findings of the study give practical insights on food labeling issues for the food processors and policy makers.

This study focuses on the importance of growth models, growth strategies, role of knowledge management system in the formulation of effective strategy for the enterprises following growth. Choice of an appropriate growth strategy is at the heart of any successful entrepreneurial venture. Selection of a strategy may be effective for one entrepreneur while it is not for other. Choice of Growth Strategy depends on various different factors, organisational context and environment which may vary from enterprise to enterprise. Resource based view is very important consideration for the entrepreneurs on the path of growth. Evaluation of all kind of resources helps them to grow their enterprises successfully. Selection of an appropriate growth strategy allows the entrepreneurs in overcoming growth challenges and avoiding the growth reversals and setbacks.

Packaging is often called as the fifth P of the marketing mix. Chocolate is a product which is loved to be consumed irrespective of any age group. Consumers were asked to imagine that a new chocolate bar has been launched in the market and were yet to sense (sight or taste) it or a chocolate bar which was already launched in the market and were yet to sense (sight or taste) it .The present study explored different chocolate packaging cues that could possibly influence the purchase decision of young consumers in such a scenario. Descriptive research with convenient sampling elicited 240 responses across the age group lying between 11 to 27 years. Results showed that an attractive package design was of paramount significance in first purchase of chocolate bars. The important factors which affected the buying decision were ‘Information’ and ‘Visual aesthetics’. However it was found that chocolate packaging had less influence on subsequent purchase of chocolate bars. It was also inferred that an attractive package along with a strong advertising campaign could bring prospective sales for a newly launched chocolate bar. The study also discussed the influence of chocolate packaging for national and international brands across various demographic variables.

In recent years, the availability of power plants has become increasingly important issue in most developed and developing countries. This paper aims to propose a methodology based on Markov approach to evaluate the availability simulation model for power generation system (Turbine) in a thermal power plant under realistic working environment. The effects of occurrence of failure/course of actions and availability of repair facilities on system performance have been investigated. Higher availability of the components/equipments is inherently associated with their higher reliability and maintainability. The power generation system consists of five subsystems with four possible states: full working, reduced capacity, reduced efficiency and failed state. So, its availability should be carefully evaluated in order to foresee the performance of the power plant. The availability simulation model (Av.) has been developed with the help of mathematical formulation based on Markov Birth-Death process using probabilistic approach. For this purpose, first differential equations have been generated. These equations are then solved using normalizing condition so as to determine the steady state availability of power generation system. In fact, availability analysis is very much effective in finding critical subsystems and deciding their preventive maintenance program for improving availability of the power plant as well as the power supply. From the graphs illustrated, the optimum values of failure/repair rates for maximum availability, of each subsystem is analyzed and then maintenance priorities are decided for all subsystems.The present paper highlights that in this system, Turbine governing subsystem is most sensitive demands more improvement in maintainability as compared to the other subsystems. While Turbine lubrication subsystem is least sensitive.

In this article, a multi-echelon supply chain for growing and deteriorating items, where the grower has a lot of live newborn items (growing) is discussed. The grower transfers the matured inventory to the processor in each shipment. The processor begins to process the stock as a ready-sale product in the market. The processor also delivers the processed inventory to the retailer in each shipment in the non-processing period of his cycle length. Then the processor offers trade credit to the retailer and makes the retailer agree to share a portion of his profit with him. The product’s life cycle when in the hand of the retailer is certain and it expires after some time t. Carbon emission during processing is considered while packing and preserving the livestock for sale. Depending on these assumptions, there are six possibilities to discuss profit values. Sensitivity analysis was also brought to verify the optimal determined values. The profit-sharing sharing method’s outcome benefits the processor and the retailer more.

The paper focuses on the application of TODIM (TOmada de Decisao Interativa Multicriterio), which means in Portuguese ‘interactive and multi-criteria decision making’) method in identify-ing the most attractive and affordable under-construction housing project in the city of Kolkata in India. In this decision making problem, 14 under-construction housing projects spanning in and around Kolkata are evaluated with respect to ten important criteria. The deployment of TODIM method can well be validated with respect to its ability to deal with both qualitative and quantitative criteria in the presence of risk factors. This method is also acknowledged to be a robust tool being almost unaffected by the varying values of the attenuation factor of losses. Using TODIM method, an under-construction housing project at Rajarhat in the eastern fringes of Kolkata city is selected as the optimal choice while meeting the requirements of investors, inhabitants and other stakeholders.

An Eddy current damper uses magnets to suppress vibrations due to external excitations. These dampers also called electromagnetic dampers, have advantages of no mechanical contact, high reliability and stability, but require a relatively large volume and mass to attain a given amount of damping. The magnets respond to an external excitation field. Along with the construction of the damper, COMSOL software is used for analysis of the eddy current damper and got various results like magnetic flux density, eddy current intensity, velocity and acceleration of the moving magnet. For this a standard dimension of an automotive vehicle damper is used so that the prototype could be tested on a damper testing machine. The standard dimension is chosen to increase the adaptability, compatibility and to ease of testing the damper. After this task the response of damper under various loads is observed. Different materials of housing tube are taken to observe the effects of various parameters like flux density, current intensity and, of course, the damping capability of the prototype damper.

In the present world stiffeners are widely used to fulfill the requirement of high stiffness. Stiffened plates are used in most of the mechanical structures. In this paper free vibration analysis of eccentric and concentric stiffened isotropic plate with central stiffener and double stiffener has been studied and effect of various parameters such as boundary conditions, aspect ratio on non-dimensional frequency parameter of plate are investigated. Comparison of non-dimensional frequency parameter for eccentric and concentric isotropic stiffened plate with effect of number of stiffener at different mode shapes, aspect ratios and boundary conditions is studied using ANSYS parametric design language (APDL) code. A ten nodded element (SOLID 187) from ANSYS element library is used for the discretization of proposed stiffened isotropic plate. Convergence study of developed model with respect to the number of modes has been done and results are compared from the related available published literature. Non dimensional frequencies are higher for fully clamped boundary condition for eccentric and concentric stiffened isotropic plate in comparison to other boundary condition. It is also seen that non dimensional frequencies are increases in a moderate value for eccentric and concentric isotopic plate with double stiffener in comparison to the central stiffener.

In the past decades, a number of researchers have made their significant contributions to develop different approaches for solving a very challenging problem of commercial off-the shelf (COTS) selection. The development of software with high quality and minimum development time has always been a difficult job for the software developers. Therefore, in today’s scenario, software developers move towards the implementation of component based software engineering that relies on the integration of small pieces of code namely (COTS). In this study, we present a comprehensive descriptive explanation of the various COTS evaluation and selection approaches developed by various researchers in the past to understand the concept of COTS selection. The advantages and disadvantages of each COTS selection approach are also provided, which will give a better prospect to the readers to understand the various existing COTS evaluation and selection approaches.

This paper presents a numerical analysis of free vibration of thin circular and annular plate using finite element method. The first five natural frequencies are presented for uniform annular plates of various inner-to-outer radius ratios, with nine possible combinations of free, clamped and simply supported boundary conditions at the inner and outer edges of plates. The accuracy of the method is established by comparing the results available in the literature. Results show that natural frequency parameter increases as the inner-to-outer radius ratio increases except in case of free boundary condition, for which it decreases with the inner-to-outer radius ratio. This result provides benchmark values that can be used to validate result obtained by other approximate approaches such as finite difference method, differential quadrature method and boundary element method.