The medical industry incorporates technology and breaks different types of equipment into three various categories determined according to the technologies and their usage. The first category, which is the focus of this article, consists of devices that are directly linked to the life of the patients, for example a ventilator. The purpose of this study is to develop a new reliability technique, based on the Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) and Petri Net, for Category 1 equipment. The RBD, focuses on showing how the failure of different parts could affect the sub-systems of the equipment and how those failures could cause an overall system failure. The second method, Petri Net, is a tool that is used to analyze various types of information processing systems. Combining these two methods will allow the user to determine the reliability of the different systems and subsystems with various pieces of equipment. The knowledge gained by this analysis will be used to determine the likelihood that the failure of specific subsystems will cause an overall system failure. The overall anticipated result is to thoroughly develop this new methodology. The complete process that is used to finish the calculation process for the subsystems will be shown, in addition to the completion of the final Reliability Block Diagram.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the Intelligent Enterprise Resource Planning (I-ERP) System can be used in company operations. Machine learning is embedded in a decision tree algorithm to demonstrate the viability of intelligent technology in an ERP system and to enhance the quality of operations through an I-ERP system. The study consists of two steps. In the first step, the algorithm uses the decision tree algorithm to demonstrate the application of intelligent technology in an ERP system. In the second step, the proposed model analyzes four quality criteria related to company operations through I-ERP system in order to determine whether or not I-ERP has significant improvement on managers’ decisions. As a result, the use of I-EPR may improve the quality of operations, agile respond to market demand, increase the efficiency and the competitiveness in organizations. An illustration example is provided to demonstrate the application of I-ERP.

Six Sigma is recognized as an essential tool for continuous improvement of quality. A large num-ber of publications by various authors reflect the interest in this technique. Reviews of literature on Six Sigma have been done in the past by a few authors. However, considering the contributions in the recent times, a more comprehensive review is attempted here. The authors have examined vari-ous papers and have proposed a different scheme of classification. In addition, certain gaps that would provide hints for further research in Six Sigma have been identified. As a results the rela-tionship between Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), and how these two concepts support the quality system for organizational learning and innovation performance have been discussed that would help researchers, academicians and practitioners to take a closer look at the growth, devel-opment and applicability of Six Sigma in Design.

Decision makers of various disciplines are facing challenges because of vast availability of options in the real world. Even though each and every decision made by a decision maker is being done with a great knowledge and conscience, the decision maker needs suitable support to choose the most favorable option to acquire great results in an agile environment. Supplier selection is imperative for an efficient supply chain management. Many industries are in need of effective decision making tools which aids them in valuable supplier selection. This paper proposes a model using Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tools viz., Grey Relational Analysis (GRA), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). GRA is used to shortlist the criteria from the available options, while AHP is used to assign weights to the criteria. The final supplier in the selection process is obtained using TOPSIS. The proposed GRA-AHP-TOPSIS model (GRAHP TOP) is used to analyze and formulate the important criteria and the applicability of the model is tested on a case of a small scale industry located in South India.

A sequential production line is defined as a set of sequential operations within a factory or distribution center whereby entities undergo one or more processes to produce a final product. Sequential production lines may gain efficiencies such as increased throughput or reduced work in progress by utilizing specific configurations while maintaining the chronological order of operations. One problem identified by the authors via a case study is that, some of the configurations, such as work cell or U-shaped production lines that have groups of buffers, often increase the space utilization. Therefore, many facilities do not take advantage of the configuration efficiencies that a work cell or U-shaped production line provide. To solve this problem, the authors introduce the concept of a buffer cluster. The production line implemented with one or more buffer clusters maintains the throughput of the line, identical to that with dedicated buffers, but with the clusters reduces the buffer storage space. The paper derives a time based parametric model that determines the sizing of the buffer cluster, provides a reduced time space for which to search for the buffer cluster sizing, and determines an optimal buffer clustering policy that can be applied to any N-server, N+1 buffer sequential line configuration with deterministic processing time. This solution reduces the buffer storage space utilized while ensuring no overflows or underflows occur in the buffer. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how the buffer clustering policy serves as an input into a facility layout tool that provides the optimal production line layout.

In this paper we investigate the use of lot streaming in non-permutation flowshop scheduling problems. The objective is to minimize the makespan subject to the standard flowshop constraints, but where it is now permitted to reorder jobs between machines. In addition, the jobs can be divided into manageable sublots, a strategy known as lot streaming. Computational experiments show that lot streaming reduces the makespan up to 43% for a wide range of instances when compared to the case in which no job splitting is applied. The benefits grow as the number of stages in the production process increases but reach a limit. Beyond a certain point, the division of jobs into additional sublots does not improve the solution.

Moment frame connections have high share to withstand deformation caused by earthquakes. Hence, connections of reinforced concrete structures must have sufficient plasticity in addition to resistance. Observations after earthquakes and the results of tests prove that structural damages have been more observed in the connections area. Implementation of reinforcement in limited volume of connection area is difficult and hence improving the behavior of the connection areas has been among the major issues discussed in structural engineering. In addition, corrosion in the bad environmental conditions is one of the main difficulties in implementing steels in concrete arming. Among alternative materials, FRP rebars that have higher durability, were given attention in recent years. In this study, the behavior of the element has been compared in these conditions by modeling the connection area with steel and FRP rebars.

This study synthesizes the use of chemicals to prevent one of common concrete durability problems, alkali-silica reaction (ASR), and can help researchers (i) identify widely used potential chemicals and evaluate these chemical solutions to prevent ASR with proper understanding of mechanisms, and (ii) to identify the research gaps in order to develop guidelines and implementation plan on the use of these chemicals for future research.

Increasing in attentions to the environment, city legislative and social problems make companies change their prospects towards supply chain management and design sustainable transportation networks. In this paper, two-stage problem have been investigated in which the transportation stage is considered before Location-Routing Problem, so we call it Transportation-Location-Routing Problem (TLRP). It is an extension of the two-echelon Location-Routing Problem. In the first stage, there is a transportation problem with truck capacity limitation. Furthermore, customers’ time windows should be met in the second stage to make the mode more realistic. Minimization of distribution cost, fuel consumption, and carbon dioxide emission along with balancing the workloads for city drivers are considered as the objective functions of the mathematical model to design a sustainable distribution network. To tackle these conflicting objectives, Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) are applied to solve the problem. A new customized chromosome based on a priority based technique is presented for the problem. Due to the three comparison metrics for multi-objective problems, with tolerating a little more computational time, MOPSO has the better performance in this problem than NSGA-II.

The use of elastic elements in actuators can be effective in improving their performance. The present paper examines the different layouts of the elastic element in actuators, choosing the appropriate design, and then designing a series elastic actuator for use in an active knee orthosis. For this purpose, the design elements of actuators were extracted using the knee data for walking. In the next step, considering the effect of the spring stiffness on the energy consumption and actuator’s peak power, its optimum amount for gait was calculated. Afterwards, the effect of adding the spring has been shown at an optimal value. Since the human knee in a gait cycle involves position and force control, designing an efficient controller to track the force and position of the knee during the gait cycle is the next section of this study. Due to the specific application of this actuator, its volume and size are important for the user. For this reason, it is necessary to design and construct an actuator with a suitable size and weight, with good output. For this purpose, a lightweight and low volume actuator was fabricated.