This exploratory paper will investigate the concept of supply chain risk management involving supplier monitoring within a cooperative supply chain. Inventory levels and stockouts are the key metrics. Key to this concept is the assumptions that (1) out-of-control supplier situations are causal triggers for downstream supply chain disruptions, (2) these triggers can potentially be predicted using statistical process monitoring tools, and (3) carrying excess inventory only when needed is preferable as opposed to carrying excess inventory on a continual basis. Simulation experimentation will be used to explore several supplier monitoring strategies based on statistical runs tests, specifically "runs up and down" and/or "runs above and below" tests. The sensitivity of these tests in detecting non-random supplier behavior will be explored and their performance will be investigated relative to stock-outs and inventory levels. Finally, the effects of production capacity and yield rate will be examined. Results indicate out-of-control supplier signals can be detected beforehand and stock-outs can be significantly reduced by dynamically adjusting inventory levels. The largest benefit occurs when both runs tests are used together and when the supplier has sufficient production capacity to respond to downstream demand (i.e., safety stock) increases. When supplier capacity is limited, the highest benefit is achieved when yield rates are high and, thus, yield loss does not increase supplier production requirements beyond its available capacity.

The aim of this study is to correlate work piece material hardness with surface roughness in prediction studies. The proposed model is for prediction of surface roughness of tool steel materials of hardness 55 HRC to 62 HRC (±2 HRC). The machining experiments are performed under various cutting conditions using work piece of different hardness. The surface roughness of these specimens is measured. The result showed that the influence of work piece material hardness on surface finish is significant for cutting speed and feed in CNC end milling operation. It is also observed that the surface roughness prediction accuracy of Adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system using triangular membership function is better than Gaussian, bell shape membership function and regression analysis. Surface roughness prediction accuracy with material hardness as input parameter is 97.61%.

Job shop has been considered as one of the most challenging scheduling problems and there are literally tremendous efforts on reducing the complexity of solution procedure for solving job shop problem. This paper presents a heuristic method to minimize makespan for different jobs in a job shop scheduling. The proposed model is based on a constructive procedure to obtain good quality schedules, very quickly. The performance of the proposed model of this paper is examined on standard benchmarks from the literature in order to evaluate its performance. Computational results show that, despite its simplicity, the proposed heuristic is computationally efficient and practical approach for the problem.

The problem of generating a train schedule for a single-track railway system is addressed in this paper. A three stage scheduling is proposed to reduce the total train tardiness. We derived an appropriate job-shop scheduling algorithm called DR-algorithm. In the first stage, by determining appropriate weights of the dispatching rules, a pre-schedule is constructed. In the second stage, on the basis of the pre-schedule, the departure times of the trains are modified to reduce the number of conflicts in using railway sections by different trains. In the third stage, a train speed control helps the scheduler to change the trains’ speeds in order to reduce the train tardiness and to reach other objectives. The factual train schedule is based on the modified train speeds and on the modified departure times of the trains. The experimental running of the DR-algorithm on the benchmark instances showed this algorithm can solve train scheduling problems in a close to optimal way. In particular, the total train tardiness was reduced about 20% due to controlling train speeds and the departure times of the trains.

The objective of the study is to assess the performance of multilayer coated carbide insert in the machining of hardened AISI D2 steel (53 HRC) using Taguchi design of experiment. The experiment was designed based on Taguchi L27 orthogonal array to predict surface roughness. The S/N ratio and optimum parametric condition are analysed. The analysis of variance has also been carried out to predict the significant factors affecting surface roughness. Based on Taguchi S/N ratio and ANOVA, feed is the most influencing parameter for surface roughness followed by cutting speed whereas depth of cut has least significant from the experiments. In regression model, the value of R2 being 0.98 indicates that 98 % of the total variations are explained by the model. It indicates that the developed model can be effectively used to predict the surface roughness on the machining of D2 steel with 95% confidence intervals.

In this paper, we present a model for time dependent demand with multiple productions and rework setups. Production is demand dependent and greater than the demand rate. Production facility produces items in m production setups and one rework setup (m, 1) policy. The major reason of reverse logistic and green supply chain is rework, so it reduces the cost of production and other ecological problems. Most of the researchers developed a rework model without deteriorating items. A numerical example and sensitivity analysis is shown to describe the model.

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) offer opportunities for the manufacturers to improve their technology, competitiveness and profitability through a highly efficient and focused approach to manufacturing effectiveness. Justification, evaluation and selection of FMSs have now been receiving significant attention in the manufacturing environment. Evaluating alternative FMSs in the presence of multiple conflicting criteria and performance measures is often a difficult task for the decision maker. Preference ranking tools are special types of multi-criteria decision-making methods in which the decision maker’s preferences on criteria are aggregated together to arrive at the final evaluation and selection of the alternatives. This paper deals with the application of six most potential preference ranking methods for selecting the best FMS for a given manufacturing organization. It is observed that although the performances of these six methods are almost similar, ORESTE (Organization, Rangement Et Synthese De Donnes Relationnelles) method slightly outperforms the others. These methods use some preference function or utility value or Besson ranking of criteria and alternatives, to indicate how much an alternative is preferred to the others. Most of these methods need quantification of criteria weights or different preference parameters, but ORESTE method, being an ordinal outranking approach, only requires ordinal data and attribute rankings according to their importance. Therefore, it is particularly applicable to those situations where the decision maker is unable to provide crisp evaluation data and attribute weights.

The present work proposes a multi-objective improved teaching-learning based optimization (MO-ITLBO) algorithm for unconstrained and constrained multi-objective function optimization. The MO-ITLBO algorithm is the improved version of basic teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO) algorithm adapted for multi-objective problems. The basic TLBO algorithm is improved to enhance its exploration and exploitation capacities by introducing the concept of number of teachers, adaptive teaching factor, tutorial training and self-motivated learning. The MO-ITLBO algorithm uses a grid-based approach to adaptively assess the non-dominated solutions (i.e. Pareto front) maintained in an external archive. The performance of the MO-ITLBO algorithm is assessed by implementing it on unconstrained and constrained test problems proposed for the Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2009 (CEC 2009) competition. The performance assessment is done by using the inverted generational distance (IGD) measure. The IGD measures obtained by using the MO-ITLBO algorithm are compared with the IGD measures of the other state-of-the-art algorithms available in the literature. Finally, Lexicographic ordering is used to assess the overall performance of competitive algorithms. Results have shown that the proposed MO-ITLBO algorithm has obtained the 1st rank in the optimization of unconstrained test functions and the 3rd rank in the optimization of constrained test functions.

Co-op advertising is an interactive relationship between manufacturer and retailer(s) supply chain and makes up the majority of marketing budget in many product lines for manufacturers and retailers. This paper considers pricing and co-op advertising decisions in two-stage supply chain and develops a monopolistic retailer and duopolistic retailer & apos; s model. In these models, the manufacturer and the retailers play the Nash, Manufacturer-Stackelberg and cooperative game to make optimal pricing and co-op advertising decisions. A bargaining model is utilized for determine the best pricing and co-op advertising scheme for achieving full coordination in the supply chain.

Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) appears to be a very promising micromachining process for having higher machining rate, better precision and control, reliability, flexibility, environmental acceptability, and capability of machining a wide range of materials. It permits machining of chemically resistant materials, like titanium, copper alloys, super alloys and stainless steel to be used in biomedical, electronic, micro-electromechanical system and nano-electromechanical system applications. Therefore, the optimal use of an EMM process for achieving enhanced machining rate and improved profile accuracy demands selection of its various machining parameters. Various optimization tools, primarily Derringer’s desirability function approach have been employed by the past researchers for deriving the best parametric settings of EMM processes, which inherently lead to sub-optimal or near optimal solutions. In this paper, an attempt is made to apply an almost new optimization tool, i.e. differential search algorithm (DSA) for parametric optimization of three EMM processes. A comparative study of optimization performance between DSA, genetic algorithm and desirability function approach proves the wide acceptability of DSA as a global optimization tool.