The teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm is finding a large number of applications in different fields of engineering and science since its introduction in 2011. The major applications are found in electrical engineering, mechanical design, thermal engineering, manufacturing engineering, civil engineering, structural engineering, computer engineering, electronics engineering, physics, chemistry, biotechnology and economics. This paper presents a review of applications of TLBO algorithm and a tutorial for solving the unconstrained and constrained optimization problems. The tutorial is expected to be useful to the beginners.

The machinability of a material can be defined as the ease with which it can be machined. Materials with good machinability property require less power to cut, can be cut quickly, and easily obtain a good finish without wearing the tooling much. Therefore, to manufacture components economically, production engineers are challenged to discover ways to determine machinability of materials which mainly depends on their mechanical properties, as well as on other cutting conditions. In this paper, the machinability characteristics of alloys of three materials, i.e. aluminium, copper and steel are studied applying grey TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) method. For each case, eight different alloys are considered whose machinability is evaluated based on different mechanical properties which are expressed in grey numbers. Using the adopted methodology, it now becomes easier for the manufacturers to select a particular alloy that can be easily machined. It is observed that A357RC, CuCr1Zr and AISI 5140 are the best machinable aluminium, copper and steel alloys, respectively. It is also found that the ranking performance of grey TOPSIS method remains unaffected with the variation in greyness of the considered mechanical property values.

The outset of new technologies, systems and applications in manufacturing sector has no doubt lighten up our workload, yet the chance causes of variation in production system cannot be eliminated completely. Every produced/ordered lot may have some fraction of defectives which may vary from process to process. In addition the situation is more susceptible when the items are deteriorating in nature. However, the defective items can be secluded from the good quality lot through a careful inspection process. Thus, a screening process is obligatory in today’s technology driven industry which has the customer satisfaction as its only motto. Moreover, in order to survive in the current global markets, credit financing has been proven a very influential promotional tool to attract new customers and a good inducement policy for the retailers. Keeping this scenario in mind, the present paper investigates an inventory model for a retailer dealing with imperfect quality deteriorating items under permissible delay in payments. Shortages are allowed and fully backlogged. This model jointly optimizes the order quantity and shortages by maximizing the expected total profit. A mathematical model is developed to depict this scenario. Results have been validated with the help of numerical example. Comprehensive sensitivity analysis has also been presented.

Waste collection is an important municipal service that charges large expenditures to waste management (WM) system. In this study, a hierarchical structure is proposed in order to minimize total cost of waste collection routing problem. Moreover, in second stage destructive environmental effects of waste transportation are minimized concurrently through taking advantage of a road/rail transportation system. In the proposed multimodal transportation system, waste packs are transferred to final destination while travel time and risk of environmental threatening is minimized. The discussed problem is formulated mathematically in two stages. In the first stage, a household waste collection routing problem is formulated while, in second stage a multimodal transportation system is routed to transfer waste packs to final destination through roads and railroads. In order to solve the proposed NP hard models, an improved genetic algorithm is developed. Comparison of the obtained results with those of GAMS for small-size samples validates the proposed models.

In the global critical economic scenario, inflation plays a vital role in deciding optimal pricing of goods in any business entity. This article presents two single-vendor single-buyer integrated supply chain inventory models with inflation and time value of money. Shortage is allowed during the lead time and it is partially backlogged. Lead time is controllable and can be reduced using crashing cost. In the first model, we consider the demand of lead time follows a normal distribution, and in the second model, it is considered distribution-free. For both cases, our objective is to minimize the integrated system cost by simultaneously optimizing the order quantity, safety factor, lead time and number of lots. The discounted cash flow and classical optimization technique are used to derive the optimal solution for both cases. Numerical examples including the sensitivity analysis of system parameters is provided to validate the results of the supply chain models.

In the recent years, issues like high competitive pressure, globalization, business difficulties, resources limits, technological complications and activities specialization, fast changes in environment, etc. have caused organizations to reconsider their management methods. As a result, they are looking forward to branding new strategies in order to achieve competitive advantages. Focusing on main competences and outsourcing most of the activities are some of these strategies. Assessment management and selecting the appropriate contractor who holds adequate efficiency is of critical importance for having a project accomplished in time and with foreseen resources. Various qualitative and quantitative factors of different importance are involved in contractors’ assessment and should be taken into account before decision making. In this paper, once the factors are identified using fuzzy screening method, they are prioritized according to their importance by means of fuzzy hierarchical analysis.

Enterprise architecture, with detailed descriptions of the functions of information technology in the organization, tries to reduce the complexity of technology applications resulting in tools with greater efficiency in achieving the objectives of the organization. Enterprise architecture consists of a set of models describing this technology in different components performance as well as various aspects of the applications in any organization. Therefore, information technology development and maintenance management can perform well within organizations. This study aims to suggest a method to identify different types of services in service-oriented architecture analysis step that applies some previous approaches in an integrated form and, based on the principles of software engineering, to provide a simpler and more transparent approach through the expression of analysis details. Advantages and disadvantages of proposals should be evaluated before the implementation and costs allocation. Evaluation methods can better identify strengths and weaknesses of the current situation apart from selecting appropriate model out of several suggestions, and clarify this technology development solution for organizations in the future. We will be able to simulate data and processes flow within the organization by converting the output of the model to colored Petri nets and evaluate and test it by examining various inputs to enterprise architecture before implemented in terms of reliability and response time. A model of application has been studied for the proposed model and the results can describe and design architecture for data.

In many quality control applications, the quality of a process or product is explained by the relationship between response variable and one or more explanatory variables, called a profile. In this paper, a new fuzzy EWMA control chart for phase II fuzzy profile monitoring is proposed. To this end, we extend EWMA control charts to its equivalent Fuzzy type and then implement fuzzy ranking methods to determine whether the process fuzzy profile is under or out of control. The proposed method is capable of identifying small changes in process under condition of process profile explaining parameters vagueness, roughness and uncertainty. Determining the source of changes, this method provides us with the possibility of recognizing the causes of process transition from stable mode, removing these causes and restoring the process stable mode.

The present work deals with the comparison of four multi response optimization methods, viz. multiple response signal-to-noise (MRSN) ratio, weighted signal-to-noise (WSN) ratio, Grey relational analysis (GRA), and VIKOR (VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje in Serbian) methods taking a case study in turning mild steel specimen using HSS cutting tool. The various factors like cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut and coolant flow rate are considered as the input process variables, while the material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (SR) and specific energy consumption (SEC) are considered as various performance characteristics. One set of experimental data is analyzed using the standardized procedures. The optimization performances of these four methods are compared. The results show that MRSN ratio method proves to be the best optimization method. It is found that the feed rate has a highest impact on the overall performance as compared to other process parameters.

Fault detection process (FDP) and Fault correction process (FCP) are important phases of software development life cycle (SDLC). It is essential for software to undergo a testing phase, during which faults are detected and corrected. The main goal of this article is to allocate the testing resources in an optimal manner to minimize the cost during testing phase using FDP and FCP under dynamic environment. In this paper, we first assume there is a time lag between fault detection and fault correction. Thus, removal of a fault is performed after a fault is detected. In addition, detection process and correction process are taken to be independent simultaneous activities with different budgetary constraints. A structured optimal policy based on optimal control theory is proposed for software managers to optimize the allocation of the limited resources with the reliability criteria. Furthermore, release policy for the proposed model is also discussed. Numerical example is given in support of the theoretical results.