Manual labour in slaughterhouses is hazardous work. Workers suffer from injuries and occupational illnesses resulting from repetitive movements with sharp knives. There is a need for a robotic tool which can perform versatile tasks with a high level of precision. This knife must be able to imitate the same primary cuttings of a professional butcher and produce meat products which are acceptable to the end-market. This paper reports the results of a world-wide assessment of the fresh pork meat cuts as a performance indicator of knives specifically adapted for automated operation. These knives included Victorinox knife, bespoke double bladed Uddeholm knife, vibrating knife and novel smart knife with built-in sensing mechanism that detects in real time the contact with meat and cut depth. Physical appearances of cuts were assessed anonymously by independent responders with different backgrounds. All knives were deemed acceptable in terms of cutting quality. There was also no discernible difference of opinion between manual and robot cuts. This indicates that the new knife for robot-assisted cutting is acceptable by market.

This study aims to analyse the total quality management tools for improving service quality and client satisfaction in healthcare settings through a systematic qualitative review. Data was collected through the web of sciences (WOS), Scopus, EBSCO, PubMed, and Medline. Initially, we found 573 articles from all the sources, but after eliminating the non-relevant articles, only 24 usable articles were finalized. Furthermore, 12 articles were purely related to TQM, service quality, and client satisfaction. This study concludes that TQM practices and tools improve service quality and client satisfaction in healthcare organizations. This study provides excellent managerial and practical insights. Managers should implement the TQM tools to improve service quality and client satisfaction. This way, customer satisfaction is enhanced, and patient satisfaction is improved, leading to high operational and overall performance. This study also reveals a need for further studies to clarify the role of TQM tools on service quality and patient satisfaction.

The poor maintenance and usage of the equipment and machines of a vegetable oil manufacturing company adversely affect its competitive advantage. These industries are faced with numerous equipment maintenance challenges in the path to increasing their throughput as well as profitability. To address the said maintenance challenges, process data were obtained for the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) factors after their Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation in the company. Minitab 21 software was used to analyze the data collected, and the results showed that the mean for quality, availability, and performance obtained were 96.929%, 63.35%, and 61.20%, respectively. This shows that the quality of products is the greatest OEE factor that vegetable oil manufacturing companies must consider meticulously to reduce the six big losses in their production processes. Response Surface Method (RSM) with Central Composite design, with the application of Design Expert 13 software, was used to model, analyze, and optimize the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) using availability, quality, and performance as the input parameters. The analysis of both the actual and coded values, which is the main contribution of the study, showed that quality has the greatest value followed by availability and performance. It was found that, to effectively reduce the six big losses, the quality, performance, and availability should be targeted as 98.3052%, 81.6022%, and 80.103%, respectively.

This study investigated the effect of strategic planning and total quality management practices on organisational productivity. This study employed a quantitative approach using Jamovi software. Sample data were collected from 167 respondents who are in Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) management using a structured-questionnaire. Model fit and construct validity were checked using confirmatory factor analysis and correlation matrix while mediation analysis was carried out using GLM procedure. The results of study present that strategic planning has a significant effect on productivity. The results also indicate that customer focus and important innovation foster organizational productivity and partially mediate the relationship between strategic planning and productivity. The study also shows that education and training has no significant effect on productivity and does not mediate strategic planning and productivity association.

Hot rolled 40Cr and W6Mo5Cr4V2 steels were diffusion-welded by using a 4-staged process including uniaxial 50 kN compression at 1200 oC in 10^-5 mbar vacuum with following cooling down to room temperature. Structural 40Cr and high-speed tool W6Mo5Cr4V2 steels are dissimilar, since they are different (i) in content of host Fe element and alloying Cr, W, V, Mo elements, (ii) in phase composition (40Cr steel is single-phased and W6Mo5Cr4V2 steel is multi-phased), (iii) in microstructure (homogeneous inclusions-less microstructure is characteristic for 40Cr steel, composite microstructure consisting of matrix Fe-based phase with metal (W, V, Mo) carbides is characteristic of W6Mo5Cr4V2 steel), and (iv) in grain structure (40Cr steel is coarse-grained with grain ~100 µm size and W6Mo5Cr4V2 steel is fine-grained with grain size of several µm). Phase composition, microstructure and grain structure of the steels are retained after welding. Diffusion redistribution of Fe, Cr, W, V, Mo atoms results in forming the diffusion zones with different widths (several µm for W, V and Mo, ~25 for Cr and ~15 µm for Fe). Resulting concentration Cr profiles are typical for diffusion from limited sources and could be satisfactorily described by diffusion coefficient equal to ~1.1∙10^-14 m²∙s^-1 (the coefficient is weighted over the entire temperature range from 1200 oC to room temperature). Within the diffusion Cr and Fe zones, the Vickers microhardness decreases from ~2000 HV (for W6Mo5Cr4V2 steel) to ~530 HV (for 40Cr steel). During room-temperature tensile tests, the diffusion-welded steels were always fractured not in the diffusion joint but in 40Cr steel.

The study's major purpose is to determine the factors that affect the settlement of land complaints and propose some policy implications to improve the settlement of land complaints. Experts are asked about the factors that may affect and their impact rates on the settlement of land complaints when the State acquires land. The proposed research model has 5 hypothetical latent variables and 17 hypothetical observed variables. As a result of the model being tested by SPSS 20.0 software, all hypothetical latent variables and hypothetical observed variables satisfy the test criteria. The impact rates of the hypothetical latent variables range from 9.19% to 36.15%. The group of implementing complaint settlement factors has the strongest influence, and the group of legal factors has the weakest influence. Policy proposals include improving settlement procedures and land databases, strengthening facilities and personnel, and perfecting the legal provisions for complaint resolution.

The Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) is one of the classical combinatorial optimization problems and is known for its diverse applications. The QAP is an NP-hard optimization problem which attracts the use of heuristic or metaheuristic algorithms that can find quality solutions in an acceptable computation time. On the other hand, there is quite a broad spectrum of mathematical programming techniques that were developed for finding the lower bounds for the QAP. This paper presents a fusion of the two approaches whereby the solutions from the computations of the lower bounds are used as the starting points for a metaheuristic, called HC12, which is implemented on a GPU CUDA platform. We perform extensive computational experiments that demonstrate that the use of these lower bounding techniques for the construction of the starting points has a significant impact on the quality of the resulting solutions.

Additive manufacturing by direct metal fabrication represents one of the fastest-growing areas in material science and manufacturing. Modern manufacturing demands that parts be engineered to have high strength, be lightweight with complex geometrical details, and be suitable for operation upon completion. A very good example of such engineering-manufacturing involves the design and manufacturing of turbine blades for energy efficiency. On the other hand, topology-optimized lattice structures have huge potential and flexibility available to designers operating in the area of designing lightweight structures and high-strength ones at the same time, in contrast to solid form structures. The key issues involved in the research include designing graded density structures made from different lattice architectures for dense materials by characterization of the thermo-mechanical properties for a number of lattice settings in Gyroid, Diamond, Schwarz, Lidinoid, Split P, and Neovius lattices for varied parameters. This paper questions how appropriately the design structure functions in high-speed-rotating elements, such as turbine blades. The current research work will be aimed at the design, finite element analysis for simulation, and manufacturing through additive manufacturing of the turbine blades, considering several designs and lattice structures that satisfy the requirements of lightweight construction and high strength. A detailed preliminary design study has already been performed with the aim of justifying the idea presented in this paper and to create an initially validated basis. It therefore presents findings from the design of different lattice structures, supported by simulations that explain the potential, extent, and limitations of the proposed paper with regard to its general scope.

Lightweight structures tend to be susceptible to vibration, which can lead to fatigue and failure. Piezoelectric shunt damping is an efficient technology that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy and dissipates it through shunt circuits without requiring external power. This study models several piezoelectric patches coupled to different shunt circuits on a thin plate, utilizing Rayleigh-Ritz modal analysis to examine patch parameters including size, position, and distribution. Optimization demonstrates that effective patch-circuit topologies correspond with structural mode shapes, resulting in maximum vibration reduction. The findings introduce a fresh technique to enhance vibration control which improves structural reliability and performance.

This article presents a novel algorithm based on the cluster first-route second method, which executes a solution through K-means and Optics clustering techniques and Nearest Neighbor and Local Search 2-opt heuristics, for the solution of a vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The objective of the problem focuses on reducing distances, supported by the variables of demand, delivery points, capacities, time windows and type of fleet in synergy with the model's taxonomy, based on data referring to deliveries made by a logistics operator in Colombia. As a result, good solutions are generated in minimum time periods after fulfilling the agreed constraints, providing high performance in route generation and solutions for large customer instances. Similarly, the algorithm demonstrates efficiency and competitiveness compared to other methods detailed in the literature, after being benchmarked with the Solomon instance data set, exporting even better results.