The effect of football neck collar on the right external carotid blood flow was investigated for ten healthy subjects using Echo-Doppler technique and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. Carotid is in charge of blooding head’s parts including the brain and eyes. Hence, the evaluation of affected carotid flow by using neck collars is crucial for an improved ergonomic design. The testings were divided into three main categories; participants without wearing neck collar (Category 1), wearing neck collar (Category 2), and finally wearing neck collar with an embedded gap adjacent to the carotid artery position (Category 3). The experimental and numerical results revealed that wearing the neck collar (Category 2) reduced the average blood carotid flow by 28% compared to the case with no neck collar (Category 1). This average blood carotid flow reduction was improved by 15% when a gap separates the collar from the carotid artery position (Category 3). The results of this paper suggest a new design for the next generation of the neck collar by devising an appropriate gap near to carotid artery. The numerical results were validated and were in a reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

Activity based costing (ABC) is a new age accounting system developed to overcome the limitations of traditional costing system, which in today’s technologically advanced world has lost its ability to provide accurate and useful cost information often required in taking various managerial decisions, like setting of selling price, ascertaining profitability of products as well as customers, taking a make or buy decision, eliminating the non-beneficial activities, and rewarding the employees. In this paper, an ABC model is developed for a government hospital in the state of Bihar in India to quantify its various public health related services. Although, there are limited published research papers related to application of ABC model in a specific department or method of a healthcare system, none of them has investigated its scope for organization-wide implementation. The results obtained from the developed ABC model in the public hospital would provide more comprehensive and accurate cost information, and radically contribute to the hospital administration in effective planning, controlling and decision making. This paper also elucidates about various obstructions and difficulties encountered during the implementation phase of ABC model in an Indian healthcare setting.

Human resource management plays an essential role on development of any business organization. Selection of employee normally depends on various criteria such as employee commitment, necessary skills, etc. Therefore, a good strategy to hire appropriate employee is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) specially the ones, which could handle uncertainty, properly. In this paper, we present a method to use MCDM techniques for hiring employees. In fact, the present work proposes a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) as one of the most popular multi-criteria decision making techniques. A computer application is developed where it receives the configuration of the employee selection problem, evaluates the candidates and ranks them using the appropriate voting system.

The concept of green inventory systems is very important for economic growth and development in the era of sustainable development. There is a special need for green inventory systems to identify and manage perishable products since spoilage and deterioration can lead to significant losses of items, which negatively affect the satisfaction of consumers. As perishable products decay continuously (such as vegetables, fruits, milk, juices, frozen foods, baked foods), their demand is adversely affected as well as customers' purchasing decisions. The more realistic assumption is a price-sensitive demand. As well as deterioration rates, perishable products have an expiration date-dependent deterioration rate. Further, inventory holding, and the deterioration of perishables contribute significantly to carbon emissions when operating the inventory system. A carbon tax policy is more flexible and effective when it comes to reducing carbon emissions due to its environmental conscious nature. We develop two sustainable inventory procedures for perishable items based on a practical scenario in which the buyer has a limited storeroom. So, to achieve sustainability goals, a model for inventory management for perishable products based on expiration dates is presented in this paper. We distinguish between two inventory schemes: (i) one that allows shortages and fractional backlogs, and (ii) one that does not allow shortage. In both schemes, both the decay rate and demand function show an upward trend against storage time. Since the decay rate increases with storage time, it is assumed that the cost of storing items is linearly related to storage time. numerical examples along with a real-life case study are presented to validate the inventory schemes after several decision-making findings have been derived.

In this paper, a volume criterion based on a simple scalar quantity, the mean value of the strain energy (SED), has been used to assess the static strength of notched components made of Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). The local-strain-energy based approach has been applied to a well-documented set of experimental data recently reported in the literature. Data refer to blunt U-notched cylindrical specimens of commercial PMMA subjected to static loads and characterised by a large variability of notch tip radius (from 0.67 mm to 2.20 mm). Critical loads obtained experimentally have been compared with the theoretical ones, estimated by keeping constant the mean value of the strain energy in a well-defined small size volume. In addition, some new tests dealing with V-notched specimens with end holes have been carried out to investigate the effect of the notch opening angle.

Small organizations that maintain their own fleet and make their own deliveries are responsible for ensuring their drivers are utilizing the most efficient routes while delivering products to their customers. Furthermore, efficient delivery requires that drivers spend as little time as possible dropping off and picking up products, since these activities are referred to as “non-value added activities,” although they are necessary tasks in the order cycle process. To aid in reducing order cycle times, large organizations that can afford it have employed transportation management systems. Unfortunately, small organizations with limited resources are less likely to adopt transportation management systems, despite the need for such automation. One solution is to use available productivity software to track and manage driver route activity in an effort to improve and maintain driver productivity by reducing non-value time and identifying optimal routes. This paper will outline how office productivity software such as Microsoft® Access can meet the needs of small organizations with limited resources by describing the development and use of a route activity database that employs an easy-to-use multi-user interface. This paper also includes the details of the underlying infrastructure and the user interface.

The main purpose of this paper is to know about the recent status of big data analytics (BDA) on various manufacturing and reverse supply chain levels (RSCL) in Indian industries. In particular, it emphasizes on understanding of BDA concept in Indian industries and proposes a structure to examine industries’ development in executing BDA extends in reverse supply chain management (RSCM). A survey was conducted through questionnaires on RSCM levels of 500 industries. Of the 500 surveys that were mailed, 125 completed surveys were returned, corresponding to a re-sponse rate of 25 percent, which was slightly greater than previous studies. The information of Indian industries with respect to BDA, the hurdles with boundaries to BDA-venture reception, and the connection with reverse supply chain levels and BDA learning were recognized. A structure was presented for the selection of BDA ventures in RSCM. This paper gives bits of knowledge to professionals to create activities including big data and RSCM, and presents utilitarian and predict-able direction through the BDA-RSCM triangle structure as an extra device in the execution of BDA ventures in the RSCM factors. This paper does not provide outside legitimacy owing to limitations for the speculation of the outcomes even in the Indian surroundings, which originates from the present test. Future research ought to enhance the understanding in this area and spotlight on the effect of big data on reverse supply chains in developed countries.

Ferrocene and their derivatives are well-known redox active materials and were extensively used by construction of modified electrodes for the design of electrochemical sensors and biosensors. Substituent derivatization of ferrocene offers the prospect of controlling ferrocene moiety properties such as solubility, stability, reversibility of oxidation wave (important for their role as an electron transfer mediator) and oxidation potential, which is critical in the electrochemical determination of biological compounds. A new series of rigid alkynylferrocene including of 2-ferrocenylethynyl fluoren (3a), 2-ferrocenylethynyl fluoren-9-one (3b), 4-ferrocenylethynyl aniline (3c) and 3-ferrocenylethynyl-1-trifluoromethyl benzene (3d) have been prepared in good yields by Sonogashira coupling reaction. All products were characterized by 1H and 13C NMR, FT-IR, and elemental analysis. The redox chemistry of these compounds has been investigated by cyclic voltammetry. The half-wave potential of the terminal ferrocenyl moieties increases progressively in the order of 3c & LT; 3a & LT; 3b & LT; 3d, which is consistent with the electron density on the ferrocenyl unit.

During the past few years, information and communication technology (ICT) has revolutionized banking industry in the world. People are now able to do their business banking activities such as bill payments, transfer funds, etc. through the art of ICT features such as automatic teller machines, internet or telephone banking services. This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing ICT implementation in Iranian banking industry. The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 26 variables. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.901, which validates the questionnaire. The survey detects six factors influencing ICT including efficiency approach, new advanced technological achievements, human resource management, service strategy, growth strategy and supporting systems.

Use of Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) is highly significant in Flexible Manufacturing Sys-tem (FMS) in which material handling in form of jobs is performed from one work center to an-other work center. A multifold increase in through put of FMS can be observed by application of multi load AGVs. In this paper, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) integrated with Memetic Algorithm (MA) named as Modified Memetic Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm (MMP-SO) is applied to yield initial feasible solutions for scheduling of multi load AGVs for minimum travel and waiting time in the FMS. The proposed MMPSO algorithm exhibits balanced explora-tion and exploitation for global search method of standard Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and local search method of Memetic Algorithm (MA) which further results into yield of efficient and effective initial feasible solutions for the multi load AGVs scheduling problem.