Exploring Business Process Re-engineering, Change Management, Customer Focus, and Organizational Performance

The purpose of this study is to draw attention to the business process re-engineering (BPR), a radical process change for a volatile environment. The study explores the concepts of BPR and its relations to organizational performance through a literature review. Numerous researches have reported on the BPR factors like change management and customer focus, which are highly recommended in the literature review. The BPR influences organizational performance both financially and non-financially. The implementation of the BPR offers the organization with sustainable competitive advantages

The effect of business process reengineering on organizational performance moderated by information technology capability in Riyadh

Business process reengineering has attracted much attention recently as an alternative technique of earnings management that may affect organizational performance. This study examines the effect of Business Process Reengineering on Organizational Performance Moderated by Information Technology Capability in Riyadh, a city that a city that attention is given to the role of investment. Data are from 164 managers, Random- effects regression was used for testing the hypotheses. The result shows a significant relationship between Business Process Reengineering factors and Organizational performance, and factor of BPR in Private organization in Riyadh. The findings indicate that change management, customer focus, financial resource, project management, management commitment and IT infrastructure do not constrain organizational performance. Some of the factors of business Process Reengineering is negatively and significantly associated with organizational performance, However, suggesting that different factors have different effect on organizational performance. Finally, the study reveals that project management and management commitment do not interact with organizational performance. The results are robust under various additional analyses and model estimations and have implications for investors, directors of companies, and other markets

Extrusion dwell time and its effect on the mechanical and thermal properties of pitch/LLDPE blend fibres

Mesophase pitch-based carbon fibres have excellent resistance to plastic deformation (up to 840 GPa); however, they have very low strain to failure (0.3) and are considered brittle. Hence, the development of pitch fibre precursors able to be plastically deformed without fracture is important. We have previously, successfully developed pitch-based precursor fibres with high ductility (low brittleness) by blending pitch and linear low-density polyethylene. Here, we extend our research to study how the extrusion dwell time (0, 6, 8, and 10 min) affects the physical properties (microstructure) of blend fibres. Scanning electron microscopy of the microstructure showed that by increasing the extrusion dwell from 0 to 10 min the pitch and polyethylene components were more uniformly dispersed. The tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and strain at failure for the extruded fibres for different dwell times were measured. Increased dwell time resulted in an increase in strain to failure but reduced the ultimate tensile strength. Thermogravimetric analysis was used to investigate if increased dwell time improved the thermal stability of the samples. This study presents a useful guide to help with the selection of mixes of linear low-density polyethylene/pitch blend, with an appropriate extrusion dwell time to help develop a new generation of potential precursors for pitch-based carbon fibres

Interdependencies between dynamic response and crack growth in a 3D-printed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) cantilever beam under thermo-mechanical loads

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is the most commonly used thermoplastic printing material for fused deposition modelling (FDM). FDM ABS can be used in a variety of complex working environments. Notably, the thermo-mechanical coupled loads under complex operating conditions may lead to cracking and ultimately catastrophic structural failure. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the crack depth and location before a structural fracture occurs. As these parameters affect the dynamic response of the structure, in this study, the fundamental frequency and displacement amplitude response of a cracked 3D-printed ABS cantilever beam in a thermal environment were analytically and experimentally investigated. The existing analytical model, specifically the torsional spring model used to calculate the fundamental frequency change to determine the crack depth and location was enhanced by the proposed Khan-He model. The analytical relationship between the displacement amplitude and crack was established in Khan-He model and validated for the first time for FDM ABS. The results show that a reduced crack depth and location farther from the fixed end correspond to a higher fundamental frequency and displacement amplitude. An elevated ambient temperature decreases the global elastic modulus of the cracked beam and results in a lower fundamental frequency. Moreover, a non-monotonic relationship exists between the displacement amplitude and ambient temperature. The displacement amplitude is more sensitive to the crack change than the fundamental frequency in the initial stages of crack growth

Manufacturing carbon fibres from pitch and polyethylene blend precursors: a review

Carbon fibres are one of the newer, emerging materials with multiple engineering applications, from automobiles to space vehicles. Carbon fibres have high mechanical strength, are lighter than metals with better chemical resistance. There have been reports on the use of polyethylene and pitch precursors for the production of carbon fibres, but there are few reports of how these blends could be used for carbon fibre preparation. Bearing in mind the myriad of benefits that using carbon fibres could bring, this paper reviews recent advances published in the literature on how mesophase pitch and polyethylene could be suitable precursors for carbon fibres. It also provides an introduction to the development of precursor blends that allow the properties of carbon fibres to be tailored to specific applications, including processing techniques, fibre parameters, fibre properties and fibre structur

Influence of high-concentration LLDPE on the manufacturing process and morphology of pitch/LLDPE fibres

A high modulus of elasticity is a distinctive feature of carbon fibres produced from mesophase pitch. In this work, we expand our previous study of pitch/linear low-density polyethylene blend fibres, increasing the concentration of the linear low-density polyethylene in the blend into the range of from 30 to 90 wt%. A scanning electron microscope study showed two distinct phases in the fibres: one linear low-density polyethylene, and the other pitch fibre. Unique morphologies of the blend were observed. They ranged from continuous microfibres of pitch embedded in linear low-density polyethylene (occurring at high concentrations of pitch) to a discontinuous region showing the presence of spherical pitch nodules (at high concentrations of linear low-density polyethylene). The corresponding mechanical properties—such as tensile strength, tensile modulus, and strain at failure—of different concentrations of linear low-density polyethylene in the pitch fibre were measured and are reported here. Thermogravimetric analysis was used to investigate how the increased linear low-density polyethylene content affected the thermal stability of linear low-density polyethylene/pitch fibres. It is shown that selecting appropriate linear low-density polyethylene concentrations is required, depending on the requirement of thermal stability and mechanical properties of the fibres. Our study offers new and useful guidance to the scientific community to help select the appropriate combinations of linear low-density polyethylene/pitch blend concentrations based on the required mechanical property and thermal stability of the fibres

Manufacturing pitch and polyethylene blends-based fibres as potential carbon fibre precursors

The advantage of mesophase pitch-based carbon fibres is their high modulus, but pitch-based carbon fibres and precursors are very brittle. This paper reports the development of a unique manufacturing method using a blend of pitch and linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) from which it is possible to obtain precursors that are less brittle than neat pitch fibres. This study reports on the structure and properties of pitch and LLDPE blend precursors with LLDPE content ranging from 5 wt% to 20 wt%. Fibre microstructure was determined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which showed a two-phase region having distinct pitch fibre and LLDPE regions. Tensile testing of neat pitch fibres showed low strain to failure (brittle), but as the percentage of LLDPE was increased, the strain to failure and tensile strength both increased by a factor of more than 7. DSC characterisation of the melting/crystallization behaviour of LLDPE showed melting occurred around 120 °C to 124 °C, with crystallization between 99 °C and 103 °C. TGA measurements showed that for 5 wt%, 10 wt% LLDPE thermal stability was excellent to 800 °C. Blend pitch/LLDPE carbon fibres showed reduced brittleness combined with excellent thermal stability, and thus are a candidate as a potential precursor for pitch-based carbon fibre manufacturing

Extrusion Dwell Time and Its Effect on the Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Pitch/LLDPE Blend Fibres

Mesophase pitch-based carbon fibres have excellent resistance to plastic deformation (up to 840 GPa); however, they have very low strain to failure (0.3) and are considered brittle. Hence, the development of pitch fibre precursors able to be plastically deformed without fracture is important. We have previously, successfully developed pitch-based precursor fibres with high ductility (low brittleness) by blending pitch and linear low-density polyethylene. Here, we extend our research to study how the extrusion dwell time (0, 6, 8, and 10 min) affects the physical properties (microstructure) of blend fibres. Scanning electron microscopy of the microstructure showed that by increasing the extrusion dwell from 0 to 10 min the pitch and polyethylene components were more uniformly dispersed. The tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and strain at failure for the extruded fibres for different dwell times were measured. Increased dwell time resulted in an increase in strain to failure but reduced the ultimate tensile strength. Thermogravimetric analysis was used to investigate if increased dwell time improved the thermal stability of the samples. This study presents a useful guide to help with the selection of mixes of linear low-density polyethylene/pitch blend, with an appropriate extrusion dwell time to help develop a new generation of potential precursors for pitch-based carbon fibres

Image-Based Partial Discharge Identification in High Voltage Cables Using Hybrid Deep Network

Deep learning and digital image technologies have combined to create a potentially effective tool for identifying partial discharge (PD) patterns precisely. However, it is necessary to investigate which algorithm guarantees the best performance. The more common tools are restricted by a lack of training data and an advanced model in itself. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to develop an efficient hybrid network comprising two deep networks, long short-term memory (LSTM), and convolutional neural network (CNN), for identifying the form of PD. A total of $8186\times 25$ (non-PD $\times$ PD) images were applied to assess the proposed methods. The size of the PD type was increased to 3675 images using data augmentation techniques. The results indicated that the integration of CNN and LSTM networks can provide a more robust implementation for PD detection. The integrated CNN-LSTM deep network based on data augmentation outperformed features derived from a single deep network. The recall, F-measure, and classification precision have 99.9% as a validation accuracy with a 99.8% intersection over union and a loss of 0.004

Predictive Control of PV/Battery System under Load and Environmental Uncertainty

The standalone microgrids with renewable energy resources (RERs) such as a photovoltaic (PV) system and fast changing loads face major challenges in terms of reliability and power management due to a lack of inherent inertial support from RERs and their intermittent nature. Thus, energy storage technologies such as battery energy storage (BES) are typically used to mitigate the power fluctuations and maintain a power balance in the system. This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) based power management strategy (PMS) for such standalone PV/battery systems. The proposed method is equipped with an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) prediction method to forecast the load and environmental parameters. The proposed controller has the capabilities of (1) effective power management, (2) minimization of transients during disturbances, and (3) automatic switching of the operation of the PV between the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) mode and power-curtailed mode that prevents the overcharging of the battery and at the same time maximize the PV utilization. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified through a comprehensive simulation-based analysis