Facility Management in Private Finance Initiative project in UTHM Pagoh Campus

Facility management (FM) in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) involved a long-time process and duration in improving the infrastructure and associating the facilities. FM will give a support role or service within an organisation that have been strategically integrated approach to operating, maintaining, improving, and adapting the buildings and supporting services in order to create natural environment. In a long-term relationship, facility management need to evolve to a higher strategic level in compliance with the organisation’s strategy. At the end of the process, it will achieve best value and performance on delivery of support services. In this research, direct observation has been done to analyze facility management provided in UTHM Pagoh Campus. Furthermore, the satisfaction level of building occupants also was investigated by using different measurement factors in a structured questionnaire to measure the effectiveness. Hence, the results concluded that the total overall satisfaction of users towards facility provided by private sector are mostly satisfied among building occupants. From the results obtained, outdoor area was ranked first out of eight measurement factors. An interview has been done in order to clarify the success of facility management. It can be summarized that all the facility supplied by private sector were meets Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), by meant it also need to improvise their services provision

The Importance of On-Going Maintenance in Preserving the Heritage Listed Buildings

Maintenance is not only important in ensuring the condition and physical of the old building to operate safely and effectively, but it also for an activity that is important in determining the life long of the building, so that it can be preserve and be inherit by the next generation. The need of maintenance is not only on repairing but more towards prevention method. According to the previous study, maintenance is done reactively; this further will cost serious problems in future. Therefore maintenance need good planning from the early stage and is followed with on-going implementation from time to time by all those who are responsible in it. In conjunction with this, this paper is to discuss about the importance of on-going maintenance in order to manage the old building after it has been gazette as heritage listed. At the end of the discussion, several strategies have been put forward in order to stimulate the practice of on-going maintenance as an initiative to encourage the culture of maintenance and also help to increase the quality process in a more effective maintenance management

Duration of low temperature changes physiological and biochemical attributes of rice seedling

Received: June 2nd, 2022 ; Accepted: August 4th, 2022 ; Published: August 18th, 2022 ; Correspondence: [email protected] low temperature (LT) is detrimental to growth of rice seedling during boro season in Bangladesh. An experiment was conducted in growth chamber during June to October, 2021 using BRRI dhan29 as planting material. The aim of this experiment was to determine the effect of variable duration of LT on growth, physiological and biochemical traits of rice seedling and to determine the age of seedling that can tolerate cold effect. In this experiment 5, 10, 15 and 20 days old seedling (DOS) were exposed to 6 °C for 1, 2, 3 and 4 days. Seedlings were also grown under room temperature (25 °C, RT) which consider as control treatment. Seedlings were grown in plastic trays filled with mixture of soil and cowdung. The experiment was conducted following completely randomized design with 3 replications. Data on shoot length and weight, root length and weight, chlorophyll (Chl), carotenoids, malondialdehyde (MDA) and proline contain were determined after 5 days of temperature sock. The results revealed that the LT was injurious to younger rice seedling when they were exposed to LT for 1 to 2 days. The shoot and root length as well as their dry weight were reduced under low temperature. Further, the Chl and carotenoid content of younger rice seedlings degraded within 2 days of LT exposure. On the contrary, the proline and MDA content of rice seedlings increased to reduce the harmful effect of under LT. It could be concluded that the rice seedlings could tolerate the detrimental effect of LT when they attain at least 15 days

Rice growth and yield characteristics under elevated carbon dioxide and nitrogen management

Received: July 16th, 2022 ; Accepted: September 8th, 2022 ; Published: September 12th, 2022 ; Correspondence: [email protected] atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is increasing and the on crop production needs to be investigated. A pot experiment was conducted in open top chambers (OTC) to determine the response of rice to elevated CO2 (eCO2) under varying time of nitrogen (N) application. The results revealed that photosynthesis, root and shoot dry matter production, yield components and nutrient absorption were favored at eCO2 when N applied up to flowering stage (FT) of rice. However, the N application up to FT of rice also significantly improved percent filled grain, reduce spikelet sterility and rice yield increased by 18 to 20% under eCO2. Rice plant absorbed higher amount of Zn, Ca, Mg, and Fe at eCO2 when N was applied up to FT. Amylose was higher but protein percentage was lower at eCO2. These results indicate that to maximize rice yield under eCO2, it is important to supply N up to FT of rice in order to increase grain fertility and reduce spikelet sterility

INTEGRATION OF SIMULATION TECHNOLOGIES WITH PHYSICAL SYSTEM OF RECONFIGURABLE MATERIAL HANDLING

The rapid-changing manufacturing environment requires a manufacturing system that is easily upgradeable to match new technologies and new functions such as Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS). RMS is distinctive from the conventional manufacturing system, where the RMS can be accomplished by using reconfigurable hardware and software, such that its capability and functionality are changeable over time. The reconfigurable components of a RMS include mechanisms, material handling system, sensors control algorithms, machines and modules for the whole production system. The objective of this project is to verify the integration between a simulation with a physical system of a reconfigurable material handling, in order to allow the simulation software controls the physical system directly. The methodology of this project starts with modelling of the physical system. Then, the control logic of the physical system model is constructed in simulation software in line with the behavior of the real physical system. Next, PLC as the controller of reconfigurable material handling connects a computer through OPC server. The PLC communication tags are extracted from OPC server. These tags are used to build the communication between simulation and OPC server. As a result, the integration capabilities are verified by using data comparison over time between simulation and reconfigurable conveyor system

An optimization approach for predictive-reactive job shop scheduling of reconfigurable manufacturing systems

The manufacturing industry is now moving forward rapidly towards reconfigurability and reliability to meet the hard-topredict global business market, especially job-shop production. However, even if there is a properly planned schedule for production, and there is also a technique for scheduling in Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) but job-shop production will always come out with errors and disruption due to complex and uncertainty happening during the production process, hence fail to fulfil the due-date requirements. This study proposes a generic control strategy for piloting the implementation of a complex scheduling challenge in an RMS. This study is aimed to formulate an optimization-based algorithm with a simulation tool to reduce the throughput time of complex RMS, which can comply with complex product allocations and flexible routings of the system. The predictive-reactive strategy was investigated, in which Genetic Algorithm (GA) and dispatching rules were used for predictive scheduling and reactivity controls. The results showed that the proposed optimization-based algorithm had successfully reduced the throughput time of the system. In this case, the effectiveness and reliability of RMS are increased by combining the simulation with the optimization algorithm

Optimal control strategy for low speed and high speed four-wheel-active steering vehicle

In this work, based on the optimal control theory approach, a four-wheel-active steering (4WAS) system is proposed for low speed and high speed applications. A model following the control structure is adopted consisting of a feed-forward and feedback compensation strategy that serves as correction inputs to enhance the vehicle’s dynamic behavior. The velocity dependent feed-forward control inputs are based on the driver’s steering intention while the feedback control inputs are based on the vehicle’s state feedback errors, being the sideslip and yaw rate of the vehicle. Numerical simulations are conducted using the Matlab/Simulink platform to evaluate the control system’s performance. The performance of the 4WAS controller is tested in two designated open loop tests, being the constant steer and the lane change maneuver, to evaluate its effectiveness. A comparison with conventional passive front-wheel-steering (FWS) and conventional four-wheel-steering (4WS) systems shows the preeminent result performance of the proposed control strategy in terms of the response tracking capability and versatility of the controller to adapt to the system’s speed environment. In high speed maneuvers, the improvement in terms of yaw rate tracking error in rms is evaluated and the proposed active steering system considerably beat the other two structures with 0.2% normalized error compared to the desired yaw rate response. Meanwhile, in low speed, turning radius reductions of 25% and 50% with respect to the capability of normal or typical FWS vehicles are successfully achieve

Field-dependent viscoelastic properties of graphite-based magnetorheological grease

This paper highlights the effect of graphite on the dynamic viscoelastic properties of magnetorheological grease (MRG). Two types of MRG namely MRG and graphite-MRG, GMRG with 0 wt.% and 10 wt. % of graphite respectively was synthesized by using a mechanical stirrer. The rheological properties of both sample at various magnetic field strength from 0 to 0.603 T was analyzed via rheometer under oscillatory mode with strain ranging from 0.001 to 1% with fixed frequency at 1 Hz for strain sweep and frequency ranging from 0.1 to 80 Hz at a constant strain of 0.01 % for frequency sweep. Based on the result obtained, the value of storage and loss modulus are dependent on the graphite content. A high value of storage modulus was achieved in the GMRG sample at all applied magnetic field strengths within all frequency ranges. These phenomena related to the contribution of graphite to forming the chain structure with CIPs and offered a more stable and stronger structure as compared with MRG. Moreover, the reduction in the value of loss modulus in GMRG was noticed compared to MRG at on-state conditions reflected by the stable structure obtained by GMRG. Lastly, both samples displayed a strong solid-like (elastic) behavior due to the high value of storage modulus, G’ acquired compared to loss modulus, G’’ at all frequency ranges. Therefore, the utilization of graphite in MRG can be used in wide applications such as brake and seismic dampers