A concept of water usage efficiency to support water reduction in manufacturing industry

Increasing pressures on freshwater supplies, continuity of supply uncertainties, and costs linked to legislative compliance, such as for wastewater treatment, are driving water use reduction up the agenda of manufacturing businesses. A survey is presented of current analysis methods and tools generally available to industry to analyze environmental impact of, and to manage, water use. These include life cycle analysis, water footprinting, strategic planning, water auditing, and process integration. It is identified that the methods surveyed do not provide insight into the operational requirements from individual process steps for water, instead taking such requirements as a given. We argue that such understanding is required for a proactive approach to long-term water usage reduction, in which sustainability is taken into account at the design stage for both process and product. As a first step to achieving this, we propose a concept of water usage efficiency which can be used to evaluate current and proposed processes and products. Three measures of efficiency are defined, supported by a framework of a detailed categorization and representation of water flows within a production system. The calculation of the efficiency measures is illustrated using the example of a tomato sauce production line. Finally, the elements required to create a useable tool based on the efficiency measures are discussed

Discrete Event Simulation Modelling for Dynamic Decision Making in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing

With the increase in demand for biopharmaceutical products, industries have realised the need to scale up their manufacturing from laboratory-based processes to financially viable production processes. In this context, biopharmaceutical manufacturers are increasingly using simulation-based approaches to gain transparency of their current production system and to assist with designing improved systems. This paper discusses the application of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and its ability to model the various scenarios for dynamic decision making in biopharmaceutical manufacturing sector. This paper further illustrates a methodology used to develop a simulation model for a biopharmaceutical company, which is considering several capital investments to improve its manufacturing processes. A simulation model for a subset of manufacturing activities was developed that facilitated ‘what-if’ scenario planning for a proposed process alternative. The simulation model of the proposed manufacturing process has shown significant improvement over the current process in terms of throughout time reduction, better resource utilisation, operating cost reduction, reduced bottlenecks etc. This visibility of the existing and proposed production system assisted the company in identifying the potential capital and efficiency gains from the investments therefore demonstrating that DES can be an effective tool for making more informed decisions. Furthermore, the paper also discusses the utilisation of DES models to develop a number of bespoke productivity improvement tools for the company

Establishing Trust in e-Governance using Web Services

Trust Management is one of the most challenging issues in the emerging Web Engineering and InternetTechnologies. Over the past few years, many studies have been proposed different techniques to address trustmanagement issues. However, despite these past efforts, several trust management issues such as privacy, security,accessibility, integrity and scalability have been mostly ignored and need to be proposed in Web Engineeringtechnologies. Web services provide many opportunities for enterprises to built trustworthiness. In India the growingeconomic infrastructure with lightening speeds towards the adoption and successful implementation of e-governance.Establishing trust in e-governance services is quite important as now government has many services for commonman at their door step and more services are in future. But the common man has to know about it and have usedfrequently for their daily requirements. This paper is emphasized to trust on the web services and what steps shouldbe adopted for better service

A COST OF ILLNESS STUDY OF TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS IN MANGALORE, KARNATAKA, INDIA

Objective: The aim of the study was to study the cost of illness of uncomplicated and complicated type 2 diabetes mellitus.Methods: The non-interventional retrospective study was carried out in K.S. Hegde Medical Academy. Annual laboratory costs, pharmacy cost, consultation charges, hospital bed charges, and surgical/intervention costs of 340 diabetic patients were obtained from the medical record section of the hospital. Patients were divided into six groups, uncomplicated, diabetic retinopathy (DR), nephropathy, neuropathy, diabetic foot (DF), and those with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and different costs were compared. Correlation of costs with duration of the study and glycemic control were studied.Results: Uncomplicated patients had significantly lower costs (p<0.0001) compared to other groups. Patients with IHD had highest expenses (p<0.0001), followed by diabetic nephropathy (DN) and DF (p<0.0001). Cost incurred in diabetic neuropathy (DNeu) was almost the double compared to uncomplicated group, but annual medical cost (AMC) was minimum among other diabetic complications. DR had higher expenses compared to DNeu. The similar pattern of distribution was observed in other individual costs. A positive correlation was observed between the costs incurred and duration of diabetes, a negative correlation between the glycemic status and cost incurred. Cost incurred was double when compared to that of previous decade.Conclusion: The total AMC is significantly higher in complicated diabetic patients as compared to those without complications. Diabetic patients with IHD had the highest expenses, followed by DN, DF, DR, and DNeu which was least expensive

Bias voltage Control of Avalanche Photo-Diode Using a Window Comparator

This work aims at controlling the bias voltage of APDs, used for single photon detection, with a micro-controller through pulse height comparison.Comment: 2011 IEEE Summer Topicals Conference proceedin

Conceptualising the impact of information asymmetry on through-life cost: case study of machine tools sector

Information asymmetry (IA) in terms of contextual variety and importance is one of the most challenging aspects of through-life costing in product-service systems (PSS). IA is an imbalance in the information, data and knowledge shared among the parties involved in a contractual agreement. In manufacturing systems under PSS, interaction and effective communication among several parties who are involved in a contractual agreement, rely on the continuity and accuracy of information and context. In such systems, contextual variety exhibits complexity and uncertainty in through-life costing and subsequently in PSS cost assessment. Although the economic aspect of PSS has been studied previously, the impact of IA on through-life cost and for different PSS solutions has not been detailed. Considering manufacturing value chains, this paper introduces a new concept of PSS-hierarchy to perform through-life costing in the presence of IA for various PSS solutions. Moreover, this paper proposes a generic life-cycle model for different PSS solutions to assess the total cost of ownership (TCO). The proposed model has been developed to support decisions on contract design in manufacturing systems. This study considers the manufacturer, service provider and customer perspectives to develop the TCO model using a machine tool manufacturing case study

Characterization of Rhizobium sp (SAR-5) isolated from root nodule of Acacia mangium L.

The use of efficient strain of Rhizobium is of prime importance for optimum N2 harvest through legumes. The present investigation on microsymbiont associated with root nodulation of Acacia mangium L., an important forest species having wider adaptability. Certain biochemical and molecular techniques were used to characterize the microsymbiont. The 16S rRNA sequence was submitted to NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) with an assigned accession number as MH 661260 (SAR-5). The dendrogram revealed that the strain MH 661260 (SAR-5) was Rhizobium alamii, exhibiting maximum similarity with Rhizobium mesosinicum strain: NR 043548. The maximum indole acetic acid (89.00 μg/mL) was produced by metabolizing glucose followed by fructose (70.4 μg/mL), mannitol (55.8 μg/mL), lactose (51.4 μg/mL), sucrose (46.2 μg/mL), starch (39.6 μg/mL), galactose (30.6 μg/mL) and maltose (26.4 μg/mL) and the least (16.5 μg/mL) was recorded in control. The plateau stage of growth was attained after 36 h of inoculation, but the exopolysaccharides (EPS) production was the highest (112 μg/mL) at 48 h after inoculation, thereafter reduced in yeast extract mineral medium. The most preferable carbon, nitrogen, and vitamin for EPS production were maltose, L-asparagine, and L-ascorbic acid, respectively and the least preferable were sucrose, KNO3, and riboflavin, respectively. The isolate (SAR-5) could survive in the pH range of 6 to 8 and the salinity level up to 3% NaCl in laboratory conditions

Knowledge, attitude and practice of adverse drug reaction monitoring and reporting among nurses of secondary healthcare

Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are responsible for significant morbidity and mortality. Nurses will play a vital role in monitoring and reporting of ADRs. Hence this study was conducted to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of adverse drug reaction monitoring and reporting among secondary healthcare level.Methods: In this questionnaire based study, 98 nurses working in district hospital Karwar (a secondary level healthcare facility) were grouped according to their working experience. Pre-validated questionnaire was distributed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of ADR monitoring and practice in their setting. Responses were converted into scores using predetermined scoring method and assessed for their level of knowledge, attitude and practice. Suitable statistical tests were applied to assess the statistical significance.Results: It has been found out that, the knowledge score ranged from 30.52±2.89 to 40.5±2.3 with no statistical significance. The attitude and practice score ranged from 43.33±2.13 to 53.85±2.67 and 23.8±4.17 to 45±7.54 respectively, with the statistical significance of 0.03 and 0.02 respectively between the groups. 72.5% participants had observed at least one ADR, while 45% of them had reported the ADR to higher authority. 82.5% of participants opined that there should be frequent awareness programs to update their knowledge on ADRs. Many factors like legal liabilities (14.5%), didn’t know where to report (24.45%), did not think reporting ADR was important (5%), non-availability of ADR reporting forms (31%) were some of discouraging factors for non -reporting of ADRs.Conclusions: We conclude from our study that even though knowledge about ADRs was relatively better despite being a resource limited setting, the attitude and practice of reporting of drug reactions needs to be improved