The relevance of outsourcing and leagile strategies in performance optimization of an integrated process planning and scheduling

Over the past few years growing global competition has forced the manufacturing industries to upgrade their old production strategies with the modern day approaches. As a result, recent interest has been developed towards finding an appropriate policy that could enable them to compete with others, and facilitate them to emerge as a market winner. Keeping in mind the abovementioned facts, in this paper the authors have proposed an integrated process planning and scheduling model inheriting the salient features of outsourcing, and leagile principles to compete in the existing market scenario. The paper also proposes a model based on leagile principles, where the integrated planning management has been practiced. In the present work a scheduling problem has been considered and overall minimization of makespan has been aimed. The paper shows the relevance of both the strategies in performance enhancement of the industries, in terms of their reduced makespan. The authors have also proposed a new hybrid Enhanced Swift Converging Simulated Annealing (ESCSA) algorithm, to solve the complex real-time scheduling problems. The proposed algorithm inherits the prominent features of the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and the Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). The ESCSA algorithm reduces the makespan significantly in less computational time and number of iterations. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been shown by comparing the results with GA, SA, Tabu, and hybrid Tabu-SA optimization methods

A distributed simulation model for inventory management in a supply chain

One of the challenging issues faced by each enterprise of a supply chain is to determine the right production and/or stock levels in order to minimize costs while ensuring a given customer service. In a supply chain, each enterprise pursues its own goal and takes its own decisions in all independent way. However, the decisions are usually influenced by the actions or decisions of the others. One of the main factors influencing the decision process is the customer demand originated at the downstream layer of the supply chain and traveling tip the supply chain in terms of orders placed oil to upstream layers and becoming more and more altered. In order to achieve high efficiency in the whole system, an effective coordination between enterprises is needed. In this paper, all analysis of how supply chain actors interact with each other and how the communication and coordination improve the efficiency of the supply chain is presented; we propose a distributed simulation model for analyzing the effect of inventory policies and information sharing on changing customer demands. The proposed model is tested oil all Italian extended enterprise in which the actors cooperate to produce compressors for refrigerators

GRS 1915+105 and the disc-jet coupling in accreting black hole systems

GRS 1915+105—the first stellar-scale, highly relativistic jet source identified—is a key system for our understanding of the disc-jet coupling in accreting black hole systems. Comprehending the coupling between inflow and outflow in this source not only is important for X-ray binary systems but has a broader relevance for studies of active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts. In this paper, we present a detailed review of the observational properties of the system, as established in the decade since its discovery. We attempt to place it in context by a detailed comparison with other sources, and construct a simple model for the disc-jet coupling, which may be more widely applicable to accreting black hole systems

Mass customization and environmental sustainability: A large-scale empirical study

A growing number of firms nowadays needs to combine mass customization (MC) with environmental-sustainability management (EM). However, the research on the synergies or trade-offs between MC and EM is still in its infancy. Furthermore, the few findings available in the literature are partly conflicting: some studies suggest that MC and EM may be synergistic, while others raise concerns on the environmental sustainability of MC. This paper contributes to this debate by presenting the results of the first, large-scale, empirical test of some of the synergies suggested by prior research. Our results support the existence of two types of synergies between the MC capability of parts commonalization and the EM capability of product stewardship. One type of synergy is explained by the fact that parts commonalization capability reinforces the positive effect of product stewardship capability on environmental performance (interaction-based synergy). The other type is explained by the fact that both these organization capabilities require the same routines of cross-functional integration (shared-routine-based synergy). Besides enriching the debate on the relationships between MC and EM, our results also contribute to the broader discussion on the compatibility between economic and environmental sustainability dimensions