AN ANALYSIS ON BCG GROWTH SHARING MATRIX

In the 21st century, sustainable improvement of business faces various challenges for the global economic competition. But, these challenges can be overcome by the efficient business strategies. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) helps the business organizations to develop their efficiency for the successful operation of their business activities. To develop the efficiency of marketing decision making, the BCG Matrix plays an effective tool for strategic planning of product performance in industry and company level. It analyses to identify which strategic business units to invest in, which to sell off, and which to shut down. It helps a company to distribute their available resources through the efficient business management. It is one of the most popular and helpful consulting firms. The paper tries to provide a guideline to the business organizations to choose the best business policies by the use of BCG matrix. Keywords: BCG Matrix, Business Organizations, Business Improvemen

Multi-Band Microstrip Antenna Design for Wireless Energy Harvesting

The purpose of this work is to propose an efficient microstrip rectenna operating on 900/1800 MHz GSM bands and the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The receiving antenna with presented joint feeding line implemented in a multilayer substrate. The reflection coefficient at the input of the optimized multi-Band microstrip patch antenna is below -10dB over the every frequency band. The measurement results are in excellent contract with the CST STUDIO SUITE 2011 simulation results

Adopting Jaya Algorithm for Team Formation Problem

This paper presents a simple and mighty metaheuristic algorithm, Jaya, which is applied to solve the team formation (TF) problem and it is a very fundamental problem in many databases and expert collaboration networks or web applications. The Jaya does not need any distinctive parameters that require comprehensive tuning, which is usually troublesome and inefficient. Among several optimization methods, Jaya is chosen for TFP because of its simplicity and it always avoids the worst solutions and moving towards the global best solution. This victorious nature makes Jaya Algorithm more powerful and significant as compared to any other contemporary optimization algorithms. To evaluate the efficiency of the Jaya Algorithm (JA) against another metaheuristic algorithm, Sine-Cosine Algorithm (SCA), both algorithms are tested and assessed for the TF problem solution using an ACM dataset containing experts and their skills. The experimental results validate the improved performance of the optimization solutions and the potential of JA with fast convergence for solving TF problems which are better than SCA

Fuzzy adaptive emperor penguin optimizer for global optimization problems

The Emperor Penguin Optimizer (EPO) is a recently developed population-based metaheuristic algorithm that simulates the huddling behaviour of emperor penguins. Mixed results have been observed in the performance of EPO in solving general optimization problems. Within the EPO, two parameters need to be tuned (namely f and l) to ensure a good balance between exploration (i.e., roaming unknown locations) and exploitation (i.e., manipulating the current known best). Since the search contour varies depending on the optimization problem, the tuning of parameters f and l is problem-dependent, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. To alleviate this parameter tuning problem, an adaptive mechanism can be introduced in EPO. This research work proposes a fuzzy adaptive variant of EPO, namely FAEPO, to solve this problem. As the name suggests, FAEPO can adaptively tune the parameters f and l throughout the search based on three measures (i.e., quality, success rate, and diversity of the current search) via fuzzy decisions. A test suite of twelve benchmark test functions and three global optimization problems: Team Formation Optimization (TFO), Low Autocorrelation Binary Sequence (LABS), and Modified Condition/ Decision coverage (MC/DC) test case generation problem were solved using the proposed algorithm. The respective solution results of the competing metaheuristic algorithms were compared. The experimental results demonstrate that FAEPO significantly improved the performance especially of its predecessor (EPO), an improved variant of EPO (i.e., IEPO), and a fuzzy-based variant of ChOA (i.e., FChOA) and gives superior performance against the competing metaheuristic algorithms. Moreover, the proposed FAEPO requires 50% less fitness function evaluation in each iteration than the ancestor EPO and exhibits competitive performance in terms of convergence and computational time against its predecessor (EPO) and other competing meta-heuristic algorithms with a 90% confidence level

Agricultural wastes as a supplementary source of energy: An economic assessment of a briquette making facility

For commercialization of crop based biomass briquetting technology and alternate source of energy model, is essential to know whether the technology is economically viable or not. In view of this, an attempt was made to analyze the economics of the biomass briquettes prepared by utilizing unused agricultural byproducts and other selected biomass produced from different crop residues. Biomass briquetting is one among the processes of converting low bulk density biomass into high density and energy concentrated fuel referred as briquette and has scope to use as fuel energy for food preparation by the rural households. India continued to roll its economy with agriculture whose energy requirement is increasing day by day with the progress made in agricultural sector. Under the existing situation, day to day’s demand for fuel energy for food preparation at rural households observed to be very high and women folk struggle hard to gather fuel for food preparation. On the other hand, in India plenty of biomass is available due to vast agricultural based crop production systems. The per annum current availability of biomass in India is estimated at 1,249 million tons. With this advantage, to minimize the drudgery of rural women folk and to fulfill rural house hold demand for fuel energy required for food preparation, could only be addressed by the means production of biomass briquettes which provides cost effective and good fuel energy source for rural households for cooking food every day. The economics of biomass briquettes production indicated per month average net return ofINR80,000to the briquette machine owner. The project appraisal with other financial indicators for biomass briquettes production had indicated desired, theNet Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Benefit-Cost Ratio and Payback Period were observed to be INR3931, 245, >30 per cent, 2.21 and 3.00 years respectively

Influence of various composted organic amendments and their rates of application on Nitrogen mineralization and soil productivity using Chinese Cabbage (Brassica rapa. L. var. Chinensis) as an indicator crop

There is a diversity of locally available nitrogen (N)-rich organic materials in Samoa. However, none of them was evaluated for their N supplying capacity after composting in Samoan Inceptisols for vegetable cultivation. Thus, N-releasing capacity of five composted organic amendments (OAs) namely macuna, gliricidia, erythrina, lawn grass and giant taro, and their two application rates (10 and 20 t ha−1) were assessed through a laboratory incubation and a crop response study using Chinese cabbage as a test crop. Among the OAs, composted mucuna was characterized by a higher total N (2.91%), organic C (63.6%) and NO3−N content (341 mg N kg−1). A significant difference in N mineralization was observed among the OAs as well as application rates. The highest N mineralization was recorded in composted mucuna followed by gliricidia, erythrina, lawn grass, and giant taro. A crop response study also showed a similar trend. Mucuna treatment had the highest biomass yield and N uptake followed by gliricidia, erythrina, lawn grass, and giant taro. Leguminous composted OAs @ 20 t ha−1 performed substantially better in all the plant growth and yield parameters, and N uptake compared to 10 t ha−1 that was not the case for non-leguminous OAs. Thus, non-leguminous OAs should be applied at 10 t ha−1. All the composted leguminous OAs showed promising results while mucuna was the best in both the application rates. Therefore, mucuna can be promoted to supply N for crop cultivation in Samoa, other Pacific Islands and tropical countries where N fertilizer is costly and not easily available

Performance of locally discovered rice cultivar (Haridhan) in Bangladesh under urea sprays technology

The research work was conducted at the Agronomy Field Laboratory, Department of Agronomy, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh during the period from July to November 2015 to evaluate the yield performance of BRRI dhan56 and a locally discovered rice cultivar Haridhan under foliar and traditional application of urea. The experiment included six treatments of urea application technique as T1=N0 (control), T2=N65%, T3=N50%+US (15%), T4=N50%+US (20%), T5=N60%+US (15%), T6=N100% (traditional method) and two rice varieties viz. HYV rice cultivar BRRI dhan56 and locally discovered rice cultivar Haridhan. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Foliar application of urea had significant effect on yield and yield components of BRRI dhan56 and Haridhan. It has been found that the treatment N50%+US (20%) produced highest grain yield (6.14 t ha-1) which might be due to the highest number of total tillers hill-1 (15.03), effective tillers hill-1 (12.11), panicle length (26.21 cm) and grains panicle-1 (156.91) got from this treatment. From the result it can be concluded that both the varieties produced highest grain yield with 50% of the required urea applied to the soil and 20% of the required urea applied as foliar spray that can save an amount of 30% of recommended dose of urea in rice field of Banglades