Handbook of Computational Intelligence in Manufacturing and Production Management

Artificial intelligence (AI) is simply a way of providing a computer or a machine to think intelligently like human beings. Since human intelligence is a complex abstraction, scientists have only recently began to understand and make certain assumptions on how people think and to apply these assumptions in order to design AI programs. It is a vast knowledge base discipline that covers reasoning, machine learning, planning, intelligent search, and perception building. Traditional AI had the limitations to meet the increasing demand of search, optimization, and machine learning in the areas of large, biological, and commercial database information systems and management of factory automation for different industries such as power, automobile, aerospace, and chemical plants. The drawbacks of classical AI became more pronounced due to successive failures of the decade long Japanese project on fifth generation computing machines. The limitation of traditional AI gave rise to development of new computational methods in various applications of engineering and management problems. As a result, these computational techniques emerged as a new discipline called computational intelligence (CI)

A study to evaluate efficacy of Tinospora cordifolia (Guduchi) as analgesic agent using albino wistar rats as an experimental animal model

Background: Pain is a very well-known symptom of many diseases and analgesics are used to relieve pain. The main problem with these drugs remains that of side effects. Herbal medicines are better in view of their cultural acceptability, better compatibility with human body systems and lesser incidence of side effects. Extract of Tinospora cordifolia (Guduchi) plant have been traditionally used to treat pain in traditional medicine.Methods: Commercially available preparation of T. cordifolia plant has been used as test drug (aqueous extract). Healthy albino rats of either sex, weighing between 140-200 g were selected for the study, divided into 4 groups of 6 each (control, standard, 100 mg/kg, 300 mg/kg). Central analgesic activity was assessed by tail flick model (morphine as standard drug I.P). Acetic acid 1% 10 ml/kg aqueous solution I.P. was used for abdominal writhing model. Diclofenac 150 mg/kg oral as standard drug for assessment of peripheral analgesic activity. Results were analysed using SPSS version 16 and Microsoft office excel 2007.Results: T. cordifolia extract significantly increased the tail flick latency time (sec) (mean tail flick latency control, T100, T300 6.833±0.25 sec, 8.65±017 sec, 10.01±0.14 respectively) (p value control vs T100, T300 at 90 min, 120 min, 0.0573, 0.0198, 0.0198 in between group) and decreased number of abdominal writhing in comparison with the control group (p value <0.0001).Conclusions: Extract of T. cordifolia was found to possess analgesic activity and also exhibited dose and time dependant increase involving central and peripheral mechanisms. The analgesic activity of T. cordifolia found to be comparable to standard drug used

The effectiveness of ultrasonogram guided intervention in chronic shoulder pain cases attending pain clinic of a government hospital of East zone, India: a prospective observational study

Background: Ultrasonogram guided intervention in chronic shoulder pain is well known for relief of pain and improvement of range of movement (ROM) of affected shoulder joint. Ultrasonogram gives accuracy helps in localized corticosteroid delivery. Corticosteroids relieve the pain by its anti-inflammatory effect. There is conflicting evidence available regarding the effectiveness of the intervention in chronic shoulder pain, questioned in many studies. We planned this study to evaluate the efficacy of ultrasonogram guided intervention in chronic shoulder pain in a tertiary teaching hospital of rural Bengal.Methods: The prospective observational study was carried out in 100 patients with chronic shoulder pain attending pain clinic who fulfilled predetermined inclusion criteria. Patients were injected with 40 mg of depomethyl prednisolone and 10 ml of 1% preservative free lignocaine via standard posterior approach. Then half an hour of standard shoulder range of motion (ROM) exercise regimen was performed under supervision. Pre injection and post injection pain level were scored by visual analogue score (VAS) shoulder exercises were taught and home-based physiotherapy was carried out by patients themselves. Patient were followed at 4, 8, and 12 weeks.Results: The mean age of patients was 53.23±5.680 years with 63 % male study subjects, After the intervention, excellent result in VAS score and improvement of ROM observed in patients. There was statistically significant difference from baseline in both pain relief and shoulder movement.Conclusions: USG guided intervention is effective in pain relief and in improvement in ROM in chronic shoulder pain in long term

Behavioral Factors in Strategic Alliances

Recently, there has been a growing trend among information technology (IT) organizations to form strategic alliances to increase competitive advantages in the marketplace. For an organization to exploit the benefits of alliances, human factors and IT factors must be among the basic components of any strategic plan (Kemeny & Yanowitz, 2000). Despite the obvious need to consider human and IT factors when developing a long-term plan, many strategic plans developed in the past that led to alliances have failed to consider human aspects. Examples of failure in the implementation of IT systems due to the lack of consideration of human factors have come to light in recent years, but a comprehensive study of the consideration of human factors in the development of strategic alliances resulting in a major IT system alignment for a firm, is still rare in IT literature

Proceedings of the International Conference on Managing the Asian Century: ICMAC 2013

This volume presents the refereed papers given at the International Conference on Managing the Asian Century, held in Singapore in July 2013. The proceedings of this conference include original papers contributed by researchers from many countries on different continents. The papers cover multi-disciplinary areas such as management, the social sciences, development economics, banking & finance, engineering management, and education, all in connection with the development of countries in Asia. Further, the papers are based on the 9 tracks at the conference:\ud \ud • Transnational Education\ud \ud • Antecedents of Asia's Competitiveness\ud \ud • Emerging Trends in Banking, Finance and Accounting\ud \ud • Business and Revenue Models in the Gaming Industry\ud \ud • Psychological Issues in Asia\ud \ud • Emerging Retail and Service Industries\ud \ud • Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation\ud \ud • Systems Thinking and Systems Practices\ud \ud • Tourism Initiatives, Relationships and Issues in the Asia-Pacific Regio

Influences of experience dimensions on consumer loyalty: the case of travel agencies in East Java

In today’s competitive environment in the travel industry, businesses must focus on how to create customer loyalty by adopting the overarching theory of experiential marketing. This study investigates the influence of experience dimensions (sense, feel, think, act and relate) on customer loyalty through experiential value in travel agencies in East Java. The customers who purchased travel tickets and hotel vouchers in East Java were studied for data collection. We use random probability sampling as a sample collection technique. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the collected data. The research shows that sense, feel, think, act and relate factors have positive and significant impact on customer loyalty. This study provides policy directions to marketers who are engaged in tourism agency services and suggests that they pay attention to experience dimensions to garner customer loyalty

Improved heuristically guided genetic algorithm for the flow shop scheduling problem

This paper deals with the problem of scheduling on makespan criterion in the flow shop environment. We have presented a new heuristic genetic algorithm (NGA) that combines the good features of both the genetic algorithms and heuristic search. The NGA is run on a large number of problems and its performance is compared with that of the Standard Genetic Algorithm (SGA) and the well‐known Nawaz‐Enscore‐Ham (NEH) heuristic. The NGA is seen to perform better in almost all instances. The complexity of the NGA is found to be better than that of the SGA. The NGA also performs superior results when compared with the simulated annealing from the literature

An analysis of quality initiatives in the Australian and Indian manufacturing industries

Implementation of quality initiatives in manufacturing, in general, increased operational efficiency, brought down manufacturing costs and made companies strategically competitive in many countries. The literature on quality is rich with cases on the adoption of quality concepts in manufacturing companies. Country specific survey reports are also available on the implementation/adoption of quality concepts. But very little has been discussed in the literature on the extent of the adoption of quality concepts in various functional areas (product design, production, R&D, finance, human resources, administration, etc.) of manufacturing. This paper contributes to this important gap in the study of manufacturing and quality literature. It reports the results of two surveys (one in Australia and the other in India) related to the manufacturing sector. The paper shows that quality concepts have spread disproportionately across functional areas of product design, production, sales and marketing, and finance and administration

Evaluating the impact of IT investments: use of a multi-period profit-linked productivity measurement model

Measuring the impact of investments in IT is still elusive. The perplexing productivity paradox phenomenon generated huge interest among IT researchers and produced numerous methods for impact measurement. But there is no robust model which can clarify clearly the business productivity and IT investment issues. In general, the measurement models have failed to show clear linkage between IT investment, employee productivity, operational costs and revenues. This paper explores further the productivity paradox, and then describes a multi-period profit-linked productivity measurement model that can demonstrate to managers the link between IT investments, productivity and profitability. For practical utility, the model is implemented in a spreadsheet application so that managers can test various policy options. The paper presents the benefits of this model and discusses possible future extensions