Industrial Engineering & Management

This study is to investigate and evaluate the performance of basic metal industries, so as to know performance gaps and developing further research themes for sector improvement and changes required. Through industrial survey 86 Ethiopian basic metal sectors and literature review, were studied. Though, the study mainly focused on raw material utilization, production capacity, innovation and Technological capability, product demand and supply, import-export process, job creation and labor force and supply chain systems performances used as performance dimension on this investigations. Since, the main aim of the study is to investigated the challenges and identify the gaps of the sector that needs for further investigation and policy measures to enhance efficient and competitive metal sectors. Since, this study design to evaluate how basic metal industries were performing in their objective, role, goals and identify the areas where the action, improvement and changes required. Based on the investigation, we find that, in some extent the basic metal performance is good. Even though, the combined effects of each performance dimension results lower performing sector. This lower performance occurred due to high cost of international market, problems forging currency, logistics and public infrastructure, warehouse problems, outdated technology, system are the main constraints of the sectors. As result of this performance the overall GDP contribution of the sector is infant and only recorded on 0.4% of the five light manufacturing sectors. Finally the further research directions and theme were investigated and proposed.

Buildings are generally heavy, fixed, and normally irreversible once construction has been completed. Due to changing demands of the occupants, they may confront the need for future expansion or complete changeover. Due to economic-based irreversibility, the expansion or conversion of a constructed building requires the foundation and columns to be enhanced and such options for expansion or conversion are planned at the very beginning of construction. Enhancing the foundation and columns represents an up-front cost, but has a return in flexibility for future expansion. This trade-off can be viewed as an investment problem, in that a premium has to be paid first for an option that can be exercised later. An optimum choice is required to be taken for foundations versus flexibility trade-off in order to balance the expected profits that may arise from future expansion, i.e., the value of flexibility, and the cost of enhancing the foundation. The authors in this paper explain a case of an educational institution in order to show the value of flexibility. The value of flexibility in this case study is so significant that failure to account for flexibility is not economical.

Asset write-down refers to a reduction of an impaired asset’s value on a firm’s balance sheet. Impaired asset management has attracted much attention since the 2008 credit crunch crisis with respect to regulation, corporate and managerial ethics, capital market response and more. The common approach in past studies of write-downs based the decision-making process on agency-related reasoning. This paper presents a quantitative financial analysis of the optimal write-down timing of an impaired asset under different settings as well different managerial attitudes. We applied a conditional time-averaged value of a firm’s stock price to model the manager’s decision-making process and analyzed the optimal timing of write-down with respect to the capital market as well as management’s expectations. Different exogenous settings of the optimal write-down timing such as impairment recovery rate and stock price return were analyzed. Moreover, a rational-type and behavioral type models of managers were also studied. Under most settings, our findings indicate that the common practice among managers, of write-down aversion, is optimal. However, counterintuitively, we found that under specific setting the optimal action is, on the contrary, to write down. Moreover, write-down decision is also dependent on the firm’s stock price daily volatility. Managers of firms having stocks of high price volatility are in a favored position, decision-making wise, in comparison against manager of low volatility stocks.

This is a review of asset management systems and their implementations of sensor and artificial intelligence. There are many ways to implement management systems to help track the life cycle of assets within an organization. These systems can be upgraded with the use of sensors to collect live parameters of the asset’s current conditions to analyze their current state of operation. From here, the conditional state of operations should engage an action from the organization’s business model to cause an event. There are examples offered in this paper from alternative research that depicts the benefits of implementation of both sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms within the organizations. This is an overall review of how these interactions can be processed and implemented. Future studies will need to be conducted in the areas of methods and processes, in particular, in order to integrate a generic model for sensors and artificial intelligence into successful asset management systems.

In the current competitive business environment today, leather products companies face numerous risks in the logistics network. Hence, managing logistics risks in the existing leather products supply chains are necessary to perform better in the global market. To overcome the logistics risks, best supplier section is one of the most crucial tasks for leather products companies. Therefore, an agile decision support framework is necessary for managing risks in logistics network. This study aimed to support leather products company’s decision makers by selecting best supplier considering risks factors in logistics with the help of powerful Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. It is a dynamic and very usable Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tool which can help decision maker to evaluate the best supplier when any supplier is unable to perform their tasks. In this research, we evaluated the best supplier by prioritizing of available suppliers with considering risks factors in logistics. This research will assist the leather products company’s decision-makers to formulate some tactic and strategic policy to minimize the logistics risks.

This paper seeks to establish if there is a quality culture in Frontiers Printing and Publishing Limited, Identify areas for improvement and then provide the appropriate recommendations for their improvement. Literatures related to the practices of total quality management were reviewed. A simple random sampling procedure was used in selecting the sample and closed ended questionnaires were administered for quantitative analysis. Data was analyzed using excel software and the outcome of this study suggested that TQM is widely applied in areas such a top management commitment, vision and planning statement, customer focus at Frontiers Printing and Publishing Limited. However, areas that needed serious attention were education and training, and recognition and rewards. Focus group discussions were then recommended for the organization for both management and staff to enable them figure out how the organization can improve on those areas.

Nowadays, scientist and engineers working in the field of materials are too concerned with sustainability issues and environmental protection. Due to environmental friendly, bio degradability and sustainability, natural fiber composites are preferred as compared to conventional synthetic fiber based composites. An Epoxy piece and Jute fiber-epoxy composite is prepared using hand lay- up technique. For this purpose, an open type mould made of mild steel plate has been used. It is revealed that the jute epoxy composite exhibited better tensile and compressive strength. Bundle strength of fibers decreases with increase in number of fibers in a Bundle. Tensile and compressive strength increases with Jute fiber reinforcement.

This study presents an effort to summarize evidence on literature about the effect of financial reporting practices on investment decisions. Regulatory interventions/changes impact financial reporting and thus play a significant role on the international comparability/usage of financial statements and as a result on investment decisions. We discuss existing literature regarding the effects of financial reporting practices firstly on the cost of equity capital. We then summarize literature concerning the effect of financial reporting practices on investment decisions as documented in the literature in the areas of earnings management; information asymmetry effects; accounting quality; the effects of the information environment; investment efficiency; over investment –under investment and cash flow sensitivity; stock market efficiency.

This paper proposes an integrated approach to determine optimal build orientation for Powder bed fusion by laser (PBF-L), by simultaneously optimizing mechanical properties, surface roughness, the amount of support structure and build time-cost. Experimental data analysis has been used to establish the objective functions for different mechanical properties and surface roughness. Geometry analysis of the part has been used to estimate the needed support structure and thus evaluate the build time and cost. Normalized weights are assigned to different objectives depending on their relative importance allowing solving the multi-objective optimization problem using a genetic optimization algorithm. A study case is presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed system. The major achievements of this work are the consideration of multiple objectives, the establishment of objective function considering different load direction and heat treatments. A user-friendly graphical user interface was developed allowing to control different optimization process factors and providing different visualization and evaluation tools.

The most significant development in car park ventilation design has been the introduction of Impulse Ventilation. It is an innovative alternative to traditional systems and provides a number of significant benefits. The ventilation of car parks is essential for removing vehicle exhausts Fumes and smoke in case of fire containing harmful pollutants. So design of impulse systems is usually proven by use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) analysis. In this study considered one of the car parking basement which is in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and study was conducted by using ANSYS-Fluent. The field study was carried to collect the actual data of boundary conditions for CFD simulation. In this study, two Cases of jet fan smoke ventilation systems were considered, one has 8 jet fans according to the customer and another one has 11 jet fans which positions were changed accordingly. Base on the comparison of simulation data, ventilation system with 11 jet fans can help to improve the evacuation of fumes in the car parking area and it is also observed that the concentration of CO minimized within 15 minutes.