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The purpose of this study is to improve supplier performance and strategic sourcing decisions by integrating jobshop scheduling, inventory management and agile new product development. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizations have struggled a lot to maintain the supplier performance and strategic sourcing decisions in the organizational benefit. However, in this context, the organization’s agile new product development (ANPD) process must be aligned with this requirement by maintaining the inventory and jobshop scheduling. As a result, identifying ANPD indicators, performance metrics and developing a structural framework to guide practitioners at various stages for smooth adoption is essential to improve the overall performance.

A comprehensive literature review is conducted to identify jobshop scheduling, inventory management and ANPD indicators along with the performance metrics, and the hierarchical structure is developed with the help of expert opinion. The modified stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and weighted aggregated sum product assurance (WASPAS) techniques, along with expert judgement, are used in this study to calculate the weights of the indicators and the ranking of the performance metrics.

As per the weight computation by SWARA method, the strategy indicators have the highest relative weight, followed by the product design indicators, management indicators, technical indicators, supply chain indicators and organization culture indicators. According to the ranking of performance metrics obtained through WASPAS, the “frequency of new product development is at the top”, followed by “advances in product design and development” and “estimated versus actual time to market”.

It is believed that the framework developed will help industrial practitioners to plan effectively to improve supplier performance. The indicators identified may guide the ANPD penetration, and performance metrics may be useful for evaluation and comparison.

The outcomes of the present study will be extremely beneficial for the industry practitioners to improve the supplier performance. The indicators identified may guide the ANPD penetration, and performance metrics may be useful for evaluation and comparison.

A unique combination of modified SWARA–WASPAS technique has been used in this study which would be beneficial for organizations willing to adopt the jobshop scheduling and inventory management and ANPD for improving supply chain performance.

The demand for energy is increasing massively due to urbanization and industrialization. Due to the massive usage of diesel engines in the transportation sector, global warming is increasing rapidly. The purpose of this paper is to use hydrogen as the potential alternative for diesel engine.

A series of tests conducted in the twin cylinder four stroke diesel engine at various engine speeds. In addition to the hydrogen, the ultrasonication is applied to add the nanoparticles to the neat diesel. The role of nanoparticles on engine performance is effective owing to its physicochemical properties. Here, neat diesel mixed 30% of biodiesel along with the hydrogen at the concentration of 10%, 20% and 30% and 50 ppm of graphite oxide to form the blends DNH10, DNH20 and DNH30.

Inclusion of both hydrogen and nanoparticles increases the brake power and brake thermal efficiency (BTE) of the engine with relatively less fuel consumption. Compared to all blends, the maximum BTE of 33.3% has been reported by 30% hydrogen-based fuel. On the contrary, the production of the pollutants also reduces as the hydrogen concentration increases.

Majority of the pollutants such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon were dropped massively compared to diesel. On the contrary, there is no reduction in nitrogen of oxides (NOx). Highest production of NOx was witnessed for 30% hydrogen fuel due to the premixed combustion phase and cylinder temperatures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among corporate social responsibility (CSR) beliefs, support intentions and purchase behaviour of consumers. Although there is a rich stream of research reporting the relationship between CSR beliefs and support intentions, there is scant reporting on the mediating role of support intentions between CSR beliefs and purchase behaviour of consumers, hence presenting an opportunity to contribute to the marketing knowledge-base.

This study employs a quantitative research design to test the relationships among CSR beliefs, support intentions and purchase behaviour. The associations among these three constructs are tested using Hayes Process tool which is a versatile computational tool for observed variable – mediation, moderation and conditional process modelling.

The results provide support for the relationships among CSR beliefs, consumer support intentions and purchase behaviour. Of the four measured CSR beliefs, philanthropic ethical and legal aspects of CSR beliefs demonstrated the association with support intentions. The results also showed that only ethical beliefs have direct relationship with purchase behaviour. Additionally, support intention provided full mediation for the relationship between philanthropic beliefs and purchase behaviour as well as for legal beliefs and purchase behaviour.

This study is carried out in a unique context of New Zealand which is a melting pot of cultures from around the globe. This study presents empirical support to show that ethical, philanthropic and legal beliefs influence support intention and purchase behaviour for the sample of consumers in the context of New Zealand. Hence, communicating ethical, philanthropic and legal-related CSR beliefs provides the means to create consumer perceptions of competitive advantage when adopting a CSR activities for marketing product and service offerings.

Drawing on a socio-cognitive model, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the aim of this paper is to investigate whether the effects of social cognition on intention to consume dietary supplements moderate by health motivation.

This study was carried out using a cross-sectional survey approach. Subjects comprised 438 undergraduate students from six universities in Malaysia.

Given strong support for the extended TPB's application to dietary supplements consumption provided by the study, it seems feasible that desirable changes in attitude, social norms, and perceptions of control might lead to corresponding changes in behavioural intention. The empirical findings, which are based on multi-group analysis, show that the strength of the relationships between informational influence, consumer attitude, and their intention to consume dietary supplements are strongly influenced by health motivation.

This research sets the ground for stakeholders in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors to improve their understanding of what drives dietary supplements consumption. Armed with this knowledge, marketers and health professionals could plan and execute their marketing strategies and health interventions more effectively.

The core contribution lies in an important extension of social cognitive model by incorporating the moderating effect of health motivation. This study demonstrates the measurement validity and predictive efficacy of the proposed integrative model which can be used as a promising framework to examine other preventive health behaviours.

The purpose of this study is to understand the behavior of hybrid bio-composites under varied applications.

Fabrication methods and material characterization of various hybrid bio-composites are analyzed by studying the tensile, impact, flexural and hardness of the same. The natural fiber is a manufactured group of assembly of big or short bundles of fiber to produce one or more layers of flat sheets. The natural fiber-reinforced composite materials offer a wide range of properties that are suitable for many engineering-related fields like aerospace, automotive areas. The main characteristics of natural fiber composites are durability, low cost, low weight, high specific strength and equally good mechanical properties.

The tensile properties like tensile strength and tensile modulus of flax/hemp/sisal/Coir/Palmyra fiber-reinforced composites are majorly dependent on the chemical treatment and catalyst usage with fiber. The flexural properties of flax/hemp/sisal/coir/Palmyra are greatly dependent on fiber orientation and fiber length. Impact properties of flax/hemp/sisal/coir/Palmyra are depended on the fiber content, composition and orientation of various fibers.

This study is a review of various research work done on the natural fiber bio-composites exhibiting the factors to be considered for specific load conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to present the review of natural fibre composites as well as a specific type of fibre, i.e., sugar palm fibre and its composites.

The approach of this review paper is to present previous work on natural fibres and their composites. Then a review of several important aspects such as history, origin, botanic description, distribution, application and characterisation of sugar palm tree, and its fibre is presented. Finally a review of properties and characterisation of sugar palm composites is presented.

Findings of this review include the potential application of natural fibres and their composites for engineering application, the use of sugar palm and its fibres, as well as the suitability of sugar palm composites in engineering application after conducting review of their performance and characterisation.

The value of this review is to highlight the potential of natural fibres, natural fibre composites, sugar palm, sugar palm fibres and sugar palm composites as materials for engineering applications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ultrasonic vibration (UV) and tool pin profile on mechanical properties and microstructural behaviour of AA7075-T651 and AA6061-T6 joints was analysed.

The joints were fabricated using three different tool pin profiles such as cylindrical, square and triangle. For each tool pin profile, two different UV powers of 1.5 kW and 2 kW were used.

On both the advancing and retreating sides of the weld, the thermo-mechanically affected zone has the lowest microhardness. In all joints, the tensile fracture locations match to the minimum hardness values. Field emission scanning electron microscope fractography of tensile tested specimens reveals heterogeneous modes of brittle, shear and ductile fracture. Three-point bending analysis was performed to determine the ductility and soundness of the weld joint. The acoustic softening effect of UV, as well as the static and dynamic ratio of tool pin profile, plays an important role in determining the material flow and mechanical behaviour of the joint.

Dissimilar aluminium joining fascinates many applications like aircraft, aerospace, automobiles, ship building and electronics, where fusion welding is a very intricate process because of the deviation in its physical and chemical properties.

From this study investigation, it is found that the square pin profiled tool with 2 kW UV power produces metallurgical defect-free and mechanically sound weld with maximum tensile strength, hardness and bending load of 297 MPa, 151HV and 3.82 kN, respectively.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the institutional structures and other predictors that determine bilateral trade between Africa and China from 1995 to 2017.

In line with the gravity model of trade, institutional, geographical and socio-economic determinants of China’s bilateral trade with 18 African oil/minerals exporting countries are examined by deploying Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood and dynamic bias-corrected least squares dummy variable econometric techniques.

The results indicate that China’s oil/minerals imports from Africa are higher than imports of manufacturing and agricultural goods, and institutional structures indicate that a weak politically stable region with less control of corruption has a discernible effect on trade.

Further insight can be gained if the type of manufactured goods being exported to China is examined; this is necessary given that China crowds out Africa’s manufactured goods. Therefore, this study recommends the need for Africa to continually strengthen its institutional structures to stimulate trade from other regions.

This study examines the quality of the institutional structures (political stability and corruption) in African oil/minerals exporting countries, considering that China has been alleged for capitalising on Africa’s weak institutional structures to trade with the resource-endowed region. For the first time, the UN COMTRADE HS product-country-partner-year trade data is used to examine on bilateral sector trade China–Africa links rather than proxies used in the studies of Biggeri and Sanfilippo (2009), De Grauwe et al. (2012) and Foad (2011) that did not capture the real trade value.