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This paper focuses on the quality of output current rectification—an important feature which should be taken into account alongside voltage and current. It is the author's intention to provide other authors and equipment manufacturers with the incentive to elaborate on this theme.

The lean production system and world class manufacturing (WCM) have been prominent in recent studies due to their conceptual synergy. However, although the number of studies is increasing, the research is immature, especially regarding the interaction between topics. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to rank the tools of the lean production system, indicating how they help organizations achieve WCM, using the theory of grey systems.

Therefore, the authors conducted an initial survey to collect data to determine how the lean production tools are related to the WCM pillars. These data were analyzed by the grey relational analysis statistical method, which passes through the construction of four stages.

The results show that of the lean production tools, stream mapping, kaizen, total productive maintenance, Six Sigma, standardized work and 5S stand out for their use and implementation in the organizational environment and facilitate organizations’ transitions to world-class performance through the WCM pillars.

The results achieved guide organizations to use the tools of the lean production system to help them reach world class status.

This paper stands out in the field of operations management, specifically in the research on lean production, by making use of the theory of grey correlation system in an innovative and original way. In addition, it promotes the consolidation of information on two of the main administrative strategies currently employed in the organizational environment.

Socialism has institutionalised equality, guaranteeing women legal protection against abuse and discrimination. It has opened doors to women to enter public life, where in many far more developed countries women still lag behind. Nevertheless, in the domain of male‐female interaction and attitudes there has been little real change.

The objective of the study is to examine the extent to which pharmaceutical companies in India rely on traditional planning approaches rather than the new learning approach to strategic planning. In addition to that, the study also seeks to examine the perceived ability of the pharmaceutical companies in India to integrate continuous improvement goals and product quality into the overall strategic planning and success in implementing total quality management (TQM) programs examined through three particular continuous improvement mindsets.

The study collected data from select pharmaceutical companies in India through survey technique using a standardized questionnaire through online mode. A descriptive statistical analysis is performed to examine the extent of integration of strategic planning and continuous improvement in the select pharmaceutical companies in India.

The results of the study indicate that pharmaceutical companies in India still rely greatly on traditional planning methods for strategic planning. However, a shift is also observed toward adoption of best practice management and modern strategic management techniques. The study also demonstrates that continuous improvement goals and strategies are included into the corporate strategic planning.

The study employs only descriptive statistics, and no hypotheses are generated in the study because the objective is not to generalize the findings. The process of formulating quality goals and integrating them with strategy is typical to any company. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized. The findings of the study do not given any insights into the strategic quality management process due to online mode of data collection. Also, the focus on the study is on the internal management of quality in an organization and factors in the external environment or in the value chain outside the firm, influencing strategic management of quality are beyond the scope of present study.

Considering the significance of quality of products, an understanding of the link between quality and strategic goals helps the managers in pharmaceutical industry to align the strategic planning goals with quality goals ensuring that the entire organization moves in same strategic direction.

The strong focus quality in pharmaceutical industry in India has given impetus to development of well-managed quality programs on the shop-floor to remain competitive and survive in the highly competitive global markets. However, no such study is conducted so far to understand the extent to which continuous improvement or TQM practices are integrated into strategic planning in the pharmaceutical companies in India.

This paper aims to present the sustainable performance criteria for 3D printing practices, while reporting the primarily computations and lab experimentations. The potential advantages for integrating three-dimensional (3D) printing into house construction are significant in Construction Industry 4.0; these include the capacity for mass customisation of designs and parameters for functional and aesthetic purposes, reduction in construction waste from highly precise material placement and the use of recycled waste products in layer deposition materials. With the ultimate goal of improving construction efficiency and decreasing building costs, applying Strand7 Finite Element Analysis software, a numerical model was designed specifically for 3D printing in a cement mix incorporated with recycled waste product high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and found that construction of an arched truss-like roof was structurally feasible without the need for steel reinforcements.

The research method consists of three key steps: design a prototype of possible structural layouts for the 3DSBP, create 24 laboratory samples using a brittle material to identify operation challenges and analyse the correlation between time and scale size and synthesising the numerical analysis and laboratory observations to develop the evaluation criteria for 3DSBP products. The selected house consists of layouts that resemble existing house such as living room, bed rooms and garages.

Some criteria for sustainable construction using 3DP were developed. The Strand7 model results suggested that under the different load combinations as stated in AS1700, the maximum tensile stress experienced is 1.70 MPa and maximum compressive stress experienced is 3.06 MPa. The cement mix of the house is incorporated with rHDPE, which result in a tensile strength of 3 MPa and compressive strength of 26 MPa. That means the house is structurally feasible without the help of any reinforcements. Investigations had also been performed on comparing a flat and arch and found the maximum tensile stress within a flat roof would cause the concrete to fail. Whereas an arch roof had reduced the maximum tensile stress to an acceptable range for concrete to withstand loadings. Currently, there are a few 3D printing techniques that can be adopted for this purpose, and more advanced technology in the future could eliminate the current limitation on 3D printing and bring forth this idea as a common practice in house construction.

This study provides some novel criteria for evaluating a 3D printing performance and discusses challenges of 3D utilisation from design and managerial perspectives. The criteria are relied on maximum utility and minimum impact pillars which can be used by scholars and practitioners to measure their performance. The criteria and the results of the computation and experimentation can be considered as critical benchmarks for future practices.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the damage behavior of flexural members under different loading conditions. The finite element model is proposed for the prediction of modal parameters, damage assessment and damage detection of flexural members. Moreover, the analysis of flexural members has been done for the sensor arrangement to accurately predict the damage parameters without the laborious work of experimentation in the laboratory.

Beam-like structures are structures that are subjected to flexural loadings that are involved in almost every type of civil engineering construction like buildings, bridges, etc. Experimental Modal Analysis (EMA) is a popular technique to detect damages in structures without requiring tough and complex methods. Experimental work conducted in this study concludes that a structure experiences high changes in modal properties once when cracking occurs and then at the stage where cracks start at the critical neutral axis. Moreover, among the various modal parameters of the flexural members, natural frequency and mode shapes are the viable parameters for the damage detection.

For torsional mode, drop in natural frequency is high for higher damages as compared to low levels. This is because of the opening and closing of cracks in modal testing. When damage occurs in the structure, there is a reduction in the magnitude of the FRF plot. The measure of this drop can also lead to damage assessment in addition to damage detection. The natural frequency of the system is the most reliable modal parameter in detecting damages. However, for damage localization, the next step after damage assessment, mode shapes can be more helpful as compared to all other parameters.

Effect on Dynamic Properties of Flexural Members during the Progressive Deterioration of Reinforced Concrete Structures is studied.

In reinforced concrete (RC) structures, an evidence of damage is the presence of cracking. In order to evaluate the effect of damage on cracking pattern and natural frequency in RC slabs, two of such structures with different dimensions and reinforcement ratios were tested, in which cracks were induced through application of static load, followed by modal tests using impact excitation. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The gradient of the fundamental natural frequency along the decay, the crack opening rate and also a global damage index based on changes of the fundamental natural frequency were evaluated.

The behaviour of the aforementioned gradient was distinct for both slabs, increasing monotonically with the cracking level for the slab with lowest reinforcement ratio, and increasing until 33 per cent of the collapse load and then decreasing afterwards for the slab with the highest ratio. Changes of the gradient were consistent with changes of the crack opening rate. Both results of gradient changes and cracking pattern brought evidence that the balance between open (old) and breathing (new) cracks differed between the slabs, and may be responsible for such differences.

Damage assessment in RC structures using vibration tests is mostly concentrated on beams. In this work, an advance is made by investigating slabs. The lack of a unique pattern of changes of the gradient implies that its absolute value is not generally suitable for the association with the damage level. However, the impact tests can be effectively used to detect early damage on slabs using this proposed parameter.

The emergence of blockchain technology has the potential to bring about transformative changes in various industries, with supply chain management being a prominent domain of application. This study investigates the strategic performance benefits of using blockchain-enabled traceability systems for improving supply chain quality management.

The present study employed structural equation modelling to analyse data obtained from 200 practitioners working in Indian pharmaceutical companies.

The results reflect that blockchain-enabled traceability systems have a positive impact on multi-tier quality governance (MQG); supply chain process alignment and coordination (SPAC) and quality centric collaboration (QCC); all of which are the facets of supply chain quality management. Furthermore, when examining the impact of blockchain-enabled traceability systems on firm quality performance and economic performance, the mediation role of SPAC and QCC was confirmed, whereas the mediation role of MQG could not be established.

The study’s empirical insights offer practical guidance for pharmaceutical manufacturers, regulators and other industry participants seeking to harness the potential of blockchain technology for creating resilient and transparent supply chains that uphold product quality and safety standards.

These findings underscore the significance of blockchain-enabled traceability systems in revolutionizing supply chain quality management practices to achieve superior strategic performance in the pharmaceutical sector.

The analytical hierarchical process (AHP)’s main purpose is to assess higher hierarchy levels based on the cooperation of its various levels. It results in a well-designed model-based method in which the weights for the selected attribute are calculated using dimensions, criteria, and indicators. This paper aims to highlight the benefits of blockchain in supply chain management with the help of a literature review along with opinions of experts from various sectors.

With the goal of enhancing the use of blockchain technology in supply chain management, particularly when comparing within the same industry, the AHP methodology has been used. In order to develop the AHP model, a total of eight elements are examined in this study, which are decentralization, resiliency, security, smart contracts, sustainability, traceability, transparency and trust. A calculation of a Desirability Index for conventional supply chain and blockchain-enabled supply chains has been also developed.

Findings where that in a blockchain-enabled supply chain, the global weights of individual benefit variables are considerably larger than in conventional supply chains. When the score of the Desirability Index for conventional supply chain and blockchain-enabled supply chain is compared, the blockchain-enabled supply chain significantly surpasses the conventional supply chain in terms of increasing sustainable development in today’s supply networks.

This study takes into account the AHP methodology applying it on blockchain. This has not been done before in the academic world, at least as far as the authors may be aware of. The originality of combining such process with a recent technology such as blockchain highlights the value of this research.

Quality 4.0 (Q4.0) leverages new emerging technologies to achieve operational excellence and enhance performance. Implementing Q4.0 in digital manufacturing can bring about reliable, flexible and decentralized manufacturing. Emerging technologies such as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Blockchain and Interplanetary File Storage (IPFS) can all be utilized to realize Q4.0 in digital manufacturing. NFTs, for instance, can provide traceability and property ownership management and protection. Blockchain provides secure and verifiable transactions in a manner that is trusted, immutable and tamper-proof. This research paper aims to explore the concept of Q4.0 within digital manufacturing systems and provide a novel solution based on Blockchain and NFTs for implementing Q4.0 in digital manufacturing.

This study reviews the relevant literature and presents a detailed system architecture, along with a sequence diagram that demonstrates the interactions between the various participants. To implement a prototype of the authors' system, the authors next develop multiple Ethereum smart contracts and test the algorithms designed. Then, the efficacy of the proposed system is validated through an evaluation of its cost-effectiveness and security parameters. Finally, this research provides other potential applications and scenarios across diverse industries.

The proposed solution's smart contracts governing the transactions among the participants were implemented successfully. Furthermore, the authors' analysis indicates that the authors' solution is cost-effective and resilient against commonly known security attacks.

This study represents a pioneering endeavor in the exploration of the potential applications of NFTs and blockchain in the attainment of a comprehensive quality framework (Q4.0) in digital manufacturing. Presently, the body of research on quality control or assurance in digital manufacturing is limited in scope, primarily focusing on the products and production processes themselves. However, this study examines the other vital elements, including management, leadership and intra- and inter-organizational relationships, which are essential for manufacturers to achieve superior performance and optimal manufacturing outcomes.

To facilitate the achievement of Q4.0 and empower manufacturers to attain outstanding quality and gain significant competitive advantages, the authors propose the integration of Blockchain and NFTs into the digital manufacturing framework, with all related processes aligned with an organization's strategic and leadership objectives.

This study represents a pioneering endeavor in the exploration of the potential applications of NFTs and blockchain in the attainment of a comprehensive quality framework (Quality 4.0) in digital manufacturing. Presently, the body of research on quality control or assurance in digital manufacturing is limited in scope, primarily focusing on the products and production processes themselves. However, this study examines the other vital elements, including management, leadership and intra- and inter-organizational relationships, which are essential for manufacturers to achieve superior performance and optimal manufacturing outcomes.