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The study aims to explore the argument of implementing the lean method to part or whole of an operation by examining the moderating impact of varying levels of the extent of implementation of four different lean methods, along with their functionalities, in predicting productivity improvement (PI).

As the focus of understanding the efficacy of lean principles is shifting from process to industry level, this study tried to generalize the approach by gathering data from 132 large Indian auto component manufacturers. This involves an assessing/monitoring approach rather than measurement.

Results highlighted the interdependence or individuality of the extent of implementation of lean methods and their functionalities. Findings revealed a significant moderating effect in improving productivity to a greater extent of 50%.

Adopting an assessment approach to a measurement study provides a noteworthy contribution to bridging theory and practical consequences. The findings can be appropriately extrapolated to medium and small enterprises forming a critical connection in the entire automobile manufacturing ecosystem.

The study showed that even if a lean method is applied to a certain extent of operations the chances of PI are significant. This is important for decision makers as they confront problems of optimum resource allocation.

PI, reduced cost and generalization of results would enable the auto component industry to become more competitive.

The examination of the moderation effect of a lean principle implementation extent, along with that of its functionalities to predict the improvement in productivity from its existing level, is a major outcome of this study.

The purpose of this study is to develop a protective coating system on mild steel panel incorporating epoxidized natural rubber with acrylic polyol resin.

In this work, a novel attempt is made to develop binder coatings using epoxidized natural rubber-based material and an organic resin (acrylic resin) for corrosion protection on metal substrate. Seven different samples of multifunctional coatings are developed by varying the compositions of epoxidized natural rubber (ENR) and acrylic resin. The properties of the developed coatings have been characterized using analytical methods such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). EIS has been carried out for 30 days to evaluate the corrosion resistance after immersing into 3.5 wt.% of sodium chloride. Cross hatch cut tester (CHT) has been used to study the adhesive properties. UV–Visible Spectroscopy (UV–Vis) was also used to assess changes in the coating-film transparency of the natural rubber-based coating systems in this study.

The developed coatings have formed uniform layer on the substrate. CHT results show excellent adhesion of the coatings. Higher concentrations of ENR have higher transparency level, which reduces when the acrylic concentration increases. FTIR analysis confirms the crosslinking that occurred between the components of the coatings. Based on the impedance data from EIS, the incorporation of natural rubber can be an additive for the corrosion protection, which has the coating resistance values well above 108Ω even after 30 days of immersion.

The blending method provides a simple and practical solution to improve the strength and adhesion properties of acrylic polyol resin with epoxidized natural rubber. There is still improvement needed for long-term applications.

The work has been conducted in our laboratory. The combination of natural rubber-based materials and organic resins is a new approach in coating research.

This paper aims to develop a new high accuracy numerical method based on off-step non-polynomial spline in tension approximations for the solution of Burgers-Fisher and coupled nonlinear Burgers’ equations on a graded mesh. The spline method reported here is third order accurate in space and second order accurate in time. The proposed spline method involves only two off-step points and a central point on a graded mesh. The method is two-level implicit in nature and directly derived from the continuity condition of the first order space derivative of the non-polynomial tension spline function. The linear stability analysis of the proposed method has been examined and it is shown that the proposed two-level method is unconditionally stable for a linear model problem. The method is directly applicable to problems in polar systems. To demonstrate the strength and utility of the proposed method, the authors have solved the generalized Burgers-Huxley equation, generalized Burgers-Fisher equation, coupled Burgers-equations and parabolic equation in polar coordinates. The authors show that the proposed method enables us to obtain the high accurate solution for high Reynolds number.

In this method, the authors use only two-level in time-direction, and at each time-level, the authors use three grid points for the unknown function u(x,t) and two off-step points for the known variable x in spatial direction. The methodology followed in this paper is the construction of a non-polynomial spline function and using its continuity properties to obtain consistency condition, which is third order accurate on a graded mesh and fourth order accurate on a uniform mesh. From this consistency condition, the authors derive the proposed numerical method. The proposed method, when applied to a linear equation is shown to be unconditionally stable. To assess the validity and accuracy, the method is applied to solve several benchmark problems, and numerical results are provided to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method.

The paper provides a third order numerical scheme on a graded mesh and fourth order spline method on a uniform mesh obtained directly from the consistency condition. In earlier methods, consistency conditions were only second order accurate. This brings an edge over other past methods. Also, the method is directly applicable to physical problems involving singular coefficients. So no modification in the method is required at singular points. This saves CPU time and computational costs.

There are no limitations. Obtaining a high accuracy spline method directly from the consistency condition is a new work. Also being an implicit method, this method is unconditionally stable.

Physical problems with singular and non-singular coefficients are directly solved by this method.

The paper develops a new method based on non-polynomial spline approximations of order two in time and three (four) in space, which is original and has lot of value because many benchmark problems of physical significance are solved in this method.

This study aims to propose that the corrosion resistance of the neat epoxy coating can be further enhanced by incorporating reinforcing agents.

Chitosan, silica and their hybrid compound were used to study the subject of corrosion resistance of epoxy coating systems. This work used 3.5 Wt.% NaCl solution as the electrolyte, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was used to investigate the electrochemical behaviour of the studied coating systems. Standard and accelerated states were used without and with scratch on the coating layer.

It was found that the impedance value of composite coating incorporated with the hybrid compound was significantly higher at 10¹⁰ Ω after 14 days of exposure in both testing states. The breakpoint frequency (f_b) determination also proves with large capacitive region at low-to-high frequency of impedance plots corresponding to the high corrosion resistance.

The hybrid compound consisting of chitosan as organic biopolymer and silica as inorganic material, respectively, served as a promising reinforcing agent for composite coating as a promising corrosion inhibitor. Different states of EIS measurement were used which are standard (without scratch) and accelerated (with scratch) states associated with the f_b values.

The purpose of this paper is to identify a classification scheme which represents the variation in business and supply chain performance of supply chains in Indian manufacturing industry. Classification is done by presenting an empirical taxonomy of clusters representing supply chains in Indian manufacturing industry based on variation in supply chain excellence index (SCEI) and business performance index (BPI).

The clustering of supply chains in Indian manufacturing industry is done by considering BPI and SCEI as clustering variables, which were found by using survey responses and results of a prior empirical study which was carried out in Indian manufacturing industry. The cluster analysis is performed by using Ward’s agglomerative hierarchical clustering followed by using K-means clustering algorithm to establish final set of clusters.

It was found that supply chains in Indian manufacturing industries can be clustered in four major clusters which are named as strategic, celebrity, capable and undeveloped cluster. The characteristics of these clusters reveal some major characteristics of supply chains in Indian manufacturing industry.

The research work presented in this paper takes a novel way to introduce the clusters of supply chains in Indian manufacturing industry. The researchers who are seeking patterns in large data sets of manufacturing companies of Indian industry will be benefitted by using the proposed clusters. While practitioners who are seeking to move their supply chain one step ahead will also reap the benefits of the paper by seeking the characteristics of particular cluster.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is a premier medical institution in India that has significantly contributed to cancer research. This study aims to highlight the cancer research productivity of AIIMS by assessing the impact and reach of the institution’s research output.

The study was based on 2,078 published papers on cancer of AIIMS indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 1989 to 2021. A combination of tools such as Microsoft Excel, Biblioshiny, BibExcel and VOSviewer was used to evaluate and visualize the selected data.

The analysis revealed the interdisciplinary nature of research outputs, which have collaborative contributions from various fields such as oncology, pathology, radiology and surgery. The most productive research area within cancer was found to be breast cancer. In terms of international collaboration, the analysis revealed that AIIMS has a strong presence in the global cancer research community, with collaborations with researchers from more than 50 countries.

This study has some limitations. First, the study is limited to using only the WoS Core Collection database. Other databases, such as Scopus and PubMed, were excluded. Second, there is ambiguity in author names and nonuniformity in the institutions’ names, which can significantly affect the study’s outcomes.

Identifying research productivity in cancer at AIIMS aids resource allocation, collaboration and strategic planning, enhancing India’s overall cancer research impact and patient outcomes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is to use scientometric indicators to evaluate AIIMS’s research productivity with particular reference to cancer for the first time. This detailed analysis provides a deeper understanding of AIIMS’s contribution to cancer research and its potential implications.

This research focuses on suggesting an optimized model for selecting best employees using advanced multi-criteria decision making method to a supply chain firm, who is planning to start a new cold chain business vertical.

Study has been conducted in a supply chain firm in North India, who wants to expand its business with the help of efficient team members. In total 38 applicants were considered for the study, as selected by the firm after initial screening from pool of talent. AHP-LP and TOPSIS-LP integrated approach were applied separately for evaluation and implementation of personnel selection model. Further, both the approaches were compared to find the best fit and optimized model.

As per the findings, both AHP and TOPSIS can be used to select the best candidate among the alternatives available. TOPSIS was found easier to implement as it involves ranking of applicants with respect to each skills required for respective job profile only once, whereas AHP involves pair-wise comparison among candidates with respect to each skills required for respective job profile and normalization of each comparison, resulting in the formation of number of comparison matrices. However, AHP is more reliable as it considers consistency check for each level of pair-wise comparison. Hence, there is a chance to avoid or revise the human judgment error. Integrated ranking and optimization approach minimizes the cost by suggesting the relevant positions to be filed to make an efficient team.

Group of interviewers are involved in the decision-making process, hence there are chances of biasness in ranking method which can influence the group decision. Research is limited to a particular geography of North India therefore needs to be tested for other regions also in order to generalize. The research will help the third party logistics (3PL) and other related firms in efficient team selection.

The researcher focuses on formalizing a method for potential candidate selection by considering the constraints of the organization. It has been observed that limited researches have been done on the application of AHP-LP or TOPSIS-LP integrated approach for selection process. Hence, this research proposes two integrated ranking-optimization method and suggests the best fit by comparing both the approaches.

Blockchain technology (BCT) is one of the latest disruptive innovations, brought along with-it immense scope of diverse applications contributing towards sustainable development (SD). The consistent increase in the publications reveal that the application of BCT for SD has become popular among researchers and practitioners in past few years, in turn, urged for a systematic literature review (SLR) to get an insight into the research journey travelled so far and setting directions for future research in this area. Therefore, this study aims to identify, map and synthesize the available literature on application of BCT for SD.

The automatic and manual search resulted into 1,277 studies from Scopus and Web of Science database. Further applying inclusion and exclusion criterion resulted in bringing out total of 157 studies, which were termed as primary studies. Based on the results of descriptive analysis, conducted through Bibliometric and VOSviewer software, the characteristics of BCT and its key capabilities, contributing towards shaping the recent SD literature, were critically examined. Identified research themes for clustering primary studies were aligned with United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (UNSDG). A mind-map was also prepared on the basis of thematic classification of primary studies.

The research themes “business practice and economic sustainability”, “agriculture and food security” and “business practice and environment sustainability” were found to be the focal points of scholarly attention. Synthesis and analysis of primary studies resulted into classification of research gaps under four categories – theoretical foundation, methodological limitation, research themes and technology implementation challenges. The study was concluded by sensitizing and sanitizing the concrete research questions for future research.

The research findings shall be a roadmap for research scholars, academicians and practitioners to comprehend the present state of knowledge in the domain of “BCT application for SD” and decide upon adopting the future course of action to attain the UNSDGs by the year 2030.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first attempt in its own sense to analyse and synthesize the available literature on “attaining SD through BCT” using SLR approach.

In a dynamic and uncertain business environment, it is necessary for companies to adapt to be capable of addressing the changing circumstances and ensure business continuity. Hence, companies are employing advanced Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies. This study aims to explore the role of advanced I4.0 technologies in facilitating companies’ development towards supply chain resilience (SCR).

The study adopted a structured approach of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) to identify 234 articles. Under PRISMA, we adopted a three-phase methodology of planning, conducting and reporting the review results. The data of these articles were synthesized using a Scopus database to investigate the relationship between I4.0 technologies and SCR.

The study’s findings map the technologies appropriate in different supply chain nodes and bridge the literature gap in the intersection of I4.0 technologies and SCR. The study results indicate the role of I4.0 technologies role in achieving resilience in key functions of an organization through an I4.0 technologies-enabled sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and return resilience (I-SMDRR) framework. The I-SMDRR framework also depicts the relationship being moderated by internal and external risk factors.

The study offers a unique framework by mapping sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and return resilience through I4.0 technologies. Additionally, the review delineates the theory-mapped research gaps helpful for future researchers. In summary, this systematic review of the literature identifies the components that lead to developing SCR.