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The selection of potential suppliers has recently become a big challenge for the manufacturing industries due to the rapid spread of covid-19 and the escalating frequency of natural ...calamities such as earthquakes and floods. When decision-makers (DMs) consider quantity discounts from multiple sources, things get much more complicated. Although previous studies have looked at selecting suitable suppliers from economic and environmental aspects, no one has considered foreign transportation risks while evaluating the textile industry’s global green suppliers. In this regard, for the first time, this study combines economic and environmental factors with the foreign transportation risk criterion to develop a holistic model for global green supplier selection and order allocation (SS&OA) in the textile industry under all-unit quantity discounts. Initially, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) method is used to calculate the relative weights of the criteria. Second, a multi-objective linear programming (MOLP) model is developed to reduce the total procurement cost, quality rejection rate, delivery lateness rate, greenhouse gas emissions from product procurement, and foreigntransportation risks. Subsequently, the developed MOLP model is transformed into a fuzzy compromise programming (FCP) model to obtain order allocation quantities among selected suppliers with their offered quantity discount rates. A real-life case study of the Pakistani textile industry is presented to validate the proposed methodology’s applicability by determining the optimal order allocation quantities among multiple suppliers based on two decision-making attitudes of DMs (neutral and risk-averse). Finally, sensitivity and comparative analyses are carried out to guarantee that the proposed technique produces accurate and optimal solutions. The final results of the proposed methodology show that it can effectively manage data uncertainties during SS&OA compared to other existing approaches. The suggested integrated methodology’s outcomes can assist the supplier organization in overcoming its current shortcomings and developing a long-term relationship with the buyer organization.
Tribochemical reactions between lubricant additives and friction interface can be initiated or catalyzed by self-excited electrons during friction. To explore the effects of static ...electricity-stimulated artificial electrons on chemical activity of additives, tribological properties of steel/steel interface and static chemisorption on steel surface were investigated with white oil containing sulfurized isobutylene additive (WO+T321) under electrostatic minimum quantity lubrication (EMQL). The results show that charged WO+T321 lubricant exhibits improved anti-friction (AF) and anti-wear (AW) properties, and chemical reaction films contain higher concentrations of S element on the worn and static chemisorption steel ball surface. This is attributed to the electrostatic catalysis induced by artificial electrons which ionize T321 molecule into anions and free radicals, promoting the formation of lubricating film enriched in S element.
•The electrostatic catalysis of artificial electrons on the formation of chemical reaction films has been revealed.•The electrostatic catalysis improves the tribological properties via enhancing chemical activity of S-containing lubricant.•The catalysis of electrostatic minimum quantity lubrication (EMQL) on active elements was further explored.
Potassium fertilization is often neglected and /or ignored leading to imbalanced fertilization under intensive cultivation especially in the Indo Gangetic Plains (IGP) in North-West India. Recently ...conservation agriculture (CA) with crop residue retention has become quite popular among the farmers and land practitioners in India and globally. Crop residues are generally rich in potassium (K) content and its continuous addition under CA may impact K dynamics and supply to crops to some extent. Keeping this in view, a field experiment was conducted to assess the effect of long-term cereal-based CA on K supplying capacity in soil of North-West India. Both routine method (neutral normal ammonium acetate extractable) and quantity-intensity (Q/I) approach were adopted to predict K supply under CA vis-à-vis conventional agriculture. Available K and Q/I parameters were analyzed after 11 years of an experimental setup consisting of six scenarios i.e. Scenario 1 (Sc1): conventional till rice-wheat cropping system; Scenario 2 (Sc2): partial CA based rice-wheat-mungbean system; Scenario 3 (Sc3): full CA based rice-wheat-mungbean system; Scenario 4 (Sc4): full CA based maize-wheat-mungbean system; Scenario 5 (Sc5) and 6 (Sc6): same as Sc3 and Sc4 but with sub surface drip irrigation system. Results revealed that full CA based scenarios maintained significantly higher (p < 0.05) available K (145 mg kg−1) than Sc1 (86 mg kg−1). However, it was observed that Q/I approach helped in better understanding of K supply under long term CA soils than routine method. Regarding K availability, Sc6 was the best scenario with high values of planar K (0.147 cmol kg−1), labile K (0.325 cmol kg−1) and potential buffering capacity (PBCK) while Sc1 (without K fertilization or residue addition) presented lowest values of Q/I parameters. Partial CA (Sc2) maintained higher labile K (0.368 cmol kg−1) and equilibrium concentration ratio (CRe0K) (1.93(mol L−1) 1/2 × 10−3) but very low PBCK (36.4 cmol kg−1 (mol L−1) −1/2) suggesting that K intensity shall not be sustained for long period of time and lead to soil K depletion over time. However, on an average, all full CA based scenarios maintained higher Q/I parameters over the conventional practice (Sc1), representing better ability to supply K both immediately and over a long period of time to meet crop requirement. The impact of maize-wheat-mungbean cropping system was prominently observed with respect to CRe0Kover rice-wheat-mungbean system; whereas the effect of irrigation method was not significantly distinguishable. The study thus highlights the potential of long term crop residue retention under CA for improving and maintaining K supply to crops.
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•Q/I approach was better than 1N NH4OAC method for understanding K dynamics under long term CA.•Intensity and quantity parameters were higher in CA than conventional agriculture.•Partial CA maintained higher immediately available K but poor supplying capacity over long term.•Long term residue retention significantly impacts K dynamics under CA.
The Yellow River Basin, which accommodates the second longest river in China – Yellow River, covers a total area of 795,000 km2 and plays an important role in the national agricultural production, ...economy, and culture. However, the Basin also faces enormous challenges related to sustainable water management in agriculture as driven by both drought and flood. In this special issue, we collected 64 articles across the Basin to improve our understanding of agricultural water management needs and demonstrate efficacies of management practices to improve the water management. The articles present exciting research on regional soil water storage and dynamics, soil moisture conservation in rain-fed agriculture, crop water demand, irrigation effects, water-nutrient coupling, water management and soil salinity, soil and nutrient losses, groundwater science and management. Findings of studies revealed: (1) the importance of mulching, drip and negative pressure irrigation, water and nutrient coupling (i.e., fertigation) in achieving both crop production and environmental protection objectives; (2) emerging research for better understanding of regional water resources and allocation of the water resources among different agricultural land uses and cropping systems, new approaches for conserving water and soil and mitigating soil salinity, system-level integrated rainfall and irrigation management, and improved knowledge on groundwater quantity and quality management; and (3) need of future research to understand processes and efficiencies of management practices in variable landscapes and cropping systems and variable and changing climates, and system-level linkages and analyses of water balance – soil water availability and conservation – water and soil losses – agricultural and environmental sustainability.
Inventory control is at the core of supply management to balance inventory needs and demand. With an inventory system, management can control stock of materials and goods, production process and ...sales transactions can even stop the production process if necessary. Sari Gamping building materials store that sells various building needs including building materials and tools. Data management of goods, transactions and inventory processing still uses conventional methods using Microsoft Office. The purpose of this research is to analyze the ongoing inventory management process to create an inventory management information system so that it can help the Sari Gamping store in controlling inventory. The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and reorder point methods were chosen to optimize inventory to avoid shortages or excess inventories, to fulfill customer orders, to achieve cost efficiency and to prevent problems that may occur. The developed system can manage data on goods, categories, suppliers, manage purchase and sales transactions and can generate information from EOQ calculations, safety stock and reorder points. From the results of testing the calculations of the two methods used with 15 samples of catylac paint variants, the average inventory cost saving in June 2023 was 65.33%.
Sleep has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Furthermore, screen time has been reported to influence sleep and has increased during pandemic quarantines. This systematic review ...searched databases to determine if screen time affected sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic.
PubMed, Nursing and Allied Health Proquest, and Science Direct Health and Lifescience college edition were searched for articles that fit the inclusion criteria. There were 2750 articles initially screened. Then, 119 articles were further assessed to determine eligibility, creating a final sample of 18 articles that explored whether screen time affected sleep.
After reviewing the included articles (n = 18), the main theme revealed that screen time negatively affected sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically aspects such as sleep duration, sleep quality, sleep onset latency, and wake time. However, several articles countered this implication. Therefore, it is important to consider other factors that may influence the relationship between screen time and sleep.
Although the number of articles included is limited, the overall synthesis suggests that COVID-19-related lifestyle changes, such as increased screen time, may negatively affect sleep health. However, other unidentified factors may have contributed to these findings and warrant further research. Nonetheless, community leaders must consider the long-term consequences of the pandemic and implement initiatives to address sleep challenges due to the intricate connection between sleep and well-being.
Supplier selection is one of the most critical activities of purchasing management in a supply chain, because of the key role of supplier's performance on cost, quality, delivery and service in ...achieving the objectives of a supply chain. Supplier selection is a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem that is affected by several conflicting factors. Depending on the purchasing situations, criteria have varying importance and there is a need to weight criteria. In practice, for supplier selection problems, most of the input information is not known precisely. In these cases, the theory of fuzzy sets is one of the best tools for handling uncertainty. The fuzzy multiobjective model is formulated in such a way as to simultaneously consider the imprecision of information and determine the order quantities to each supplier based on price breaks. The problem includes the three objective functions: minimizing the net cost, minimizing the net rejected items and minimizing the net late deliveries, while satisfying capacity and demand requirement constraints. In order to solve the problem, a fuzzy weighted additive and mixed integer linear programming is developed. The model aggregates weighted membership functions of objectives to construct the relevant decision functions, in which objectives have different relative importance. A numerical example is given to illustrate how the model is applied. Finally, the conclusions and recommendations are presented.
Grinding is one of the important machining processes that are widely applied in precision manufacturing. In the beginning, studies mostly focused on dry machining. In time, emerging technologies have ...led to change in the development of the machining process. New techniques and tools have been developed over the last decade that has brought the process to an advanced place. At first, flood cooling has removed the burning problems in the grinding process. After that, a new technique was developed which is known as minimum quantity lubrication (MQL). This technique is a recognized opportunity to eliminate environmental concerns. This paper reviews some of the common as well as advanced MQL systems specifically used in grinding operations. The effect of MQL and other cutting parameters on cutting forces, surface roughness of the machined workpiece, tool wear, temperature, specific cutting energy, and residual stress is outlined. This paper also addressees the recent trend of cooling systems in the grinding process. After reading this research paper, one can easily get an overview of the previously conducted research to find the output parameter trends in MQL condition. The reader can infer from this paper in which direction the development trend in grinding is in the machining process.
This study investigates a supply chain comprising an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a contract manufacturer (CM), in which the CM acts as both upstream partner and downstream competitor to ...the OEM. The two parties can engage in one of three Cournot competition games: a simultaneous game, a sequential game with the OEM as the Stackelberg leader, and a sequential game with the CM as the Stackelberg leader. On the basis of these three basic games, this study investigates the two parties' Stackelberg leadership/followership decisions. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are exogenously given, either party may prefer Stackelberg leadership or followership. For example, when the wholesale price or the proportion of production outsourced to the CM is lower than a threshold value, both parties prefer Stackelberg leadership and, consequently, play a simultaneous game in the consumer market. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are decision variables, the competitive CM sets a wholesale price sufficiently low to allow both parties to coexist in the market, and the OEM outsources its entire production to this CM. This study also examines the impact of the supply chain parties' bargaining power on contract outcomes by considering a wholesale price that is determined via the generalized Nash bargaining scheme, finding a Stackelberg equilibrium to be sustained when the CM's degree of bargaining power is great and the non‐competitive CM's wholesale price is high.
