Search

Lean manufacturing is one of the most widely used tools in the contemporary manufacturing industry to improve the business performance via achieving higher efficiencies at reduced cost structures. However, the apparel industry has not yet been able to realize the full potential benefit scheme of this change initiative. Thus, this research is formulated to identify key barriers faced by the apparel industry which hinder the utilization of the full spectrum of lean benefits. A comprehensive literature review was conducted along with the feedback from the industry professionals to identify key barriers of lean implementation which were categorized under six lean tools. A pilot study was conducted targeting lean practitioners and identified three lean tools (TPM, 5-S and Kanban) as the most decisive tools for further investigations. A detailed survey questionnaire formulated on those prioritized lean tools was distributed to lean practitioners (executives and managers) in lean implemented Sri Lankan apparel factories. Quantitative feedback was obtained using ‘1-5 Likert Scale’ and prioritized using ‘Relative Importance Index’ to identify the most critical barriers pertaining to the feasibility of lean implementation and continuation. A comprehensive list of recommendations was developed using the findings of the literature and the qualitative feedback from the survey.

India is a fast growing economy and emerging to be a global leader. The energy requirement for any evolving nation is on the rise. Over dependence on diminishing fossil fuels has cost us pollution and its after effects as the reward. Wind energy is emerging to be one of the leading power sources from natural resources. New and improved methods of harnessing wind energy are being developed. Conventional windmills although much in use have their own limitations in installation and maintenance. Bladeless windmills can overcome these limitations and harness wind energy more efficiently and cost effectively. This journal paper depicts the principle of working and the output obtained from the prototype of a bladeless windmill.

Genetic disorders can be identified and treated in the most suitable manner by knowing the pattern of its bases. DNA sequencing is the process of detection of the order in which these nucleotides are arranged in DNA. To overcome the disadvantages of traditional methods of DNA sequencing CMOS ISFET sensors can be used. Dual mode CMOS ISFET has the provision for image sensing which makes the DNA sequencing more accurate.

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) divides the huge bandwidth available on a fiber into several non-overlapping wavelength channels and enables data transmission over these channels simultaneously. Failure of the optical fiber causes loss of huge amount of data which can interrupt communication. There are several approaches to ensure network survivability. In survivability, we consider dedicated protection in this paper in which backup paths are configured at the time of establishing connections. If a primary path is failed, the traffic is rerouted through backup path with a short recovery time. In this paper, we investigate the performance by calculating the spectrum efficiency variation for dedicated protection in WDM networks. Spectrum efficiency is calculated by dividing the total traffic bit rate by the total spectrum used. In this paper, we carry out the investigation with detailed simulation experiments on different single-line rate (SLR) scenarios such as 100 Gbps, 400 Gbps, and 1Tbps. In addition, this paper focuses on four standard network topologies which consist of different number of links to identify how the spectrum efficiency varies for each network. Our findings are as follows. (1) Spectrum efficiency for each SLR are almost similar and comparable in all the network topologies. (2) Unlike network topology with low number of links, the spectrum efficiency for network topology with high number of links are higher, therefore, the spectrum efficiency increases when the number of links are increased. (3) The spectrum efficiency is lower when the number of primary links are higher even though in all the network topologies.

Cultivation, adding up to an important aspect in GDP (Gross Domestic Produce), has been affected tremendously over the past few decades due to the use of chemicals. Due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, arable land under cultivation is decreasing enormously. Organic farming, being the need of the hour, is opted as one of the widely chosen methodology to overcome the prevailing problem in cultivation. Advancements in agriculture have proven to serve the cultivators in a number of ways. Cultivation of crops is being done at home, which consumes limited amount of space and cost. To bring in another technological advancement by breaking all barriers, for organic farming is the Hydroponics where consumption of space and water are way too minimal. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants purely using water and nutrients, without soil. The proposed hydroponic system is built upon the concepts of embedded system. The system facilitates the growth of multiple crops under a single controller. Necessary supplements for the crops are provided based on the inputs obtained from the pH sensor and the water level sensor used. The water and nutrient supply to the different varieties of crop is controlled and monitored at regular time intervals. An efficient algorithm has been proposed for controlling all the functionalities. Automation of the hydroponic system improves the efficiency and reduces manual work.

Manual attendance has been carried out for many years which is time consuming and also provides erroneous results. The faculty has to maintain the attendance record in registers and file using pen and paper. With the development in technology, we have to look for an automated way for managing attendance. Using mobile phones provide an alternative way in this direction. The proposed system helps the teaching faculty members to maintain attendance of each class they handle. The attendance is recorded using voice automation and then updated in the database maintained for the attendance. The system also enables the teacher to mail periodic reports of the student to their parents. Thus it bridges the communication gap between the faculty members and the parents.

The growing need for underwater observation and subsea monitoring systems have stimulated considerable interest in advancing the technologies of underwater wireless communication. This communication technology is expected to play an important role in investigating climate change, monitoring biogeochemical, ecological and biological change in the ocean and lake environments, which helps to control and maintain oil production facilities and harbors using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), ships, buoys, and submarines. However, the present technology of underwater acoustic communication cannot provide the high data rate required to investigate and monitor these environmental factors. To overcome this problem, Optical wireless communication has been proposed as the best alternative to meet this challenge. In this paper, optical communication using LEDs is presented as an advancement over acoustic modems for scenarios where high speed but only limited access applications is required and also lower power, less complex communication systems are desired. On the basis of Beer-Lambert's law it was deduced that blue light (470 nm) of the visible spectrum suffered the least attenuation underwater. We attempt to design an ultra-bright blue LED based transmitter system by optimizing it with opto-coupler and an enhanced photodiode based receiver system are developed with the goal of transmitting data at higher rates by using On-Off keying technology. The objective was to transmit the data at a rate of at least 1 Mbps over a distance of 30 meters. Here, real time data could be sent or received with the help of simulation results.

Aircraft applications demand high reliability and high power density while aiming to achieve simplicity in operation, increased fuel efficiency and reduced costs of operation and environmental impact. Fighter aircraft especially, must have high manoeuvrability and must be able to handle huge thrust as compared to passenger aircrafts. This paper deals with the development of an all electric actuator with the view of replacing the existing electro hydraulic actuator which powers the control surface that controls pitching of the fighter aircraft and provides the same torque and displacement with better manoeuvrability. The rotary motion of electric actuator is translated to linear movement of ball screw which controls the angular motion of control surface. Development of electric actuator involves selection of a motor with high torque to provide electric actuation, and simulating it in Matlab with closed loop feedback control. Switched reluctance motor is considered for the application and it is simulated in closed loop with one common switch converter and C-dump converter so as to the best results. A comparative study of the output of the motor is carried out in using the two different converters.

The paper describes the design of one-dimensional discrete cosine transform (DCT) which is widely used in image and video compression systems. The objective of this paper is to design an area efficient fully parallel distributed arithmetic (DA) architecture for one-dimensional DCT to be implemented on field programmable gate array (FPGA). DCT requires large amount of mathematical computations including multiplications and accumulations. The multipliers consume increased power and area; hence multipliers are completely discarded in the proposed design. Distributed arithmetic is a method of modification at bit stream for sum of product or vector dot product to hide the multiplications. DA is very much suitable for FPGA designs as it reduces the size of a multiply and accumulate hardware. The speed is increased in the proposed design with the fully parallel approach. In this work, existing DA architecture for 1D-DCT and the proposed area efficient fully parallel DA architecture for 1D-DCT are realized. The simulation is performed using Modelsim6.2b and synthesized with Xilinx IS E Simulator. The 1D-DCT can be extended to 2D-DCT by using row column decomposition technique.