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The adoption of Lean Six Sigma has become increasingly widespread in manufacturing industries worldwide. It is a powerful methodology for optimizing operational efficiency and quality, leading to increased productivity, reduced costs, and higher customer satisfaction. However, implementing LSS effectively, especially in Indian manufacturing sectors striving for sustainability, presents significant challenges. In this paper, the authors have presented the critical factors that impede the successful integration of sustainable Lean Six Sigma practices within the Indian manufacturing landscape. Through a systematic review of existing literature and empirical studies, authors have identified the eighteen failure factors. To prioritize these factors, authors have employed the Best Worst Method (BWM), a decision-making tool that aids in ranking factors based on their importance and impact. It is a multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) methodology to solve different types of fact-based decision–making problems. This method involves initially identifying the best (most important) and worst (least important) factors, followed by pairwise comparisons to determine their relative significance. Results depict that “Failure of leadership to inspire and motivate”, “Lack of well-defined framework for executing initiatives”, and “High implementation cost and poor estimation of cost” are three top-level critical failure factors.

The main problem is to raise the standard of construction, rethinking concrete's expanding potential as a construction material. The scarcity of river sand as a fine aggregate ingredient is currently a widespread issue for many concrete plants. As a result, quarried stones that were accessible locally were used as fine aggregate. Crushed Rock Particles, also known as crushed sand, performs better in terms of fresh characteristics since there are more fines present in CRF than in river sand. The current study additionally examines the relationship between plastic viscosity and the fresh and hardened SCC properties. As a partial substitute for Ordinary Portland Cement, Fly Ash and Ground Granulated Blast Slag blends are used to generate binary and ternary. The experimental tests satisfactorily validate the suggested blend design. The results shown that SCC mixture with ternary blend, binary blend with GGBS, fly ash, and blend with pure OPC are suitable for creating fresh characteristics. Additionally, it was found that a cohesive and workable mix was produced when 100 % CRF was used in place of sand.

AbstractDuring machinability, the combination of machining process parameters and the material properties of the component to be machined plays an important role. Material properties depend upon the type of phase form present and the grain size of the formed phases, which in turn depends upon the prior treatment given to alter the initial room temperature types and form. Accordingly, spheroidization treatment was carried out on medium carbon steel (AISI1040) by altering the initial room temperature structure through normalizing and hardening treatment. Machinability experiments were performed on CNC machine by varying machining process constraints. Tool wear and surface roughness of the machined component obtained by turning were analyzed and correlated. Using Minitab and full factorial design, the ANOVA study was carried out. With the help of regression analysis, residual and main effect plots combined optimization (tool wear and surface roughness) was targeted. ANOVA result shows excellent machinability for the as-bought-spheroidized condition where feed has a 67% contribution to tool wear (TW) whereas the depth of cut has a 71.91% contribution to surface roughness (SR). Also, the optimized regression values obtained for machining parameters are feed (0.39 mm/rev), depth of cut (0.6 mm), and spindle speed (780 rpm) with composite desirability of 0.8174. TW and SR experimental values for the optimized machining parameters are 0.039 mm and 2.89 μm, respectively, and the difference between the actual and optimized values is less than 5%.

The adoption of Lean Six Sigma has become increasingly widespread in manufacturing industries worldwide. It is a powerful methodology for optimizing operational efficiency and quality, leading to increased productivity, reduced costs, and higher customer satisfaction. However, implementing LSS effectively, especially in Indian manufacturing sectors striving for sustainability, presents significant challenges. In this paper, the authors have presented the critical factors that impede the successful integration of sustainable Lean Six Sigma practices within the Indian manufacturing landscape. Through a systematic review of existing literature and empirical studies, authors have identified the eighteen failure factors. To prioritize these factors, authors have employed the Best Worst Method (BWM), a decision-making tool that aids in ranking factors based on their importance and impact. It is a multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) methodology to solve different types of fact-based decision--making problems. This method involves initially identifying the best (most important) and worst (least important) factors, followed by pairwise comparisons to determine their relative significance. Results depict that "Failure of leadership to inspire and motivate", "Lack of well-defined framework for executing initiatives", and "High implementation cost and poor estimation of cost" are three top-level critical failure factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, abrasive waterjet machining has emerged as a promising machining technique for the machining of composites because of its non-thermal nature. In the present study, the effect of machining parameters on the quality of machining has been studied and the process parameters have been optimized to machine jute-fiber-reinforced polymer composites. The design of the experiment was used to predict the combination of the input parameters for L27 experiments. Taguchi and response surface methodology (RSM) techniques were employed to analyze the experimental data and identify the optimum combination of process parameters to achieve as little delamination as possible. The results indicate that an increase in the values of the parameters traverse speed and abrasive mass flow rate leads to an increase in the damage obtained. However, an increase in the value of the parameter stand-off distance minimizes the damage produced. To achieve minimum delamination, the optimum combination of input parameters is obtained through Taguchi and RSM. For the present experimental condition, to achieve minimum delamination, the parameter traverse speed should be set at 20 mm/min, the stand-off distance should be 4 mm, and the abrasive flow rate should be set at 0.25 kg/min. The results confirm that the optimum combination of parameters obtained through both approaches is similar. This investigation results indicated a significant improvement in the cutting quality with reduced damage, achieved through the optimized process parameters. For the considered range of parameters, graphs are plotted such that any intermediate values can be anticipated within the considered range without performing any further experiments. The present work signifies the effect of fiber orientation on delamination.

In the present work efforts are made to confirm the presence of actual weight percentage of reinforcements and its effect on aluminium alloy composites during stir casting technique. Two types of reinforcements, such as Silicon carbide and Boron carbide, were used by varying weight to manufacture Al6061 composites. The manufactured composites after stir casting show uniform distribution of hardness on the entire cross-section measured from top to bottom. The dissolved composites during the acid solubility test show approximately 95% of reinforcements present in the aluminium composites. Presence of reinforcements and quantity play a very important role to augment the properties of aluminium alloy by altering the microstructure during solidification and induces strain energy in the metallic matrix alloy. Almost 50–80% increase in hardness and 40–50% increase in tensile strength were observed in the as-cast composites as compared to aluminium alloy. Uniform distribution of reinforcements and hardness distribution on the entire cross-section clearly reveals that stir casting is an effective method for manufacturing aluminium composites.

Background World Health Organisation´s South-East Asia Region is home to about one fourth of the world's population. Of this, there are about 246 million smokers and 290 million smokeless tobacco users. In addition to the human toll, the effects of tobacco are felt significantly in the economy of a country. The World Bank has declared that, when effects of poverty due to loss of income, spending on tobacco and costs of illness are taken into account, tobacco use is a net loss to an economy. Methods Objective of the study: To determine the correlation of tobacco use with tobacco related disease burden and developmental indicators of South East Asian countries. Study method: Secondary data-based Cross-Sectional Study Data sources: Data on tobacco prevalence, cancer prevalence, human development index, tobacco economics and poverty indicators during the year 2014-2015 were collected from various sources such as WHO Report on Global Tobacco Epidemic 2015, World Bank data, Tobacco Atlas and World Life Expectancy 2014 reports. Data analysis: Data were analyzed using Pearsonn´s Correlation Coefficient on SPSS version 16. Results were considered significant at 95% level of significance. Results The Study represented data of 11 Countries of the WHO South East Asia Region. Current smoking prevalence ranged between 2.80% and 39.80% with a mean prevalence of 20.7% (± 9.24). Both prevalence of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per year per ca-pita in the 11 countries had a positive moderate correlation with the number of deaths per 100000 population due to lung cancer (r= 0.62 & 0.76; P=0.04 & 0.01). Oral Cancer increased with prevalence of smokeless tobacco use (r=0.07; P=0.07). [Correlates between tobacco use and tobacco burden] Conclusions The study findings suggest that tobacco prevalence, tobacco related deaths and tobacco economics can be correlated with the health profile of countries in the region. These countries show positive correlation between tobacco use and related diseases.

Byline: M. Wasim, Uday. Muddebihal, U. Rao Introduction: Laparoscopic repair is now the treatment of choice for most cases of ventral/incisional hernia. Although the technique has undergone many refinements, there [...]