Azharul Karim

Manufacturing practices and performance: Comparison among small-medium and large industries

Purpose – This exploratory study aims to investigate relationships of current manufacturing practices and their performance with the size of the manufacturing organizations. The study also seeks to identify the practices that significantly influence their manufacturing performance.Design/methodology/approach – Relationships of current manufacturing practices and their performance are investigated using established scales including competitive advantage, quality and reliability practices, advanced quality practices, supplier relationship, field data and information exchange, product data management, manufacturing performance. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA and regression model were used in order to fulfil the objectives of the study. The survey was administered to top managers across the manufacturing industry.Findings – The results of the study indicate that there are significant differences in the strategic approach of small and medium (SMI) and large industries (LI). In terms of manufacturing performance...

Perspectives on the recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse police

Purpose: The aims of this paper are: to investigate the perceptions held by police (insiders) and community member (outsiders) of the recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse employees of Victoria Police; and, to develop a model that can assist in future recruitment and retention policy development.---------- Design/methodology/approach: Structured focus group interviews were conducted based on an instrument deduced from existing literature. Police and community members were interviewed separate cohorts. The discussions were thematically coded to themes and sub-themes.---------- Findings: Specific differences were identified in perceptions of the importance of recruiting culturally and linguistically diverse groups, barriers to recruitment, recruitment methods, and retention methods.---------- Research limitations/implications: Based on these perceptions, a propose a model addresses the importance of cultural diversity in policing and barriers to recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse employees. Further research is necessary to assess the broader applicability of this model.---------- Practical implications: The proposed model is may be used as the basis for future recruitment and retention activities, and human resource management policy development.---------- Originality/value: This is the first study in the Australian context of recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse police that addresses both community and police perspectives. Aligning the demographic profile of the police service with that of the community is beneficial to effective policing.

A perspective on multiculturalism and policing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between demographics and an employees understanding of and support for the recruitment of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) groups in a policing context. Design/methodology/approach – A multi‐method research approach was adopted where a postal survey, comprised of both closed and open questions, was distributed to 500 Victoria Police employees and yielded a response rate of 19.5 per cent.Findings – The findings show that gender and higher education have significant relationships to understanding CALD and lead to significant support for the recruitment of CALD employees. Results show that the instrument utilized in this study was highly reliable with a Cronbach Alpha value of 0.802. Alpha values for “understanding” and “support” were 0.813 and 0.788, respectively. Research limitations/implications – The limitation of this study is that the findings are based on a pilot study with 97 responses.Practical implications – The utility...

Extracting failure time data from industrial maintenance records using text mining

Reliability modelling requires accurate failure time of an asset. In real industrial cases, such data are often buried in different historical databases which were set up for purposes other than reliability modelling. In particular, two data sets are commonly available: work orders (WOs), which detail maintenance activities on the asset, and downtime data (DD), which details when the asset was taken offline. Each is incomplete from a failure perspective, where one wishes to know whether each downtime event was due to failure or scheduled activities. In this paper, a text mining approach is proposed to extract accurate failure time data from WOs and DD. A keyword dictionary is constructed using WO text descriptions and classifiers are constructed and applied to attribute each of the DD events to one of two classes: failure or nonfailure. The proposed method thus identifies downtime events whose descriptions are consistent with urgent unplanned WOs. The applicability of the methodology is demonstrated on maintenance data sets from an Australian electricity and sugar processing companies. Analysis of the text of the identified failure events seems to confirm the accurate identification of failures in DD. The results are expected to be immediately useful in improving the estimation of failure times (and thus the reliability models) for real-world assets.

Factors Affecting Porosity

The simultaneous transfer of heat and mass significantly affects the mechanical and physicochemical properties of food materials. Pore formation is an important structural change that takes place during drying. The degree of porosity depends on the properties of the food materials and drying process conditions. The material composition, fresh structure, moisture size, and shape of the sample are the critical material characteristics that significantly affect pore formation during drying. In addition, drying process parameters, such as temperature, pressure, coating treatment, noticeably influence structural changes over the course of drying. This chapter is concerned with the effects of material properties and drying process parameters on pore development during the drying process. Following this is a discussion of the pattern of pore formation during five major types of drying process.

Pore Formation and Evolution During Drying

The drying of an agricultural product affects its structural orientation because of the simultaneous transfer of heat and mass. Pore formation and evolution are among the important structural changes that occur during drying. However, the mechanisms of pore formation in food materials over the course of drying are very complicated because of the structural complexity of plant-based products. In general, the development of voids resulting from water migration and structural mobility is a more pronounced phenomenon causing pore formation and evolution during drying. This chapter lays out the theoretical mechanisms of pore formation and evolution and looks at how they are affected by food properties and drying conditions.

Effect of Porosity on Drying Kinetics and Food Properties

Drying causes severe structural changes in plant-based food materials owing to the simultaneous transfer of heat and mass. Pore formation is one of the critical structural changes that occur during drying. Pore characteristics affect heat and mass transfer mechanisms significantly. In addition to this, the degree of porosity of food materials notably influences the nutritional, sensorial, mechanical, and chemical quality of dried food products. This chapter presents the findings of research focusing on the effect of porosity on transfer mechanisms and other quality attributes of foodstuffs.

Nano-confined synthesis of fullerene mesoporous carbon (C60-FMC) with bimodal pores: XRD, TEM, structural properties, NMR, and protein immobilization

Nanoconfined synthesized crystalline fullerene mesoporous carbon (C60-FMC) with bimodal pore architectures of 4.95 nm and 10-15 nm pore sizes characterized by XRD, TEM, nitrogen adsorption/ desorption isotherm and solid-state NMR, and the material was used for protein immobilization. The solid-state 13C NMR spectrum of C60-FMC along with XRD, BET and TEM confirms the formation of fullerene mesoporous carbon structure C60-FMC. The immobilization of albumin (from bovine serum, BSA) protein biomolecule in a buffer solution at pH 4.7 was used to determine the adsorption properties of the C60-FMC material and its structural changes investigated by FT-IR. We demonstrated that the C60-FMC with high surface area and pore volumes have excellent adsorption capacity towards BSA protein molecule. Protein adsorption experiments clearly showed that the C60-FMC with bimodal pore architectures (4.95 nm and 10-15 nm) are suitable material to be used for protein adsorption.

Quality certification and company performance: The newly developed country experience

AbstractThis study investigates the impacts of ISO 9001:2008 certification on companies in Malaysia. Data were collected from CEOs and managers through a questionnaire survey. A multivariate analysis and SPSS macro were used as statistical techniques to assess the effects of ISO 9001 certification. Results of the study indicate that ISO 9001 certified companies were having significantly greater benefits and financial performance compared to non-certified companies. However, no significant direct relationship between ISO 9001 certification and companys financial performance was found. A further investigation revealed that financial performance is actually directly related to quality and local and international business performance, which are significantly influenced by ISO 9001 certification. Therefore quality and business performances are involved in the mediational process between the financial performance of companies and ISO 9001 certification. The novelty of this research lies in the establishment of...

An integrated lean methodology for improving patient flow in an emergency department – case study of a Saudi Arabian hospital

Abstract This study presents an integrated lean methodology for improving patient flow by identifying root causes of patient flow problems and proposing a lean patient flow process in emergency departments (EDs). The methodology combines the ‘voice of process’, the ‘voice of customers’ and the ‘voice of staff’ to identify non-value-added activities in the ED process. This integration was used to model, evaluate and improve work and process flow in the hospital’s ED. The current activities were analysed using process mapping and the A3 problem-solving sheet as visual tools to identify sources of waste. Aseer Central Hospital in Saudi Arabia was selected as the organisational case for this research. The study identified several critical areas of waste that significantly affect patient flow in the ED. The investigation reveals that these wastes were mainly related to the quality management, ED facilities, patients, physicians, nurses, administration, data/information and uncertainty/changes to work schedules in treatment. Based on the identified wastes, recommendations are made to design a lean process flow by eliminating root causes of overcrowding and waste in EDs. The proposed process model links key areas associated with the root causes of patient flow problem and highlighting critical areas that need improvement.