K. Elangovan

Quality and productivity improvement of executive decisions in maintenance engineering: an ESS-based approach

Time and again scant emphases have been made to link quality with productivity and vice versa. However, these efforts are tilted towards improving quality and productivity of organisational performance. No attempts have been made to improve quality and productivity of executive decision-making. This happens despite the establishment of the need for management support and commitment to implementing managerial and technological models. On realising this research and practical gap, this article makes overtures towards this direction by showing the way to exploit Executive Support System (ESS) for implementing a maintenance engineering model. The construction and workings of the prototype version of an ESS are described for this purpose. A questionnaire-based feedback approach was adopted to verify and validate this prototype version of ESS.

Experimental Study of Preparation, Characterisation and Thermal Behaviour of Water-Based Nanofluids Containing Titanium Oxide Nanoparticles

This paper presents the preparation, characterisation and thermal behavior of TiO2/water Nanofluids with different concentration. The presence of Nanosized particles in the conventional heat transfer fluids enhances its thermo physical character. In the present work, TiO2/water Nanofluids with various volume concentrations were prepared by dispersing a specified amount of spherical sized TiO2 Nanoparticles in distilled water without any surfactant. To get a uniform dispersion and stable suspension, the Nanofluids were kept under ultrasonic vibration continuously for 3 hours. Zeta potential measurement brought detailed insight into the causes of dispersion, aggregation of Nanofluids. The KD2 Pro, fully portable thermal properties analyser, was used to measure thermal conductivity of nanofluids. The viscosity of the nanofluid was measured using a Brookfield Viscometer. The experimental results show that the thermal conductivity increases with an increase of particle volume fraction and the enhancement was observed to be 9.22% over the base fluid for volume concentration of 0.75%. From the experimental observations, enhancement in thermal conductivity is larger than the enhancement in viscosity.

Effects of electroplating on the mechanical properties of injection molded thermoplastics

Injection molding (IM) is the most generally used manufacturing process for the fabrication of plastic parts. A wide variety of products are manufactured using injection molding, which vary greatly in their size, intricacy, and application. One of the main limitations of Injection molded parts is the limited strength characteristic of Injection molded materials which in turn limits their scope of application in many areas of engineering. This paper focuses on enhancing the scope of application of IM parts through deposition of thin metallic foils. The ABS and Nylon6 are the materials on which plating is carried out. Through electroless and electrolytic deposition of copper, nickel and chromium layers over the ABS and Nylon6 samples, improvements with respect to strength are evaluated through experimental means. The process of deposition of thin metal foils on ABS substrates involves many steps such as surface activation, etching, catalyzing, electroless deposition, electro plating and surface cleaning, whereas, the electroless procedure is avoided on Nylon6 substrates. Characterization tests such as tensile and compression are conducted on samples in both un-coated and coated conditions.

Maintenance quality policy statement: its research, design and executive support system

After the evolution of the ISO 9000 series standards, organisations began to nourish the power of policy statements in achieving quality strategies. However, there are many fields in which policy statements are yet to be exploited. Maintenance quality engineering is one of them. This paper reports a research project which has been undertaken to overcome this deficiency existing in both contemporary research and practice. During this research project, a methodology for developing a maintenance quality policy statement has been designed. Since this methodology requires the support and commitment of top executives, an Executive Support System (ESS) has been developed. The validation of this ESS has been checked by demonstrating it to the executives of two Indian companies and obtaining their feedback. In concluding, this paper finds that wider dissemination of the importance of a maintenance quality policy statement among maintenance engineering professionals is the need of the hour.

Executive support for developing maintenance quality mission statement

In literature, numerous research reports claiming the power of mission statements in achieving core competence have surfaced. On the other hand, recent researchers have argued that attaining maintenance quality is a route to achieving core competence. This paper links these two types of researches by presenting the methodology for developing maintenance quality mission statements for achieving core competence. Past research findings have established the need for devoting the Chief Executive Officers high-quality time to developing mission statements. Since this aspect is not practically viable, a module of the Executive Support System (ESS) named ESSMAQ has been developed. The workings of this module and efforts made to validate it are described in this paper. The article concludes that full-fledged implementation of this module has to be preceded by a wider dissemination of the power of mission statements and the ESS among the captains of industrial sectors.

Maintenance quality objectives development methodology and its executive support system

The growth of strategic management principles and ISO 9000 certifications triggered the organisations to develop objectives. Subsequent researches have established that objectives enabled the organisations to achieve core competencies. On sensing their importance, the field of maintenance engineering has also been orienting towards developing objectives. Yet the research activities reported in this direction is found to be minimum. In order to overcome this situation, this paper has reported a research project in which the relevant literature has been systematically reviewed to evolve a model for developing maintenance quality objectives. On considering the requirement of closer involvement and support of executives while developing maintenance quality objectives, a module of Executive Support System (ESS) has been developed. The practical validation of this module was checked by gathering the feedback received from two maintenance engineering executives.