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The purpose of this paper is to check the veracity of educators’ apprehensions about peer assessments by comparing them with the actual peer assessment scores. It also explores the levels of satisfaction and current usage of peer assessment tools among educators.

The first phase of this study aims at providing insights into the educators’ apprehensions, their satisfaction and usage levels of peer assessments. The second phase involves analysis of peer assessment scores of 539 students in 117 teams. Findings from statistical analysis of peer assessment scores are compared against the apprehensions of educators.

The results do not support the apprehensions among educators about peer assessments. Findings on the usage, satisfaction levels of educators and their future intentions of using peer assessments are also presented in this paper.

Studies with larger sample size, qualitative in-depth research on experiences, designs and conditions of successful peer assessments and studies based on users’ experiences of peer assessments will help in getting richer insights in this area.

Results of this study indicate a need for educators to shed their apprehensions and adopt online or offline peer assessments tools with trust and confidence.

This study is important due to the existence of contrary views, inconsistent results and lack of adequate familiarity about the use, efficacy and practice of peer assessments. Though previous studies have tried to establish the reliability of peer assessments, this study finds that educators are still apprehensive about peer assessments. This is a unique study as no previous research has attempted a comparative study to check the veracity of the apprehensions of educators about peer assessments using the actual peer assessment scores.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the employee’s perception toward e-learning programs or services and to explore the attribute for improvements.

For this study, 294 employees from four different types of banks in North India were selected as respondents. Four types of banks were considered – government bank, private bank, foreign bank, and cooperative bank. The respondents were asked to give their responses as per their perceptions toward e-learning on a five-point Likert scale.

Although e-learning has not been able to fulfill its promise in revolutionizing corporate training in India, there is little doubt that in future the mode of learning will play a major role in human resource development in India because the research carried out on the successful implementation of e-learning is mostly in the western part of world.

The present study provides a useful insight about employee perceptions on the effectiveness of e-learning, which ultimately improves the e-service quality and results in the improvement of satisfaction of customers in the online banking sector.

The purpose of this paper is to differentiate the empowering influences of critical enablers of supply chain management (SCM) along with their interrelationships. These empowering enablers are significant, as they encourage productive execution to improve organizational performance and stakeholder's satisfaction.

From the literature review, incidence of a number of SCM enablers were found and they were subjected to critical scrutiny by a considerable number of experts engaged in SCM research and application to identify significant and applicable empowering enablers by grounded interactions. By using Impact Matrix Cross-Reference Multiplication Applied to a Classification analysis, the driving and dependence power were analyzed and the empowering enablers were ordered. This was pursued by building up a structural model of the empowering enablers using interpretive structure modeling, followed with measuring cause–effect relationship using decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL).

Among these identified enablers of SCM, operational performance, green SCM, employee empowerment and motivation and strategic association came out to be strategic enablers.

The findings may help the practicing professionals to develop clarity in understanding of these essential enablers and their contextual as well as cause–effect relationship in SCM. The practicing professionals need to focus on all these enablers during implementation of SCM for enhancing the organizational performance and stake holders' satisfaction.

This study is of practical utility in real-life implementation of SCM. The algorithm used in applying the multi-criteria decision-making approach is very user-friendly, and the application of DEMATEL is an innovation compared to previous research. Further, the findings can be used as a benchmark for improving the performance of SCM by considering the cause–effect relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors relevant for financial inclusion (FI) and establish a model that shows how these factors lead to economic development (ED) through FI.

Primary data were collected through structured questionnaire. Out of 350, 311 respondents accurately filled the questionnaire. The data were collected from rural areas of Tamil Nadu. Exploratory factor analysis has been applied to evaluate drivers/factors relevant for FI. Confirmatory factor analysis has been applied to establish reliability and validity of the identified factors. A structural model has been proposed and empirically tested for ED through FI.

The main findings of the current paper are as follows: online banking (OB), understanding banking services (UBS) and financial literacy (FL) are the drivers of FI; FI can lead to ED, as the proposed model of ED, through FI, is supported in the paper (χ²/degree of freedom and CMIN/degree of freedom are less than 3; GFI and AGFI are more than 0.90 and 0.85, respectively). Behavior of the people, with respect to mode of financial transactions, has changed due to demonetization. (The χ² test for mode of financial transaction is significant).

The geographical reach of the sample should cover the whole India. The sample should also have equal representation from rural and urban areas.

The identified factors for FI (OB, UBS and FL) should be more focused to bring about better results for FI in India. These factors can lead to a more effective execution of FI initiatives. In addition to this, policy makers can be confident of relying upon FI as a tool for ED.

The identified three drivers for FI have not been explored earlier. In addition to this, ED (through FI) in the form of structural model has also not been tested earlier. Government of India can realign their policies toward FI by using findings of this paper. In addition to increasing the access of formal financial system to masses, more thrust can be given to OB and FL for better results of FI in India.

Almost everything around us is the output of software-driven machines or working with software. Software firms are working hard to meet the user’s requirements. But developing a fault-free software is not possible. Also due to market competition, firms do not want to delay their software release. But early release software comes with the problem of user reporting more failures during operations due to more number of faults lying in it. To overcome the above situation, software firms these days are releasing software with an adequate amount of testing instead of delaying the release to develop reliable software and releasing software patches post release to make the software more reliable. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors have developed a generalized framework by assuming that testing continues beyond software release to determine the time to release and stop testing of software. As the testing team is always not skilled, hence, the rate of detection correction of faults during testing may change over time. Also, they may commit an error during software development, hence increasing the number of faults. Therefore, the authors have to consider these two factors as well in our proposed model. Further, the authors have done sensitivity analysis based on the cost-modeling parameters to check and analyze their impact on the software testing and release policy.

From the proposed model, the authors found that it is better to release early and continue testing in the post-release phase. By using this model, firms can get the benefits of early release, and at the same time, users get the benefit of post-release software reliability assurance.

The authors are proposing a generalized model for software scheduling.

Due to the importance of quality to customers, this study considers criteria of quality and profit and optimizes both in a multi-echelon cold chain of perishable agricultural products whose quality immediately begins to deteriorate after harvest. The two objectives of the proposed cold chain are to maximize profit and quality. Since postharvest quality loss in the supply chain depends on various decisions and factors, in addition to strategic decisions, the authors consider the temperature setting in refrigerated facilities and transportation vehicles due to the unfixed shelf life of the products which is related to the temperature found by Arrhenius formula.

The authors use bi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming to design a four-echelon supply chain. The authors integrate the supply chain echelons to detect the sources and factors of quality loss. The four echelons include supply, processing, storage and customer. The decisions, including facility location, assigning nodes of each echelon to corresponding nodes from the adjacent echelon, allocation of vehicles to transport the products from farms to wholesalers, processing selection, and temperature setting in refrigerated facilities, are made in an integrated way. Model verification and validation in the case study are done based on three perishable herbal plants.

The model obtains a 29% profit against a total cost of 71 and 93% of original quality of the crops is maintained, indicating a 7% quality loss. The final quality of 93% is the result of making a US$6m investment in the supply chain, including the procurement of high-quality raw materials; facility establishment; high-speed, high-capacity vehicles; location assignment; processing selection and refrigeration equipment in the storage and transportation systems, helping to maximize both the final quality of the products and the total profit.

The proposed supply chain model should help managers with modeling decisions, especially when it comes to cold chains for agricultural products. The model yields these results – optimal location-allocation decisions for the facilities to minimize distances between the network nodes, which save time and maintain the majority of the products’ original quality; choosing the most appropriate processing method, which reduces the perishability rate; providing high-capacity, high-speed vehicles in the logistics system, which minimizes transportation costs and maximizes the quality; and setting the right temperature in the refrigerated facilities, which mitigates the postharvest decay reaction rate of the products.

Comparison of the results of the present research with those of the traditional chain (obtained through experts) shows that since the designed chain increases the profit as well as the final quality, it has benefits for the main chain stakeholders, which are customers of agricultural products. This study model is expected to have a positive impact on the environment by placing strong emphasis on quality and preventing excessive waste generation and air pollution by imposing a financial penalty on extra demand production.

Since profit and quality of the final product are two important factors in all cultures and communities, the proposed supply chain model can be used in any food industry around the world. Applying the proposed model induces growth in local industries and promotes the culture of prioritizing quality in societies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research on a bi-objective four-echelon (supply, processing, storage and customer) postharvest supply chain for agricultural products including that integrates transportation logistics and considers the deterioration rate of products as a time-dependent variable at different levels of decision-making.

Examines the tenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

The purpose of this paper is to optimize the design of a hybrid tether using probabilistic approach considering inherent random variation in the stress developed and the strength it has. The variation in strength is mostly because of variation in diameter of the tether and the properties of the material along the length of the tether. As a result, classical design approach for the tether may not serve the purpose. For this purpose, a reliability-based design of hybrid tether is discussed in this paper.

A literature review was carried out on the design of tether and its operational reliability. It has been shown that the classical design approach does not serve the purpose, as the strategic operation has to be reliable enough, often requiring a measure of reliability required. A reliability-based approach has been presented to achieve the optimum design of a hybrid tether.

The optimization problem was carried out for different values of the safety factor to investigate the effect on the optimal design of tether. An analysis is carried out to show that one should not target a very high value of reliability or factor of safety, as it causes the self-weight of the tether to increase tremendously and its cost significantly.

The present work has been carried out considering the limited data and can further be extended to determine more accurate reliability measures by considering more number of sample test data. The measured data is collected from limited required trials for demo; do not represent the exact population data.

Lab strength test and flight trials were conducted to acquire data for the present analysis. In field use, it was noticed that the tether degraded from top portion attached toward the balloon end because of maximum exposure and repeated usage.

The purpose of this paper is to study and develop supply chain structure of traditional Indian agri-fresh food supply chain (AFSC). This paper proposes a mathematical model to design a traditional Indian AFSC to minimize total distribution cost and post-harvest losses in the chain.

This paper formulates two mathematical models to structure and represent the flow of products in the existing chain. First, a three-echelon, multi-period, multi-product, mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is formulated to minimize the total distribution cost incurred in the chain. Further, the developed formulation is extended by considering the perishability of products in the second model.

A real case study problem of Mandsaur district (India) is solved in LINGO 17.0 package to check the validity of the formulated models. The perishable (second) model of AFSC reports better results in terms of costs and post-harvest losses minimization. The results revealed that 92% of the total distribution cost incurred in the transportation of products from farmers to the hubs.

This paper includes implications for redesigning an existing supply chain network by incorporating an appropriate transportation strategy from farmers to hubs to minimize transportation inefficiency and enhance the profitability of farmers.

The formulated AFSC model would help managers and policymakers to identify optimal locations for hubs where required infrastructure would be developed.

According to the author's best knowledge, this paper is the first to design traditional Indian AFSC by considering the perishability of products.

Given the need to simultaneously implement lean and agile (LeAgile) paradigms in supply chain, managers do not know which of these paradigms practices should be given priority. Not knowing this, not only will they fail to apply these paradigms properly, but they will also waste significant financial resources. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the practices of LeAgile paradigms and their effects on the supply chain performance.

Because the military products play a key role in national security enhancement, this research is done in the military product supply chain. Research methodology is an exploratory, mixed and descriptive one. In terms of its purpose, it is an applied research based on identifying and searching for practices and the use of interpretive equations. First, the authors identify the most important and implementable LeAgile practices in the form of importance feasibility analysis matrices. Then, using fuzzy interpretative structural modeling, a model is presented to show the logical relationships and hierarchy between paradigms, practices and their impact on supply chain performance. The research tool in both main stages of the research was the questionnaire completed by industrial and academic experts. The selection of experts was done purposefully.

The results show that of total 100 practices introduced in the previous research for LeAgile supply chain, 21 practices in the lean and agility of the supply chain of military industries are important and implementable. The final model of this study illustrates the hierarchical relationships between 21 practices and its effect on supply chain performance key measures. This model shows that LeAgile paradigms are intertwined and their simultaneous implementation leads to improved supply chain performance. In this model, supplier-related practices play a driving and fundamental role and become a top priority for implementation.

Military products variation in land, air and sea areas and the large number of industries in each sectors, forced us to select the only land area. Although the results of this research can be used in the air and sea areas, one cannot say that Implementation of this study by its presented model will fully lead to the military industries supply chain (SC) lean and agility in air and sea sectors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research on the SC legality in Iran’s military industry which tries to apply these two paradigms simultaneously in the SC and bridge the gap between theory and practice. Clustering LeAgile practices, based on two measures of importance and feasibility, and defining four strategies for implementing these measures, is a new approach to focus on deploying practices that are currently more feasible. Identifying a significant number of SC LeAgile practices (100 practices) and demonstrating the interactions between important and feasible practices in the military products SC are another innovation in this research.