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The purpose of this paper is to identify the non-value-adding activities (NVAs) of core making process and to eliminate them through the standardization-of-work (SW) procedures in a manufacturing company.

The action-research methodology was adopted for the current study. First, various lean tools were identified through literature review, and the bottleneck area was identified in discussion with the shop-floor executives. NVAs were recorded after a continuous process study including method study and motion analysis followed by the standard operating procedure. Second, the standardized work combination tables were prepared and NVAs were eliminated using the SW procedures. SW has been opted because it is a set of actions which helps in analyzing, improving and controlling the process and it leads to continual improvement.

The production logbook revealed that the capacity in this particular workstation was 54 pieces per 7 h work shift against the current production of approx. 45–50 pieces (past data). SW saved 31.6 s per cycle which boosted the production up to 58 pieces per 7 h work shift. Finally, the authors came to know that the productivity of this particular process increased up to 6.5 percent which may upsurge if this action is executed continually with the support from shop-floor executives and management. These results were also compared with previous research works in this area and found significant relevance, and hence, the results appear to be reliable.

This is a unique study in itself which explores the lean model by assessing NVAs of core making process. The proposed approach needs to be tested across different other core making processes of the case company so as to generalize the effectiveness of SW as well as the results obtained in the current study.

The current study illustrates an important step to give more visibility to the lean concept by addressing the problem of lack of standard procedures. This study will help the shop-floor executives and managers to focus their efforts in achieving high performance through effective implementation of SW. The study should be of the interest of researchers in the area of lean manufacturing, operations management, productivity analysis, etc.

The findings of this study are based on the problem formulation for productivity gains using SW procedures in the case company. The study introduces a new perspective for the execution of SW for core making processes. SW created transparency in workflow, enhanced the safety and eliminated the 3Ms. The outcome of the current study was discussed with the production team and management of the company to validate the productivity gains and received an optimistic response. Most importantly, these improvements were achieved with no investment in machinery or tooling.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key performance indicators (PIs) that serve as a decision support tool in case of dairy supply chain practices and to analyze their interactions in the context of Indian dairy industry sector. A total of 11 PIs have been identified through the literature review and the opinions of an expert team consisting of managerial and technical experts from dairy industry and academics.

A solution methodology based on the interpretive structure modeling (ISM) technique is used to analyze the interactions among PIs and to propose a structural model. The developed model not only helps in understanding the contextual relationship among the PIs, but also in determining their interdependence to assess the supply chain performance in dairy industry. Further, the importance of PIs has been determined based on their driving and dependence power by using MICMAC analysis.

The ISM-based model suggests four PIs at first level, three PIs at second level, one PI at third level as well as one PI at fourth level and two PIs at fifth level. Model allocates to the effective information technology, brand management, responsiveness in shipment and accuracy and a control over wastages as the key PIs in the dairy industry sector. The effective traceability systems, cold chain infrastructure, quality management and the support for technological innovations are the next major PIs. There exists no autonomous PI in MICMAC analysis which proves the importance of identified PIs in the case study.

The proposed model is an attempt to capture the dynamics of milk processing sector and to incorporate all relevant constraints related to internal and external environments that would significantly improve the supply chain performance in the dairy industry.

The model developed in this study has been tested in the cooperative milk processing units based in India and also discussed with the experts from academics. This work may help practitioners, regulators and dairy industry professionals to focus their efforts toward achieving high performance by the effective implementation of the identified PIs.

In this study, 11 PIs are considered. Interactions among PIs are evaluated with the help of the ISM matrix. Out of the 11 PIs, six demonstrate both strong driving and dependence power as explained in the MICMAC analysis.

The industry is relying on the preventive maintenance techniques that can minimize failures and provide industrial plants with effective equipment, but in many companies the maintenance tasks are performed very frequently and not as per plan and do not take into consideration the conditions of the plant and equipments. The failure of each and every component needs to be studied in order to choose the best maintenance strategy. This paper presents a fuzzy VIKOR (Multicriteria Optimization and Compromise Solution) technique which is used in developing a comprehensive approach for maintenance strategy selection in the Deinking plant of the paper industry to choose the appropriate maintenance strategy thereby reducing the unnecessary cost incurred on the maintenance.

In this paper, the Fuzzy VIKOR based methodology was applied for determining the maintenance criticality index of the deinking plant of the paper industry. The effect of failure of components were evaluated by three maintenance experts on five performance criteria that is chance of failure, chance of non-detection, downtime length, severity, spare part criticality. The components were ranked according to the maintenance criticality index and thereby implementing the appropriate maintenance strategy.

The Fuzzy VIKOR technique was applied to calculate the ranking of various components of paper industry based on the views and judgment of three maintenance experts. The proposed technique suggested the appropriate maintenance strategy for various components taking into consideration the maintenance criticality index of the components.

The proposed technique will help the maintenance managers to solve a discrete problem with non-commensurable and conflicting criteria. The study will help the industries to reduce the unnecessary maintenance tasks and thereby reduce the maintenance cost. This will help the maintenance practitioners in choosing the best and most effective strategy for the organization with regard to the market and company situation especially in the changing business requirement of Industry 4.0.

Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has created the catastrophic situation, it has crippled all the economic activities and seized off the operations of food supply chain (FSC). Disrupted FSC escalated the societal concerns related to food safety and security. The purpose of this study is to consolidate various issues, exploring the perspectives associated with the agricultural practices, food industries and society concerns related with the FSC performance system dynamics amid of COVID-19 pandemic.

To structure this work, a detailed research literature insight focussing on the key findings associated with the past disease outbreaks like influenza, avian flu, Ebola, bird flu, SARS, foot and mouth disease and ongoing phase of COVID-19, encompassing the perspective related with various agricultural and concerned supply chain practices is clustered. Furthermore, issues having relevancy with the notion of this work, sourced from platforms of print and electronic media have been incorporated to ground the reality associated with the impacts, for better visualisation of the perspectives.

This study outlays the key findings which are relevant with the past pandemic outbreaks from the core of the research literature. It details the impact of the current COVID-19 scenario on the various FSC operations, focussing on dimensions allied with the industry, economic and society concerns. For the same, to mitigate the effects, relief measures focussing on the short- and long-term perspectives have been incorporated. Steps ramped up by the Government of India (GOI) to safeguard masses from the threat of food security, accelerate pace of the FSC operations and upscale operating capacities of the industries and agriculture practices have incorporated.

Presented work is persuaded amid of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions hence it outlays the theoretical perspectives only. But, these perspectives portray the ongoing scenario's impacts, extending its implication to the people coming from the industry and academia background. This study can felicitate the government bodies to make them familiar with the various impacts which indented the FSCs, food industries and added woes to the society concerns.

India is the second largest populated nation of the world, and outspread of the COVID-19 has capsized the FSCs and raised the various instances, making population vulnerable to the threats of food insecurity. This study encompasses effect of the FSC disruption by incorporating its effect on the food industries practices, societal issues and extending possible relief measures to restructure the FSC dynamics. As of now, study focussing on the Indian FSC concerns, detailing of impacts due to pandemic outbreak, relief measures to sail out of the hard times are not available.

This study aims to ground the assessment of the various costing perspectives associated with the dynamics of processed food supply chains (FSCs), for questing the avenues of profitability within a food processing enterprise.

This study underpins the development of the relation hierarchical model, binding the cluster of the key costing enactors, with the various incurred costs in the food supply chain performance system. The developed model is seeded by the inputs gathered from the case enterprises under consideration, which is further contemplated by extending the fundamentals of bipolar fuzzy sets with the methodology of ELECTRE-II.

Secured primacies owing to the mutual correspondence between the costing cluster reveal the impact of procurement cost in the dynamics of FSC. Furthermore, an inference is grounded relative to the other entities of total costs like investment, production, transportation, distribution and retailing by considering the perspective of a case enterprise. It yields that procurement costing procedurals need to be deliberated supremely, considering the vitality of the costing perspective associated with the other procedurals of the case enterprise.

The framework developed in the presented work clusters the various costing enactors along with the costings in processed FSCs, binding its holistic perspective rather than the discrete approach. The present research work provides an origin to explore the various miniatures more precisely succeeding to secure primacies for upscaling the profit-cost notions. As costing determines the avenues bundled with the production and consumption of various food commodities.

Presented work gives comparative review of food supply chain (FSC) under various notions related to its conceptualisation, operationality and technological advancements in lieu with Industry 4.0 revolution. In Indian scenario, the impression of FSC seems in a scattered way that cannot be directly useful for an organisation, to overcome this scattering, a framework has been developed to consolidate the previous research works and exploration of new trends in food supply chain management (FSCM) in context to Indian scenario.

This article encapsulates the essence of various research articles and reports retrieved from databases of Emerald and Elsevier's Science direct, clustering the various notions related to FSC in Indian context. To visualise the one-sight view of related works, a pictorial representations have also been appended.

This article explains the general aspect of FSC and its linkage in context to Indian system. Presented work outlays both empirical and theoretical approaches trending from last 15 years. As research count in context to Indian FSC is lacking, so this work will be a road map for expedition in direction of FSCM, in era of research.

Findings and suggestion in this work can expanded in various industries related to food, helping to turn their fortune and enrichment of Indian FSC.

Food is binding word for all the commodities, and its effective supply chain management is a big boon for economy of country along with large employment generation for people directly/indirectly associated with this industry. This article covers a generalise approach from ground level framework to a level of advancement which fulfil technological aspects, future needs and upcoming trends in lieu to need of developing nation.

As limited research is done in Indian FSCM, this work to bridge this gap along with a well-defined framework which going to explore FSC. This work is going to be facilitation for researchers of this area as no major review for Indian context has not been published.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a method to select the best alternative in a multi‐criteria decision making (MCDM) environment when the decision is taken by a group of members in an uncertain environment.

In this paper, Fuzzy Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (Fuzzy PROMETHEE) technique has been used for MCDM problems. The team of decision makers is constituted to integrate their opinion. The analysis is done using Geometrical Analysis for Interactive Aid (GAIA) plane, available in Decision Lab 2000 software, which provides valuable help in understanding the conflicts among criteria.

The selection of best alternative is done on the basis of generally conflicting criteria. Fuzzy PROMETHEE technique has been proposed and the same is demonstrated using Decision Lab 2000 software. This software can be used for as many criteria as possible and also in a fuzzy environment, where the crisp data for criteria comparison are not available. It is found that the analysis of the results becomes very easy and effective with this software. A case study is conducted for a cement company to select the logistic service providers (LSPs) to demonstrate its ease and effectiveness of use.

The research provides a model to choose the best alternative using Decision Lab 2000 software for Fuzzy PROMETHEE technique. The proposed methodology can be used in a fuzzy environment with ease and effectiveness. In the competitive scenario, this could help the industry in prompt and efficient decision making in MCDM problems.

Sustainability in food sector is the need of the hour. It has been revealed that Green supply chain management (GSCM) is an emerging new and effective approach to improve the productivity, efficiency of any enterprises and to achieve sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to rank the key performance indicators which are responsible for implementation of GSCM in Indian dairy sector. Ranking is done by giving weightage to them based on survey reports. The study includes literature review, personal interviews and surveys using the detailed questionnaire. Since food processing industry, e.g. dairy industry is the major energy user and directly affecting the health of public is being chosen for implementing GSCM practices. The approach is to form an effective framework for successful implementation of GSCM in dairy sector. Grouping of key performance indicators has been done using factor analysis and thereafter Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method has been applied to determine the suitable framework based on relative importance of critical factors.

The first step was to identify critical factors through extensive literature review, personal interviews, etc. The personal interviews has been carried out by contacting executives, managers, professionals of various dairy industries. Data has also been collected by interviewing auditors of ISO 14001 which was responsible for implementation of Environmental management system. Questionnaire used for collecting data has been formulated based on critical factors. It is also used to study minute details of the process being used in dairy industry. After collection of sufficient data SPSS is used for grouping of data through factor analysis. Thereafter AHP method has been used to identify the relative importance of these factors by ranking it which can be used by the managers in developing model/framework for implementing GSCM.

The work aims to examine the critical factors of GSCM and its ranking so as to implement GSCM practices in dairy industry in Indian context. Detailed questionnaire based on 79 parameters has been used for survey in dairy industry in northern India. Grouping of these parameters has been done using factor analysis. The ranking of these identified critical factors has been used by using AHP which is used to see the relative importance of these eight factors. These ranked factors would be used by the managers of the dairy industry to implement GSCM. The work is limited to Indian dairy industry but it can be extended to other industry also after identification of critical factors.

It is certified that this research work is original and has never been submitted or published in any journal.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of main parameters and their interactions on the workers' Lifting Index in a steel rolling mill.

NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) lifting equation has been used to evaluate the risk of lifting tasks with respect to low back injury under varying load (10, 15, 20 kg), frequency (2, 3, 4 lifts/min), and twisting angle (0, 30, 45 degree).

The level of importance of the parameters on lifting index at origin and destination has been determined using analysis of variance (ANOVA).The analysis draws on lifting parameters and uses both main effects and interactions to describe the variation in Lifting Index and to identify the social influence associated with back injury. The interactions between object weight and twisting angle and object weight and lifting frequency turn out to be significant (p<0.05), whereas the interaction between twisting angle and lifting frequency is less significant (p=0.061).

The study includes a specific location (steel rolling mills located in Jammu region of India) only.

The findings suggest that focus should be made on all lifting parameters, rather than sole emphasis on the load to be lifted.

The paper supports the view that load, twisting angle and lifting frequency greatly influence the physical stressfulness of the task. It is suggested that the workplace should be designed for negligible twisting and moderate lifting frequency, so as to have minimum Lifting Index.