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The purpose of this paper is to develop a new composite model using structural equation modelling (SEM) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the selection of suppliers.

In this paper the authors have made an attempt to arrive at the supplier selection score using SEM and AHP. An attempt has been made to develop a new composite model using SEM and AHP technique, based on the survey of 151 respondents. Attributes' weightage are found out using cluster analysis.

Based on the output from the composite model, cluster analysis has been carried out to find out the strengths and weakness of each supplier on the influencing factors. Based on these findings, the supplier can improve on factors where they lag and can maintain the factors where they excel.

In this paper the authors have made an attempt to arrive at the supplier selection score using SEM and AHP.

Given the growing importance of religious tourism, the purpose of this paper is to present a review of the literature around the area.

All papers with the term “religious tourism” have been searched via Emerald Insight from January 2006 to December 2017. The search was run in June 2017 for the last time and all early cite papers falling under the criteria were also included. This has ensured that key literature produced after the seminal work by Timothy and Olsen (Eds) (2006) has been reviewed. Certain exclusions apply which have been listed in the paper.

Key themes from the literature on religious tourism along with new developments and overlaps with other tourism sectors have been highlighted.

This paper reviews literature spanning more than a decade on religious tourism.

The purpose of this study is to introduce working capital efficiency multiplier (WCEM) as a direct profitability measure of working capital management. The existing accounting measures in the literature establish an indirect approach to study the relationship between working capital efficiency and profitability of the firms.

Using the help of a set of companies from CMIE Prowess database, the study introduces WCEM as a direct profitability measure of working capital efficiency.

In this study, a new direct measure of working capital efficiency is introduced which is multiplicative in nature. WCEM is a product of three components, namely, WACC, ratio of the sum of trade receivables and inventories to trade payables and ratio of net working capital (NWC) to net sales.

The importance of direct measure like WCEM could be enormous in performance evaluation of a firm. It can be used as an indicator for choosing a suitable investment opportunity by an investor. This is due to the fact that the firm that is highly efficient in managing working capital is less exposed to liquidity risk. At the same time, the firm is less dependent on external financing. Therefore, such firms eventually create more value for their shareholders. Another indication that WCEM provides is to gauge the bargaining power of the firm and its competitive position in the market. Lower WCEM indicates higher bargaining power of a firm across the value chain, and its superior position relative to its competitors.

Most of the studies on WCM are of the empirical type and there is a complete dearth on theoretical framework. Researchers hereafter can consider WCEM as one of the financial performance variables in place of the existing measures such as return on asset (ROA), return on invested capital (ROIC), return on equity (ROE), gross operating income (GOI) and net operating income (NOI) and thereby can contribute new empirical insights through their research outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to study customer delight in tourism as influenced by destination image and perceived value, in the context of Tirupati Thirumala Balaji Devasthanam, the most visited temple in the world. Further, the role of self‐service technology in enhancing destination image is also discussed.

The paper employs a causal research design and convenient sampling techniques. The target population of this study is the visitors who visited Thirumala temple during the past year. A self‐administered questionnaire including both structured and open‐ended questions and interviews schedules were employed. Factor and regression analysis have been used to explore the tourist's attitude towards self‐service technology interfaces, in the context of Thirumala Thirupathi Devasthanam (TTD).

The self‐service technology channels such as the web site and the television channel had an impact on the customer delight element and these online channels need to be explored and utilized to create a superior experience.

The information obtained will help policy makers to design a more comprehensive marketing mix, to enhance tourist experience. Moreover, the role of technology in the field of tourism will provide valuable insights as to how best to reach the target audience.

Very few studies have explored destination image, customer delight, value dimensionality as well as SST interventions‐destination image in a tourism context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore illness beliefs among adults with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), studied in a clinical setting in the Indian context. Diabetes management lies primarily in the hands of the patient, which signifies the need for understanding the various dimensions of individuals’ illness beliefs. While past research from abroad has stressed the need for understanding the patient’s perspective in effective illness management, the lack of studies in the Indian context calls for further research in this area.

Drawing on the Self-Regulation Model (Leventhal et al., 1980), semi-structured interviews were carried out to understand the beliefs about diabetes among individuals diagnosed to have T2DM. In total, 70 individuals with T2DM were included, taking into account the disease duration, urban-rural, age and gender distinctions. The data were analyzed using content analysis method.

The results of the analysis revealed numerous sub-themes related to the perceived consequences of diabetes, control or cure issues, timeline and emotional issues as experienced by the subjects.

Carrying out a triangulated research with the various stakeholders, namely, diabetologists, general practitioners and other support staff like dieticians could add more value to this exploratory study.

There is a dearth of research work that explores the illness beliefs that patients’ hold about diabetes, as discussed in the Indian context. It is expected that the insight provided by the study can help the government bodies, healthcare organizations and practitioners design and develop interventions from a patient-centric view. Additionally, such a patient-centric approach will enable individuals to achieve their treatment goals.

Generation scheduling (GS) is the most prominent and hard-hitting problem in the electrical power industry especially in an integrated power system. Countless techniques have been used so far to solve this GS problem for proper functioning of the units in the power system to dispatch the load economically to consumers at once. Therefore, this work aims to study for the best possible function of integrated power plants to obtain the most favourable solution to the GS problem.

An appropriate method works in a proper way and assures to give the best solution to the GS problem. The finest function of incorporated power plants should be mathematically devised as a problem and via that the aim of the GS problem to minimize the total fuel cost subject to different constraints will be achieved. In this research work, the latest meta-heuristic and swarm intelligence-based technique called grey wolf optimization (GWO) technique is used as an optimization tool that will work along with the formulated problem for correct scheduling of generating units and thus achieve the objective function.

The recommended GWO technique provides the best feasible solution which is optimal in its performance for different test cases in the GS problem of integrated power plant. It is further found that the obtained solutions using GWO method are better than the former reports of other traditional methods in terms of solution excellence. The GWO method is found to be unique in its performance and having superior computational efficiency.

Decision making is significant for effective operation of integrated power plants in an electrical power system. The recommended tactic implements a modern meta-heuristic procedure that is applied to diverse test systems. The method that is proposed is efficient in providing the best solutions of solving GS problems. The suggested method surpasses the early techniques by offering the most excellent feasible solutions. Thus, it is obvious that the proposed method may be the appropriate substitute to attain the optimal operation of GS problem.

Renewable energy sources are discontinuous and infrequent in nature, and it is tough to predict them in general. Further, integrating renewable energy source-based plants with the conventional plant is extremely difficult to operate and maintain. Operation of integrated power system is full of challenges and complications. To handle those complications and challenges, the GWO algorithm is suggested for solving the GS problem and thus obtain the optimal solution in integrated power systems by considering the reserve requirement, load balance, equality and inequality constraints.

The proposed system should be further tested on diverse test systems to evaluate its performance in solving a GS problem and the results should be compared. Computation results reveal that the proposed GWO method is efficient in attaining best solution in GS problem. Further, its performance is effectively established by comparing the result obtained by GWO with other traditional methods.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of current research on customer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context and propose a research agenda for future studies. Despite being a relatively recent area of interest for academics and practitioners, a literature review that synthesizes existing knowledge into coherent topics and outlines a research agenda for future research is still lacking.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of 219 papers and using a text-mining approach based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, this paper enhances the existing knowledge of B2B customer behavior and provides a descriptive analysis of the literature.

From this review, ten major research topics are found and analyzed. These topics were analyzed through the lens of the Theory, Context, Characteristics and Method framework, providing a summary of key findings from prior studies. Additionally, an integrative framework was developed, offering insights into future research directions.

This study presents a novel contribution to the field of B2B by providing a systematic review of the topic of customer behavior, filling a gap in the literature and offering a valuable resource for scholars and managers seeking to advance the field.

Sewing thread plays an important role in transforming a two-dimensional fabric into three-dimensional garment. Over the years, ring spinning has been dominating the yarn market because of its consistent performance. Eli-Twist spinning system, a new method of yarn manufacture, provides a product with improved mechanical and physical properties than the conventional ring-spun yarn. It is the process of producing a two-ply compact yarn with improved fibre utilisation. The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility of using Eli-Twist yarn as a sewing thread and to compare its performance with conventional thread.

In this study, regular polyester and Indian cotton were used to produce the Eli-Twist and conventional TFO thread. Three different blends (100 per cent polyester, 50/50 polyester/cotton [P/C] and 100 per cent cotton) were taken to produce three different counts (39.4 tex, 29.5 tex and 23.6 tex) from each composition. The hairiness, tenacity, breaking elongation and coefficient of yarn-to-metal friction of threads were tested and a comparative analysis was made. The seam performance of all the threads was judged by seam strength, seam efficiency and seam elongation.

The results show that the mass irregularity and imperfections are more or less similar for both types of threads. Eli-Twist sewing thread has shown less friction, less hairiness and higher tensile strength. The Eli-Twist sewing thread was found to be better than the conventional two-ply sewing thread. The seam performance parameters, such as seam strength, seam efficiency and seam elongation of the Eli-Twist thread showed significantly improved performance.

The main concern of this study is delineating the performance of the Eli-Twist sewing thread. No study in this regard has been reported so far. The improved physical and mechanical behaviour of the Eli-Twist yarn has prompted to assess its performance as sewing thread.

This study aims to present a modified interleaved boost converter (MIBC) topology for improving the reliability and efficiency of power electronic systems.

The MIBC topology was implemented with two parallel converters, operated with a −180 degree phase shift. Using this methodology, ripples are reduced. The state-space model was analysed with a two-switch MIBC for different modes of operation. The simulation was carried out and validated using a hardware prototype.

The performance of the proposed MIBC shows better output voltage, current and power than the interleaved boost converter (IBC) for the solar PV array. The output power of the proposed converter is 1.353 times higher than that of existing converters, such as boost converter (BC) and IBC. The output power of the four-phase IBC is 30 kW, whereas that of the proposed two-phase MIBC is 40.59 kW. The efficiency of MIBC was better than that of IBC (87.01%). By incorporating interleaved techniques, the total inductor current is reduced by 29.60% compared with the existing converter.

The proposed MIBC can be used in a grid-connected system with an inverter circuit for DC-to-AC conversion, electric vehicle speed control, power factor correction circuit, high-efficiency converters and battery chargers.

The work presented in this paper is a modified version of IBC. This modified MIBC was modelled using the state-space approach. Furthermore, the state-space model of a two-phase MIBC was implemented using a Simulink model, and the same was validated using a hardware setup.