Search results

The objective of this research is to explore integration and transition activities in large industrial projects. The purpose is to (a) obtain a better understanding of the integration and transition activities between the project front-end (FE) and project initiation phases (PIPs), (b) explore what, how and when these integrations and transitions occur, and (c) explore what the integration and transition activities mean to project practitioners.

A qualitative research design methodology is followed, based on interviews using open-ended questions. An expert panel is used to provide responses to questions pertaining to the integration and transition between the project FE and PIP. The research is focused on managing large projects in the South African electrical engineering industrial projects industry. A literature review combined with empirical analysis reflects the importance of integrating and transitioning in project business.

The findings provide guidance to researchers and practitioners on integration and transition mechanisms, how and when these occur. It highlights the benefits of integration and transition activities. Important lessons for researchers and practitioners are provided together with areas for future research.

This is an interpretative analysis of expert opinion. Expert panel members are experienced at senior decision-making level, and their expertise was accessed based on experience, education and knowledge. This extensive experience is shared in this paper providing insights into their opinions, experiences, success and failures. These inputs together with the literature review provide interesting implications for both a theoretical foundation as well as practical implications for practitioners.

This research aims to argue that manual geometric modeling is blocking the building information modeling (BIM) promotion to small-size companies. Therefore, it is necessary to study a manner of automated modeling to reduce the dependence of BIM implementation on manpower. This paper aims to make a study into such a system to propose both its theory and prototype.

This research took a prototyping as the methodology, which consists of three steps: (1) proposing a theoretical framework supporting automated geometric modeling process; (2) developing a prototype system based on the framework; (3) conducting a testing for the prototype system on its performance.

Previous researches into automated geometric modeling only respectively focused on a specific procedure for a particular engineering domain. No general model was abstracted to support generic geometric modeling. This paper, taking higher level of abstraction, proposed such a model that can describe general geometric modeling process to serve generic automated geometric modeling systems.

This paper focused on only geometric modeling, skipping non-geometric information of BIM. A complete BIM model consists of geometric and non-geometric data. Therefore, the method of combination of them is on the research agenda.

The model proposed by this paper provide a mechanism to translate engineering geometric objects into textual representations, being able to act as the kernel of generic automated geometric modeling systems, which are expected to boost BIM promotion in industry.

This paper attempts to investigate the approaches used for implementing total quality management (TQM) practices and study its impact on ABC India Limited (Name changed), a tyre manufacturing industry for realizing leadership in the Indian market. The other objectives are to explore the key issues faced by the company before TQM and study the benefits achieved after TQM implementation.

A conceptual case study research methodology has been utilized in this paper. The industry was facing some major business challenges such as low productivity, financial issues and low market presence since 1996. To overcome these issues, the top management of the industry adopted TQM as a business improvement tool and started its implementation in 2008.

A good number of improvement initiatives under four TQM approaches such as management approach, development approach, improvement approach and involvement approach were performed systematically and strategically. As a result of the successful implementation of TQM initiatives, the industry received the most prestigious quality award namely Deming Prize in 2017.

With the implementation of the TQM philosophy in the industry, it gained the top market position, the customer satisfaction score increased from 75 to 81, market presence increased from 7.2% to 26.3% and the percentage participation of employees increased by 73.5% within a period from 2009 to 2016.

The novelty of this research is to consider a case-based approach that will be helpful in promoting the utilization of the TQM philosophy in other industries for gaining competitive advantages.

This paper aims to explore how one industry leader in Indonesia addressed its hiring and training problems while simultaneously contributing to society through an human resource management (HRM)-led corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative involving a vocational education training (VET) intervention.

The VET case study, which is central to the paper, followed a four-stage action research design. Data were collected through series of consultations with the company’s top management, benchmarking companies, the vocational school, local community and government bodies.

The intervention reduced the company’s hiring and training problems and provided jobs for graduates which addressed local youth unemployment. This experience generated lessons on CSR strategic interventions which should be considered when HRM professionals are seeking to address simultaneously organisational and social objectives.

The study is based on a single case in a local setting in one country.

The study offers insights to HRM practitioners who face similar problems relating to upskilling, local talent supply and employee recruitment. The proposed framework is likely to be relevant to HRM practitioners who play a lead role in their organisations’ CSR initiatives.

The case provides a realistic example of how a company, through its HRM function, can play a meaningful role in addressing societal issues and strategic business objectives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is an original case study based on primary data, conducted as action research.

This research addresses the diverse characteristics of existing railway steel bridges in China, including variations in construction age, design standards, structural types, manufacturing processes, materials and service conditions. It also focuses on prominent defects and challenges related to heavy transportation conditions, particularly low live haul reserves and severe fatigue problems.

The study encompasses three key aspects: (1) Adaptability assessment: It begins with assessing the suitability of existing railway steel bridges for heavy-haul operations through comprehensive analyses, experiments and engineering applications. (2) Strengthening: To combat frequent crack defects in the vertical stiffener end structure of girder webs, fatigue performance tests and reinforcement scheme experiments were conducted. These experiments included the development of a hot-spot stress S-N curve for this structure, validating the effectiveness of methods like crack stop holes, ultrasonic hammering and flange angle steel. (3) Service life extension: Research on the cruciform welded joint structure (non-fusion transfer type) focused on fatigue performance over the long life cycle. This led to the establishment of a fatigue S-N curve, enhancing Chinese design codes.

The research achieved several significant outcomes: (1) Successful implementation of strengthening and retrofitting measures on a 64-m single-span double-track railway steel truss girder on an existing heavy-duty line. (2) Post-reinforcement, a substantial 26% to 32% reduction in live haul stress on bridge members was achieved. (3) The strengthening and retrofitting efforts met design expectations, enabling the bridge to accommodate vehicles with a 30-ton axle haul on the railway line.

This research systematically tackles challenges and defects associated with Chinese existing railway steel bridges, providing valuable insights into adaptability assessment, strengthening techniques and service life extension methods. Furthermore, the development of fatigue S-N curves and the successful implementation of bridge enhancements have practical implications for improving the resilience and operational capacity of railway steel bridges in China.

The purpose of this paper is to report a review of various perspectives of lean in heavy engineering and fabrication industries and to propose a framework.

Lean manufacturing (LM) earlier known as Toyota Production System (TPS) was mainly used by automobile industries where the operations occur in sequence and the adoption of LM was easier. When it comes to heavy engineering industries, the concept of lean can be adopted in a versatile operating environment to have more advantages by waste elimination thereby having higher profit. Thus, an effort is made to consolidate various lean perspectives, namely, barriers, principles, tools and performance measures and a framework was proposed on how various lean perspectives can be adopted in a systematic way.

A comprehensive analysis of lean from various perspectives from viewpoint of the fabrication industry are done and the review is presented. Also, the framework linking barriers, principles, tools and performance measures is being contributed as an outcome of the review.

The review of lean from various perspectives for the fabrication industry and the development of a framework is the original contribution of the authors.

This study aims to explore supply chain resilience (SCR) and provides a unique resilience index. The work measures the resilience status of 37 organizations across 22 industries and provides insight into accessing the supply chain (SC) vulnerability in an uncertain environment.

This study involves measuring the resilience status of 37 organizations across 22 industries based on a subjective decision-making approach using fuzzy logic. Experts from industries rated the importance and level of implementation of 33 attributes of SCR, which are used to develop a fuzzy index of implementation that explains the resilience status of organizations.

A novel coexistent resilience index is computed based on mutualism to exhibit the proportion of contribution or learning of each attribute of an organization in an industry. The research will enhance the response plans and formation of strategic alliances for mutual coexistence by industry.

Evidence-based interpretations and suggestions are provided for each industry to enhance resilience through coexistence.

The work uniquely contributes to academic literature and SC strategy. The novel coexistent resilience index is computed based on mutualism, facilitating researchers to access SC resiliency.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of current carbon tax (CT) policy on organizations involved in a sharing network relation.

For finding the CT and economic value of the industries connected in a sharing network model a multi-objective multi-integer linear model has been formulated. The data set of the case organization is used for computation. The formulated mathematical model is computed with the aid of GAMS optimization program.

This research paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the sharing network strategy in increasing the economic value and decreasing the CT for industries involved in sharing network. The CT value INR 3,012.694 for the industries in Scenario II which incorporates the sharing network is less than the CT INR 3,580.167 for industries in Scenario I without sharing network.

The data used for the computation is based on a particular sharing network under investigation. The formulated mathematical model can be checked with similar sharing networks by varying the parameters.

This work can aid in gaining complete knowledge on the sharing network strategy which can uplift the resources and the monetary value of the non-efficient industries moving them towards sustainable and greener supply chain practices.

The presented work can impact various industries in developing countries providing them with a strategy to enhance their resources and economic value by maintaining an amicable relation.

This work uniquely was able to validate economic feasibility and CT in accordance with the carbon footprint involved in sharing network. This sharing network also incorporates the concepts of circular economy and reverse logistics for showcasing a better strategy.

Following the recent rise in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, fundamental questions about their wider impacts have started to reverberate around various disciplines. This study aims to track the unfolding landscape of general issues surrounding GenAI tools and to elucidate the specific opportunities and limitations of these tools as part of the technology-assisted enhancement of mechanical engineering education and professional practices.

As part of the investigation, the authors conduct and present a brief scientometric analysis of recently published studies to unravel the emerging trend on the subject matter. Furthermore, experimentation was done with selected GenAI tools (Bard, ChatGPT, DALL.E and 3DGPT) for mechanical engineering-related tasks.

The study identified several pedagogical and professional opportunities and guidelines for deploying GenAI tools in mechanical engineering. Besides, the study highlights some pitfalls of GenAI tools for analytical reasoning tasks (e.g., subtle errors in computation involving unit conversions) and sketching/image generation tasks (e.g., poor demonstration of symmetry).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study presents the first thorough assessment of the potential of GenAI from the lens of the mechanical engineering field. Combining scientometric analysis, experimentation and pedagogical insights, the study provides a unique focus on the implications of GenAI tools for material selection/discovery in product design, manufacturing troubleshooting, technical documentation and product positioning, among others.

This study addresses the challenge of integrating entrepreneurial competences development into the traditionally structured engineering curriculum, recognizing its potential contribution to job creation. Specifically, this study proposes a course design that intersects project management and entrepreneurial disciplines, adopting a challenge-based learning approach.

Considering a list of common features that entrepreneurs and engineers—in the role of project managers—should excel at, and building upon the principles of experiential learning, this study proposes and describes a course design that is expected to help engineering students develop entrepreneurial competences. Through a series of assessment instruments and descriptive statistics, the study evaluates its implementation in a pilot test applied in a Project Management course at a Spanish university.

The results demonstrate a significant improvement in students' entrepreneurial competences after completing the course. Noteworthy variations in receptiveness to skill development among different personality profiles are observed. Gender differences are minimal, with the exception of women exhibiting heightened self-perception in the autonomy dimension.

This study explores the common features shared by two often-disconnected disciplines, namely engineering and entrepreneurship. It suggests that integrating both perspectives through a challenge-based course design can enhance entrepreneurial competences among engineering students without compromising the specific knowledge gained from engineering programs. Engaging students in such pedagogical experiences not only fosters entrepreneurial competences but also contributes to their professional and personal growth.