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The purpose of this paper is to perform a comparative assessment on working of the existed subassembly identification (SI) methods, which are widely practiced during the product development stage and to propose an improved method for solving the SI problem in assembly sequence planning (ASP).

The cut-set method is found as a suitable method among various knowledge-based methods such as the theory of loops, theory of connectors and theory of clusters for the workability enhancement to meet the current requirements. Necessary product information is represented in the matrix format by replacing the traditional AND/OR graphs and the advanced predicates are included in the evaluation criteria.

The prominent methods in SI are followed a few of the predicates to avoid complexity in solution generation. The predicate consideration is found as the most influencing factor in eliminating the infeasible part combinations at SI. However, the quality of identified subassemblies without advanced predicates is not influencing the solution generation phase but practical applicability is affecting adversely.

The capability of performing SI by the cut-set method is improved to deal with the complex assembly configurations. The improved method is tested by applying on different assembly configurations and the effectiveness is compared with other existent methods of ASP along with the conventional method.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between environmental management accounting practices (EMAP), environmental management system (EMS) and organizational performance (OPM) for Malaysian manufacturing industry by using structural equation modeling (SEM) approach.

The population of the Malaysian manufacturing industry comprised 2,600 manufacturing companies. The unit of analysis is the organization that participated in the survey comprised of automotive/machinery, plastics/rubber/metal, food/tobacco, electrical/electronics and chemical/woods. Out of the 2,600 questionnaires sent to the respondents, 395 were received from manufacturing companies. The collected data are analyzed with the IBM SPSS Statistics and SEM technique.

Findings found that EMS implementation as a partial mediator to improve EMAP and OPM for Malaysian manufacturing industry. Further, the implementation of EMS was found to mediate the relationship between EMAP and OPM.

The understanding of the importance of studying the relationship between EMAP, EMS and OPM has been emphasized in the present study. In fact, the findings of this study along with its limitations have paved the way for future research in EMAP, EMS and OPM areas.

This research provides important guidelines for manufacturers and related companies to implement EMAP and EMS in order to improve OPM. Hence, the Malaysian manufacturing industry may need to consider the measurement of EMAP, EMS and OPM as beneficial to their manufacturing companies.

The research contributes to the environmental management accounting by empirically linking the relationship between EMAP, EMS and OPM for Malaysian manufacturing industry.

This paper aims to develop methods for generating disassembly tasks for selective disassembly. The disassembly task contains the disassembly information, namely, disassembly direction, disassembly tool and selective disassembly sequence.

Ontology is adopted to represent the product, and ontology rules are used to represent the disassembly knowledge. A product ontology model (POM) is introduced on the basis of material, connection matrix and interference matrix. Two types of disassembly knowledge are taken into account, one is the disassembly knowledge of disassembly tool selection and the other is the disassembly knowledge of special connections. Based on the POM and the disassembly knowledge, decision support methods are designed to generate disassembly tasks.

A centrifugal pump is used to demonstrate the proposed methods, and the result shows that the methods work well.

The methods developed in this study are fundamental approaches. The ontology and the ontology rules can be extended with more disassembly knowledge.

The main contribution of this research is the development of methods for representing disassembly knowledge based on ontology rules and the decision support methods for generating disassembly tasks.

This study aims to examine the relationship between environmental cost (EC) on organisational performance (OPM) through an environmental management system (EMS) as the mediating variable.

A total of 2,600 manufacturers were identified and consequently selected as the entire study population. Additionally, this study used the structural equation modelling technique to identify the mediator effects of EMS between EC and OPM.

The EC and EMS relationship on OPM produced direct and indirect consequences. Hence, it is concluded that manufacturing industry in Malaysia are focused on the OPM when implementing EC and EMS.

The model would incorporate EC and EMS implementation on OPM in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study could also be advantageous to the industry in improving EC, EMS and OPM.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical success factors of environmental management accounting practices in Malaysian manufacturing industry.

A pilot study was carried out on a sample of 60 manufacturing companies from Malaysian manufacturing industry. A survey instrument including 25 measurement items was designed to identify the level of environmental management accounting practices implementation in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. Descriptive statistical analysis and reliability analysis were used to analyze the data with SPSS software.

Findings indicate that environmental safety is one of the critical success factors that play the key role in ensuring the safety awareness at workplace. Companies in the manufacturing industries need to obtain critical success factors of environmental management accounting practices implementation to enhance performance, particularly for Malaysian manufacturing industry.

The limitation of this study has been the difficult to find the literature on environmental management accounting practices in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. Another limitation is this study only conducted to 60 manufacturing companies from Malaysian manufacturing industry.

For practical implications, the development of instruments in this study may be valuable tools to evaluate Environmental Management Accounting Practices (EMAP) in Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study also provides important guidelines for Malaysian manufacturing industry to implement EMAP. This research finding would provide new insights for the critical success factors of EMAP to improve performance in Malaysian manufacturing industry.

This study makes a new contribution to environmental management accounting practices in Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study also provides important information for decision makers involved in environmental management accounting practices implementation and also provides useful reference for future researchers in this research area.

The cost of manufacturing a product must be estimated accurately at the concept design stage to help decision making. Examples of such decisions are the economic feasibility of a product and the economic trade‐offs between alternative designs. An accurate estimating technique would include the cost of materials and all activities that incur cost. Presents a number of cost models for the manufacturing cost for an electrical interconnect design. All activities and material usage are allocated into three bases; unit‐level cost, batch‐level cost and product‐level cost. The unit product cost is the summation of these three costs. An example is presented to show the application of the cost models developed.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the efficiency of particle optimization method by using direct and indirect surrogate modeling in inverse design problems.

The new algorithm emphasizes the use of a direct and an indirect design prediction based on local surrogate models in particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Local response surface approximations are constructed by using radial basis neural networks. The principal role of surrogate models is to answer the question of which individuals should be placed into the next swarm. Therefore, the main purpose of surrogate models is to predict new design points instead of estimating the objective function values. To demonstrate its merits, the new approach and six comparative algorithms were applied to two different test cases including surface fitting of a geographical terrain and an inverse design of a wing, the averaged best-individual fitness values of the algorithms were recorded for a fair comparison.

The new algorithm provides more than 60 per cent reduction in the required generations as compared with comparative algorithms.

The comparative study was carried out only for two different test cases. It is possible to extend test cases for different problems.

The proposed algorithm can be applied to different inverse design problems.

The study presents extra ordinary application of double surrogate modeling usage in PSO for inverse design problems.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of information system (IS) on the relationship between environmental management accounting practices (EMAP) and organizational performance (OPM) for Malaysian manufacturing industry.

This study is based on survey data collected from 395 manufacturing companies in Malaysia. Validity and reliability analyses were performed using IBM SPSS and structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicated that EMAP positively and significantly to IS and OPM. This study also found that IS partially mediates the relationship between EMAP and OPM. This study also found that IS partially mediates the relationship between EMAP and OPM.

This study has a number of limitations that need to be addressed in future research. First, the population and sample of survey respondents are only targeted in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. Second, this research only uses the survey technique and is conducted in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. Third, the limitation of this study would concern the difficulty to find EMAP and IS relationship literatures in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. However, the researchers consider that there is greater scope for investigation on the EMAP, IS and OPM relationships for Malaysian manufacturing industry.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by examining the mediating effect of IS on the relationship between EMAP and OPM for Malaysian manufacturing industry. Thus, it is expected that the results of this study have given valuable insight of the relationship between EMAP, IS on OPM for Malaysian manufacturing industry.

In order to handle high and rapid production demands, printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers have employed high‐speed surface mount machines into their assembly lines. These machines have abilities of fast component placements, but provide challenges for process engineers to optimise the component placement sequences and feeder arrangements via effective planning. A computer program was developed based on operating concepts using genetic algorithm, to solve for various component placement sequencing planning of the high‐speed chipshooter. Genetic algorithms are a class of general purpose search methods based on the concepts of genetic evolution and survival of the fittest. The program provides information on component placement sequences and feeder arrangements for optimal assembly times. Initial tests have shown that the size of the parent space affects the convergence of the solutions during iterations. Finally, comparisons of results have shown improvement over those previously obtained by other researchers.

A printed circuit board (PCB) assembly consists of a circuit board and a variety of components in different shapes and sizes placed at specific locations on the board. They are used extensively in a variety of products by many industries today. These products include, for example, computer terminals, televisions, electronic instruments, and process controllers. There are many types and models of automatic machines available for placing components on the boards. The component placement operation consists of all steps necessary to remove a component from its packaging materials and mount it onto the PCB. The components are supplied either from a set of feeders, magazines or matrix trays. Because of the extreme accuracy required, automatic equipment is mandatory for all but the smallest production volumes.