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This paper aims to present a new design in the area of basal osseointegrated implant (BOI) for oral and maxillofacial surgery using a patient-specific computer-aided design (CAD) and additive manufacturing (AM) approach. The BOI was designed and fabricated according to the patient’s specific requirement, of maxilla stabilisation and dental fixation, a capacity not currently available in conventional BOI. The combination of CAD and AM techniques provides a powerful approach for optimisation and realisation of the implant in a design which helps to minimise blood loss and surgery time, translating into better patient outcomes and reduced financial burdens on healthcare providers.

The current study integrates the capabilities of conventional medical imaging techniques, CAD and metal AM to realise the BOI. The patient’s anatomy was scanned using a 128-slice spiral computed tomography scanner into a standard Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) data output. The DICOM data are processed using MIMICS software to construct a digital representative patient model to aid the design process, and the final customised implant was designed using Creo software. The final, surgically implanted BOI was fabricated using direct metal laser sintering in titanium (Ti-64).

The current approach assisted us to design BOI customised to the patient’s unique anatomy to improve patient outcomes. The design realises a nerve relieving option and placement of porous structure at the required area based up on the analysis of patient bone structural data.

The novelty in this work is that developed BOI comprises a patient-specific design that allows for custom fabrication around the patients' nerves, provides structural support to the compromised maxilla and comprises a dual abutment design, with the capacity of supporting fixation of up to four teeth. Conventional BOIs are only available for a signal abutment capable of holding one or two teeth only. Given the customised nature of the design, the concept could easily be extended to explore a greater number of fixation abutments, abutment length/location, adjusted dental fixation size or greater levels of maxilla support. The study highlights the significance of CAD packages to construct patient-specific solution directly from medical imaging data, and the efficiency of metal AM to translate designs into a functional implant.

In today’s competitive market, product demand and its mix frequently vary due to various uncertainties, which thus imparts the overall manufacturing cost. Furthermore, uncertainties also impart the layout design in manufacturing industries in the long run. Therefore, the layout design needs to capture the possibility of uncertainties, and these uncertainties must be captured while designing the layout of a facility. Hence, an efficient facility layout design minimizes the manufacturing cost and lead time. The purpose of this paper is to propose a cellular layout design for a tower manufacturing industry.

The paper develops an embedded simulated annealing-based meta-heuristic to solve proposed cellular layout under different scenarios considering single and multi-time periods for tower manufacturing industry. A comparative study is also performed to analyze comparison among static cellular layout, a dynamic cellular layout or a robust stochastic cellular layout for the tower manufacturing industry.

The current layout of the industry is a process layout. Here, the layout for a tower manufacturing industry is proposed under SCFLP, DCFLP and RSCFLP. The proposed models and solution methodology is tested using six scenarios with different combination of time periods. Lastly, OFV value obtained for all the scenarios is compared, and it is found that RSCFLP outruns other SCFLP and DCFLP for a tower manufacturing industry. Based on the above study, it is also concluded that RSCFLP is an efficient and effective layout in tower manufacturing industry.

The paper proposes a cellular layout design for a tower manufacturing industry. The cellular layout design is found to be preferred over the traditional layout as it reduces material handling cost, manufacturing lead time and hazards. Moreover, it enhances productivity and quality.

The aim of the paper is to investigate several aspects of bankruptcy prediction within both theoretical and empirical frameworks. In particular, it has focused on the comparison of different techniques used to forecast failure through a balanced sample of companies within a geographical area (the Campania region) located in the south of Italy.

Business failure has been one of the most investigated topics within corporate finance and the empirical approach to bankruptcy prediction has recently gained further attention from financial institutions. The aim of corporate failure prediction is to have a methodological approach which discriminates firms with a high probability of future failure from those which are considered to be healthy. Starting from the seminal paper of Altman (1968), many other significant contributions have been subsequently made to this field (Ravi Kumar and Ravi, 2007). This paper's approach is to compare different statistical techniques based on the analysis of financial data for the prediction and diagnosis of the risk of bankruptcy.

The paper investigates the determinants of bankruptcy in a specific geographical area (Campania region). Empirical evidence on a data‐set of the annual reports of a balanced sample of companies for a given time period has been analyzed. These findings aim to make a contribution to current literature as well as to contribute to the elaboration of efficient prevention and recovery strategies.

Researchers have tended to restrict the scope of their analysis due to the problems related to the collection and storage of financial data. This study focuses on financial information relating to the area of interest in order to provide a comparative analysis of different forecasting techniques.

The case illustrates an entrepreneurial voyage and venture creation and through it helps in identifying the reasons and causes for that venture's failure. It also enables discussion on the importance of planning a venture, more importantly; financing, managing, growing, and ending a venture and on how to avoid the pitfalls that befall such enterprises. This case can be used in Entrepreneurship courses as well as MBA, PGP and Executive Education programmes on Entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the research which has been done during the past three decades on the topic of green advertising and identify gaps for future research.

The methodology that has been adopted for analysis is two-pronged – the first being a literature review with tabulation of data using excel sheets and bar graphs and the second being a bibliometric review using the software VOSviewer. Both approaches analyze the number of citations, keywords, authors, journals and countries. A database of 113 articles from 1990 to 2020 is generated from Web of Science.

Major contributors to the topic of green advertising research have been identified. Thematic classification is created to understand the subtopics of green advertising. Under this classification, nine subtopics have been identified. Six core research gaps have been identified for future research in the area of green advertising.

The study helps identify where green advertising research is being conducted, its growth potential and future prospects. This research work will enable the industry to gain new insights into this emerging field of green advertising for incorporating the same in their advertising campaigns in view of growing consumer concerns on environment.

The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current status of research in green advertising. The paper is unique as it is the only review on the topic of green advertising. Given the increasing trend of going green among consumers, the paper adds tremendous value to the field of green advertising.

Financial distress is a socially and economically important problem that affects companies the world over. Having the power to better understand – and hence aid businesses from failing, has the potential to save not only the company, but also potentially prevent economies from sustained downturn. Although Islamic banks constitute a fraction of total banking assets, their importance have been substantially increasing, as their asset growth rate has surpassed that of conventional banks in recent years. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper uses a data set comprising 101 international publicly listed Islamic banks to work on advancing financial distress prediction (FDP) by utilising cutting-edge stochastic models, namely decision trees, stochastic gradient boosting and random forests. The most important variables pertaining to forecasting corporate failure are determined from an initial set of 18 variables.

The results indicate that the “Working Capital/Total Assets” ratio is the most crucial variable relating to forecasting financial distress using both the traditional “Altman Z-Score” and the “Altman Z-Score for Service Firms” methods. However, using the “Standardised Profits” method, the “Return on Revenue” ratio was found to be the most important variable. This provides empirical evidence to support the recommendations made by Basel Accords for assessing a bank’s capital risks, specifically in relation to the application to Islamic banking.

These findings provide a valuable addition to the limited literature surrounding Islamic banking in general, and FDP pertaining to Islamic banking in particular, by showcasing the most pertinent variables in forecasting financial distress so that appropriate proactive actions can be taken.

The case describes the performance evaluation system that has been put in place by Ravi Kumar, the MD to ensure that Oystar Hassia is able to design, deliver, service, sell its packaging machines seamlessly in all parts of the world. The performance evaluation system is periodic, regular, able to take track the progress of the people within the system. The benefits accrued from performance evaluation system are also detailed in this case.

This study aims to propose and empirically test new improved customer-based brand equity (CBBE) creation framework, which advocates marketing activities create CBBE through customer experience (CE). The proposed framework is in contrast to extant literature suggesting marketing activities directly create CBBE.

Qualitative interviews with patients, followed by interaction with respondents using a structured questionnaire, were used to collect the data.

The results suggest that CE is the focal mediating variable for the relationship between marketing activities and CBBE. Out of 15 marketing activities, 8 positively impacted CBBE through CE and 2 negatively affected CBBE through CE. Among the remaining five, three had only a direct positive impact on CBBE and two neither directly nor indirectly impacted CBBE.

The effects of only individual marketing activity, and not of the interaction among marketing activities, were assessed.

The study provides insights into the importance of CE in building CBBE for credence-dominant services (e.g. healthcare). This work will help managers in implementing experiential marketing by designing suitable activities for creating service CBBE.

The study outlines service CBBE creation through CE, offering specific insights for the healthcare market.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to use two industrial wastes; waste foundry sands (WFS) and molasses (M) along with lime (L) to improve the strength characteristics of clayey soil.

In the first part of the study, the optimum percentages of materials (WFS, molasses, lime) have been found out by conducting differential free swell (DFS) and consistency limit tests on clayey soil by adding various admixtures. The second and third part of the study investigates the compaction behaviour and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of clayey soil on addition of optimum amount of various materials alone and in combination with each other. Finally, the micro-structural behaviour of addition of optimum percentages of lime, WFS and molasses using Scanning electron microscopic technique has been discussed.

The laboratory results revealed that the addition of optimum content of lime along with WFS and molasses reduced DFS and plasticity index and increased maximum dry density and UCS values. The microstructural behaviour showed that the presence of lime and molasses filled the voids present in the soil and the addition of WFS helped in providing compact structure, thus improving the strength characteristics.

The study will be helpful in designing low-cost pavement designs for rural roads.

The adverse effect of waste materials on environment may be solved by using them in improving the strength characteristics of clayey soils, thereby providing healthy environment to living beings.

The study will help to provide low-cost methods to improve strength characteristics of clayey soil along with the use of waste materials; the disposal of whose is a challenging task.

The aim of this analysis is to review the Indian manufacturing organizations practicing Lean Six Sigma (LSS) tools/techniques with an objective of monitoring the performance of an organization and to develop recommendation for strategies to benchmark organizational operational efficiency.

This study offers insights of the LSS performance measurement aspects of the Indian manufacturing organizations based on Data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. The five inputs and two outputs are considered on the basis of literature review and discussed with the practitioners.

In this analysis, the relative efficiency score of 18 Indian manufacturing organizations has been determined in order to assist evaluation of the impact of monetary investment on the outputs. The present analysis not only investigates the optimum level of input variables but also lays down a significant observation that an organization having higher profit and inventory turnover ratio is not necessarily an efficient organization.

The results assist to determine the best practice units, potential source of inefficiency and deliver beneficial data for the consistent enhancement of the operational efficiency. The DEA results assist managers and decision makers to derive appropriate strategies to enhance their performance with reference to the efficient organization and to regard it as their role model.

This analysis renders a DEA based framework of LSS practicing Indian manufacturing organizations. The framework is unique in terms of its input-outputs variable selection and measurement procedure.