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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of a Brazilian steelmaking company’s reheating process of the hot rolling mill.

The research method is a quantitative modeling. The main research techniques are data envelopment analysis, TOBIT regression and simulation supported by artificial neural networks. The model’s input and output variables consist of the average billet weight, number of billets processed in a batch, gas consumption, thermal efficiency, backlog and production yield within a specific period. The analysis spans 20 months.

The key findings include an average current efficiency of 81%, identification of influential variables (average billet weight, billet count and gas consumption) and simulated analysis. Among the simulated scenarios, the most promising achieved an average efficiency of 95% through increased equipment availability and billet size.

Additional favorable simulated scenarios entail the utilization of higher pre-reheating temperatures for cold billets, representing a large amount of savings in gas consumption and a reduction in CO2 emissions.

This study’s primary innovation lies in providing steelmaking practitioners with a systematic approach to evaluating and enhancing the efficiency of reheating processes.

The emission of greenhouse gases has become an increasingly relevant topic in supply chain management. The steel industry is a highly intensive manufacturing industry with significant emission levels, particularly Scope 3 emissions, which are the indirect emissions from suppliers. Since a supply chain is seen as a non-mandatory measurement item within GHG measurement protocols, this article contributes to the literature on assessing the suppliers of a focal company relative to their emissions for complying with Scope 3 (indirect emissions). It adds to the evolving literature on low-carbon supply chains.

This study first conducted a survey with 110 suppliers from a focal transnational buyer company. A cluster analysis was performed, and ANOVA compared constructs relating to public or private ownership and country of origin. Finally, regression tested the relationship between the motivators and governance in the mitigation strategies.

Using cluster analysis, two groups of companies were found that have statistically significant differences. The influence of the country of origin was also found in relation to governance and mitigation strategies, as was the influence of the type of company on governance. Furthermore, the more motivated the suppliers and the more governance measures they adopt, the more companies adopt their own GHG mitigation strategies. These findings are summarized by way of an analytical framework that integrates the constructs with empirical evidence.

The steel industry is a sector that is particularly energy-intensive and produces millions of tons of CO₂ per year. Emissions from its SC (Scope 3) are relevant but still seen as a non-mandatory item for measurement purposes within the GHG measurement protocols, which leads to less attention being paid to the subject. This study contributes by way of its analytical framework that is validated by empirical data that can be tested in further studies.

Mr. Sajjan Jindal, MD of JVSL (nos JSW) wanted to bring the latest technology of iron making into India. His project went to several cost overrun and time overrun due to several foreseen and unforessen circumstances. This case discusses the issues new technology introduction in iron making area, problem faced by inexperienced contractor. It shows the need for proper risk management is required. It also shows the criticality of the project does not mean time cost trade off, but many other factors like reliability of the equipment, process and reliability of the equipment and plants.

The case was developed from secondary sources and interviews with a security analyst. The secondary sources include company annual reports, news reports, analyst reports, industry reports, company websites, stock exchange websites and databases such as Bloomberg and CMIE Prowess.

Increasing competition in product and capital markets has put tremendous pressure on managers to become more cost competitive. To address their firms' uncompetitive cost structures, managers may have to consider dramatic restructuring of their businesses. During 2014–2017, Tata Steel Ltd (TSL) UK considered a series of divestitures and a merger plan to nurse the company back to health. The case considers the economics of the restructuring plan. The case is designed to help students analyze a corporate downsizing program undertaken by a large Indian company in the UK and to highlight the dynamic role of the CFO and governance issues in family firms. It introduces students to issues surrounding a typical restructuring and provides students a platform to practice the estimation of value creation in a restructuring exercise. While some cases on corporate restructuring in the context of developed economies are available, there are very few cases written in an emerging market context. This case bridges that gap. TSL presents a unique opportunity to study corporate restructuring necessitated by a failed cross-border acquisition. It illustrates the potential for value loss in large, cross-border acquisitions. It shows how managerial hubris can prompt family firm owners to overbid in acquisitions and create legacy hot spots. In addition, the case can be used to discuss the causes of governance failures such as weak institutional monitoring and poor legal enforcement in emerging markets that could potentially harm minority shareholders.

The case was developed from secondary sources and interviews with a security analyst. The secondary sources include company annual reports, news reports, analyst reports, industry reports, company websites, stock exchange websites and databases such as Bloomberg and CMIE Prowess.

This study seeks to understand how accountant stereotypes have been constructed and reconstructed at the macro-national and the structural level in Chinese society.

This qualitative investigation into China's social construction of accountant stereotypes employs Becker's (1963) labelling theory. Viewing stereotyping as a socially constructed practice, this study draws on a post-positivistic, reflexive epistemology in conducting 28 semi-structured interviews with accountants and related actors.

Chinese accountant stereotypes are constructed and reconstructed according to the rules created and enforced in different cultural-political periods. The accountant stereotypes constructed during the ancient Confucian period (500 BC – 1948) were replaced during 1949 and 2012 when the political focus shifted towards propagating socialism and later promoting economic growth. They also show how Confucian stereotypes of accountants resurfaced in 2013 but were reconstructed by the central government's cultural confidence policy of propagating Confucianism.

Empirically, prior literature has focused on what the accountant stereotype is and how accountants respond to such stereotypes, but it has neglected the ways in which these accountant stereotypes are politically and culturally constructed, diffused and legitimated. This paper fills in the gap by understanding the social practice of accountant stereotyping in a previously unexplored political-cultural context, namely Chinese society. In theoretical terms, by offering the first use of Becker's (1963) labelling theory in the accounting literature, it furthermore enhances our understanding of how accountants' identities and social standing are shaped by social rules.

The purpose of this study is to explore how a time-varying electromagnetic stirring (EMS) affects the fluid flow and solidification behavior in a slab caster continuous casting mold. Further, the study of inclusion movements in the mold is carried out under the effect of a time-varying electromagnetic field.

A three-dimensional coupled numerical model of solidification and magnetohydrodynamics has been developed for slab caster mold to investigate the inclusions transport by discrete phase model with the use of user-defined functions. Enthalpy porosity and the Lagrangian approach are applied to analyze the behavior of solidification and inclusion.

The study shows that the magnetic field density distribution has a radial symmetry in relation to the stirrer’s center. As the EMS current intensity increases, the strength of the lower recirculation zone gradually decreases and nearly disappears at higher intensities. Additionally, the area of localized remelting zone expands in the solidification front with rising current intensity. The morphology of inclusions and EMS current intensity have a significant impact on the behavior and movement of inclusions within the molten steel.

By using the model, one can optimize the EMS parameter to enhance the quality of steel casting through the elimination of impurities and by improving the microstructure of cast that mainly depend on solidification and flow patterns of molten steel.

Until now, the use of time-varying EMS in the slab caster mold to study solidification and inclusion behavior has not been explored.

The purpose of the article is to identify relevant criteria for decision support in the implementation of waste-to-energy (WtE)-based systems.

The methodology is a simple case study with a qualitative approach. Five experts involved in the project of a thermoelectric power plant qualitatively evaluated, on a Likert scale, a decision model with 15 indicators derived from recent studies. The research object was the first stage of a project to implement a thermoelectric plant employing municipal solid waste (MSW) in southern Brazil.

The study identified 15 criteria supporting the decision-making process regarding WtE implementation for MSW in a mid-sized city in southern Brazil. The study identified that compliance with MSW legislation, compliance with energy legislation, initial investment and public health impact are the most influential criteria. The study offered two models for decision processes: a simplified one and a complete one, with ten and fifteen indicators, respectively.

The study concerns mid-sized municipalities in southern Brazil.

Municipal public managers have now a methodology based on qualitative evaluation that admits multiple perspectives, such as technical, economic, environmental and social, to support decision-making processes on WtE technologies for MSW.

MSW management initiatives can yield jobs and revenues for vulnerable populations and provide a correct destination for MSW, mainly in developing countries.

The main originality is that now municipal public decision-makers have a structured model based on four constructs (technical, economic, environmental and social) deployed in 15 indicators to support decision-making processes involving WtE and MSW management.

Maintenance represents an indispensable role in the productive sector of the steel industry. The increasing use of operating with a high level of precision makes hydraulic systems one of the issues that require a high level of attention. This study aims to explore an empirical investigation for decreasing the occurrences of corrective maintenance of hydraulic systems in the context of Lean 4.0.

The maintenance model is developed based on action-research methodology through an empirical investigation, with nine stages. This approach aims to build a scenario to analyze and interpret the occurrences, seeking to implement and evaluate the actions to be performed. The undertaken initiatives demonstrate that this approach can be applied to optimize the maintenance of an organization.

The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that the applied method allows the overviewing results, with a qualitative approach concerning the maintenance actions and management processes to be considered, allowing a holistic understanding and contributing to the current literature. The results also indicated that Lean 4.0 has direct and mediating effects on maintenance performance.

This research intends to propose an evaluation framework with an interdimensional linkage between action research methodology and Lean 4.0, to explore an empirical investigation and contributing to understanding the actions to reduce the occurrences of hydraulic systems corrective maintenance in a production line in the steel industry.

Supplier selection along with continuous evaluation of their performance is a crucial activity in healthcare supply chain management for effective utilization of scarce resources while providing quality service at an affordable price, and minimizing chances of stock-out, avoiding serious consequences on the illness or fatality of the patients. Presence of both qualitative and quantitative evaluation criteria, set of potential suppliers and participation of different stakeholders with varying interest make healthcare supplier selection a challenging task which can be effectively solved using any of the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods.

To deal with various qualitative criteria, like cost, quality, delivery performance, reliability, responsiveness and flexibility, this paper proposes integration of grey system theory with a newly developed MCDM tool, i.e. mixed aggregation by comprehensive normalization technique (MACONT) to identify the best performing supplier for pharmaceutical items in a healthcare unit from a pool of six competing alternatives based on the opinions of three healthcare professionals.

While assessing importance of the six evaluation criteria and performance of the alternative healthcare suppliers against those criteria using grey numbers, and exploring use of three normalization procedures and two aggregation operations of MACONT method, this integrated approach singles out S5 as the most compromised healthcare supplier for the considered problem. A sensitivity analysis of its ranking performance against varying values of both balance parameters and preference parameters also validates its solution accuracy and robustness.

This integrated approach can thus efficiently solve healthcare supplier selection problems based on qualitative evaluation criteria in uncertain group decision making environment. It can also be deployed to deal with other decision making problems in the healthcare sector, like supplier selection for healthcare devices, performance evaluation of healthcare units, ranking of physicians etc.