The previous issue focused on the recent economic slowdown and emphasized on renewed focus on modern manufacturing and distribution systems. With the economy on a recovery path, lessons learnt from the slowdown need to be shared. The paper, "Supply Chain Model in a Multi-Echelon System with Inflationary Implications", by Richa Jain and S R Singh deals with a multi-echelon supply chain network with a single producer, multi-distributors and multi-retailers for a deteriorating inventory during a finite planning horizon. This discreteness is an application of real life situation where the stocks deplete by discrete amounts and not continuously.

A supply chain is entwined with production systems. The paper, "Revisiting OEE as an Assessment Methodology for TPM Activities: A Practical Analysis", by Mahesh Pophaley, deals with the ever-increasing importance of the subject of plant maintenance. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), as an upcoming industrial maintenance program provides the answer to dramatic improvement to productivity. This study builds on previous works that examined the role of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) measurement systems in TPM, with particular reference to developing a new framework for assessing the implementation effectiveness of TPM.

Continuing with the theme of manufacturing, the paper, "Research Methodology for Effective Utilization of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies in Northern India Manufacturing Industry", by Harwinder Singh and J S Khamba, studies the implementation of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMTs) in the Indian scenario. They discuss the hurdles and barriers in implementing AMTs and provide a research methodology for improving the utilization level of AMTs in a Northern India manufacturing industry for achieving manufacturing success.

In the paper, "Enabling Technologies and Implementation Framework for Agile Manufacturing", S Ayyappan and P K Jayadev discuss the requirement of a flexible, adaptive and reconfigurable systemmore specifically an agile manufacturing system. They present the enabling technologies and implementation framework of an agile manufacturing system.

Another aspect of manufacturinginventoryis dealt with in the paper "Evaluation of Inventory Performance for Perishable Products Through Simulation", by Srikanta Routroy and Nardekar Abhinadan Bhausaheb. The authors argue that it is relatively easy to control and manage the inventory for non-perishables, but it is difficult to manage the same for perishable items with unpredictable demand. They use a simulation model using ARENA simulation tool for perishable products to evaluate different inventory performance in the retail stage. A case situation is developed to demonstrate the salient features of the concept.

Analogous to manufacturing, Vijay Manikrao Athawale and Shankar Chakraborty in the paper, "Facility Layout Selection Using PROMETHEE II Method", argue that it is important for an organization to evaluate, design and select the most suitable layout for its functional effectiveness. Selecting the best facility layout for an industrial application from a finite set of candidate alternatives is an example of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) problem. In this paper, two real time examples of facility layout selection are presented to demonstrate the applicability of a highly potential MCDM method, namely PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation).

Focusing on the international scene, in the paper, "TQM: The Japanese Way in Malaysian Companies", by Jamal Abdul Nassir Shaari, is a study on enhancing Malaysian quality management practices from Japanese experience. The study has two main objectives: to investigate whether Malaysian companies practice Total Quality Management (TQM) the Japanese way; and to identify their role towards organizational performance. It is seen that Malaysian companies do practice TQM the Japanese way, but there is no influence on organizational performance via employee and customer.

The paper, "A Note on Transformation, Standardization and Normalization", by K Muralidharan, discusses the importance of data cleaning and processing using various statistical techniques like Transformation (T), Standardization (S) and Normalization (N) from a practical point of view. The author opines that it is possible that the unprocessed raw data at first instance will lead to poor interpretation because of the effects of systematic variations. A suitable transformation or standardization or normalization can nullify the effect of such variations. The author explains this using a couple of examples from literature. Such a study is relevant with greater emphasis on using data as an aid to management decision making.

-- Anupam Ghosh
Consulting Editor