Abstract: Wear is a huge problem in the mining industry as it depreciates the assets invested. The industry is looking at efficient refurbishment technologies to repair its equipment so as to enhance its service life. This thesis focuses on the development of wear resistant clads via laser cladding (LC) process to mitigate the problem of degradations in slurry tailings’ pump impeller made of 304L stainless steel. A critical literature review indicates that Tribaloy T-800 and Stellite 6 pow...
ABSTRACT In the manufacturing sector management of the supply chain expenses has been identified as major costs driven problem. For many years, researchers and practitioners have concentrated on the individual processes and entities within the Supply Chain. Recently, however, many companies have realized that important cost savings can be achieved through the reduction of transportation costs throughout their Supply Chain. As companies began realizing the benefits of optimizing transportatio...
ABSTRACT The facilities layout problem is an integral part of facilities planning that aims to systematically arrange and locate all production units within a facility with an objective of improving the production operations of a company. Numerical Machining Complex is planning to improve the production of its manufacturing operations in its machining and fabrication workshop. It seeks to enhance the performance of the existing workshop in terms of efficiency, productivity, and space utiliza...
ABSTRACT Risk-based approach in spare part inventory management and plant maintenance is essential for ensuring asset integrity in a process facility. The sugar industry in Kenya has been a victim of inefficient spare part inventory management resulting to unscheduled factory stoppages, factory breakdowns, obsolescence of plant and equipment whose maintenance costs are very high. This has been compounded by high maintenance costs and expensive spares which are also difficult to find and proc...
ABSTRACT The manufacturing sector today faces high competition and there is an increasing demand for customers to receive quality products, at the right time and at a competitive price. This then calls for manufacturing firms to improve productivity more so in automotive manufacturing industry. Master Fabricators Limited had in the past attempted to improve throughput time for the buses manufactured by increasing the number of employees and hiring highly qualified production personnel to ste...
ABSTRACT Good maintenance planning and proper resources scheduling in corn milling industry are of fundamental importance for safe and efficient operation of corn milling plants. This leads to production optimization due to reduced cost of operation. The interactions of aspects of plant safety and reliability with issues related to economic performance, such as production revenues, repair and maintenance costs, renders the problem of managing maintenance and repair activities highly complica...
ABSTRACT Spinning mills in Kenya are operated by eight integrated textile industries to produce cotton yarns for internal use by their knitting and weaving departments and for sale to the local market. Fabric requirement estimated at 225 million square meters cannot be supplied by local domestic production and the gap is met through importation of fabrics and finished garments. Spinning mills play a very significant role in backward integration of the textile value chain by converting fibres...
Productivity of a system is one of the key factors that affects overall competitiveness of an organisation. Productivity is the measure of the effective use of resources which is expressed as the ratio of output to inputs. Therefore productivity is the relationship between result and the time it takes to accomplish them and it is used to examine efficiency and effectiveness of any activity that is conducted in an economy,business or an individual hence it refers to the measure of the efficie...
Abstract Due to intense global competition and increasing demands from stakeholders, companies are striving to improve and optimize their productivity in order to stay competitive. The performance and competitiveness of manufacturing companies is dependent on the reliability and availability of their production facilities. Therefore, it is the objective of the maintenance department to maximize the machine availability. The use of effective maintenance policies is one of the methods that hav...
ABSTRACT Due to global competition, many organizations are coming up with ways of sharpening their competitive edge. This has been achieved through cost leadership, differentiation of goods and services and lastly, through quick response to the needs of the customers. To respond to these market requirements, manufacturers are using high-tech equipment. They are also adopting new material control methods such as Just-In-Time philosophy. Set-up costs are also being minimized to a minimum. All ...
Abstract The basic goal of manufacturing industries is tomaximize profitability in order be competitive and stay in the market. This is mainly achievedby producing products at low cost to maximize profits. However,low productivity has been the major problem facing most manufacturing companies just like DMKL. Two major sections that are affected by low productivity in DMKL processing plant are Labeling and Parking section. Productivity in these sections stand at an average of 50% the rated ca...
ABSTRACT In the manufacturing sector management of the supply chain expenses has been identified as major costs driven problem. For many years, researchers and practitioners have concentrated on the individual processes and entities within the Supply Chain. Recently, however, many companies have realized that important cost savings can be achieved through the reduction of transportation costs throughout their Supply Chain. As companies began realizing the benefits of optimizing transport...
Abstract The assignment problem is a special type of linear programming problem which is concerned with allocating to operators (men) to n machines (tasks) given that each operator is qualified for certain of the tasks. The output from each task is given as a function of the number of qualified men assigned to it. The assignment model is to.be solved by conventional linear programming approach or transportation model approach. It is a square matrix, having equal number of rows and columns. ...
ABSTRACT This paper presents a new methodology for weld-metal properties optimization from welding flux ingredients. The methodology integrates statistical design of mixture experiment with mathematical programming optimization technique. The mixture experiment is responsible for the modeling of the weld-metal properties as a function of welding flux levels while mathematical programming optimizes the model. Data and confirmed models from the literature were used to perform optimization on th...
Abstract. The level of utilization of many public utilities is, most often. influenced by their locations. Huge public funds are spent annually on the provision of several public infrastructures, such as pedestrian bridges, that are grossly underutilized due to their poor location or citing. This study was aimed at developing a fuzzy logic based decision support system for the optimal location of pedestrian bridges in a typical Nigerian city. Various factors. and their interactions. that affe...