The development in internet technologies provides various innovative business opportunities and creates competitiveness among the electronic marketers in online marketing. The satisfaction of customers in e-purchase depends on various problems and facilities which are prevailing in the online market. The study was conducted with the aim of analyzing and ranking the problems of customers in online purchase. The study also examined the relationship between the demographic variables and problems faced by online customers. The data was collected from 512 online customers who are living in Bengaluru city, Karnataka through questionnaires during the month of August 2018. Garret ranking was used to find out the ranking distribution pattern of customers in online purchase. The problems ‘product variation’ and ‘faulty products’ have been quoted as the major problems faced by the online customers irrespective of the demographic their profile. The ranking pattern of the third major problem ‘delay in delivery’ differs with respect to education and customers’ income. The ranking pattern for the problem ‘fake website’ was significantly different with respect to gender, age and education of customers.

Bin packing problem is a constrained optimization problem with a huge search space due to large combinations. Bin packing problem has a wide range of applications in multiple fields. This paper presents harmony search algorithm with different initialization and adaptive PAR strategies for solving bin packing problem. The proposed Harmony search (HS) variations tests two partial feasible initialization strategies for bin packing problem. The paper presents adaptive PAR strategies for better exploration and exploitation of HS algorithm. The PAR values are tuned in every iteration. Improved initialization strategy, population initialization after premature convergence and adaptive PAR leads to the better exploration of harmony search algorithm for bin packing problem. The performance of variations are tested over 120 benchmark instances with 100 and 200 objects with varying complexities. The results show that improved HS performs better than basic HS with respect to best, mean, convergence rate. The performance of algorithms is tested with varying harmony memory size and harmony memory considering rate. Results show that variation in these two parameter values has less effect on performance of improved versions.

Several Plant products have been found to be a part of phytomedicines since time immemorial. These plant products can be derived from barks, leaves, flowers, roots, fruits, and seeds. It has been found that the light radiation affects the antimicrobial activity of herbal products. The present study was aimed to investigate the phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activities of Calotropis gigantea leaf extracts. In addition to these studies we also check the effect of UV light radiation on the anti microbial activity of leaf extract. Phytochemical screening revealed the presence of various active phytochemicals in the extracts of aerial part of Calotropis gigantea. Ethanol, chloroform and hexane extract of leaves were tested against Clostridium botulinum, Proteus vulgaris, Escherichia coli and Arthrographis cuboid, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus niger by the agar disc diffusion method. The antimicrobial activity of the extracts generally reduces significantly after exposure to the UV radiations.

The government of India has increased its focus on investment in infrastructure, allocating US$ 130.57 billion in 2022-23 for the sector. Effective project management is crucial for success. However, despite a huge body of knowledge on project success, project delays persist, with 33% of projects delayed by an average of 47 months as of August 2021. This study aims to identify Critical Success Factors for contemporary construction projects in India, offering guidance for project stakeholders. Forty-five attributes of project success were collated from literature and expert discussions and a questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit the views of experts on the critical impact of these attributes on overall project success. The research posits that these attributes have underlying constructs that cause them. Factor analysis was employed to extract the underlying constructs. Six critical success factors (CSF) were extracted. To comprehend the relative importance of the factors, RII was employed on summated factor scores that were then ranked in order of their importance. ANOVA showed consistent assessments of the CSFs across professional roles and geographies. The findings are expected to aid project professionals in prioritizing key factors for optimal project management and successful outcomes.

All organizations and stakeholders would ideally like to see an information technology (IT) project managed successfully. Many researchers have strongly debated the importance of risk management in project management about the size of the project since it gives project managers a forward-looking view of risks and chances to increase the project's success. The main aim of the study is to determine how risk management parameters and their mediated effects impact the effectiveness of IT projects. Data was collected from 261 IT professionals involved in projects through a structured questionnaire and analyzed using regression and SEM to test their statistical significance and prove the hypothesis. The study arrived at some significant results which showed the relationship of Risk Identification and Risk Analysis on Risk Assessment, which impacts Project Success. It also showed that the success of the project depended on Stakeholders Tolerance and Risk Implementation. In addition to this, the study provides evidence that risk management does not influence the success of the project. The study's discovery of the intervening impact of risk management practices clarifies preconceived conceptions in the risk management sector.

The basic aim of this study was to find a relationship between heat input and mechanical properties of high strength low alloy steel (HSLA) welded joints and also elaborate its effect on microstructure. The combined effect of welding current, voltage and speed i.e. Heat Input on mechanical properties of High Strength Low Alloy Steel (ASTM A242 type-II) weldments have been studied in the present work. HSLA steel work pieces were welded by Gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process under varying welding current, arc voltage, and welding speed. Total nine samples were prepared at different heat input level i.e. 1.872 kJ/mm, 1.9333 kJ/mm, 2.0114 kJ/mm, 2.1 kJ/mm, 2.1956 kJ/mm, 2.296 kJ/mm, 2.4 kJ/mm, 2.5067 kJ/mm and 2.6154 kJ/mm It was observed that as heat input increases the ultimate tensile strength and microhardness of weldment decreased while impact strength increased and it was also observed that on increasing the heat input grain size of microstructure tends to coarsening it is only due to decreasing in cooling rate.

In this article, we propose Simulated Annealing (SA) heuristic to solve Unequal Area Dynamic Facility Layout Problem (FBS) with Flexible Bay Structure (UA-DFLPs with FBS). The UA-DFLP with FBS is the problem of determining the facilities dimension and their location coordinates with flexible bays formation in the layout for various periods of the planning horizon. The UA-DFLP with FBS is more constrained than general UA-DFLP and it is an NP-complete problem. The proposed SA is tested with the available UA-DFLPs instances in the literature. The proposed SA heuristic has given new best solution or the same solution for FBS based problems as compared with the best-known reported in the UA-DFLPs with FBS literature. The proposed SA heuristic is also tested on standard UA-DFLPs used in non-FBS approaches. The SA heuristic solution is not significantly different from the best solution reported in the literature for non-FBS approaches. Equal area DFLP instances are also solved with the proposed SA and the results obtained are promising with the solutions reported in the literature. Hence the results obtained indicate that the proposed SA for UA-DFLP with FBS is effective and versatile for both equal and unequal area dynamic facility layout problems. The computational efficiency of the proposed SA heuristic is very much competitive as compared to other meta-heuristics computational timings reported in the literature.

Like freedom of India, the demonetization reform was also unveiled in India during the midnight by the Indian Government and it was declared that one thousand and five hundred rupee notes would no longer be legal tender effective from 8th November 2016. At the same time, the Reserve Bank of India issued new two thousand rupee notes and new five hundred rupee notes on November, 10, 2016. This initiative was taken by the Central Government with the aim of preventing corruption, reducing black money and counterfeit currency notes. There was a significant impact on the entire Indian economy system and it was urged the citizens to switch to alternative modes of payment due to non-availability of hot currency i.e., e-payments, hence people faced many problems in all transactions after demonetization especially in service sectors. This paper performs a questionnaire based survey by collecting the necessary data from 629 beneficiaries/customers of service sector organisations in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, India during November-December 2017 to measure the effects of demonetization after a year. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (Structural Equations Model) was used to analyse the relationship between the effect, sustainability and the impact on the customer satisfaction. The study found that demonetization based on Adoptability, Implementation, Readiness and Acceptance of new payment methods significantly influenced the customer satisfaction under service sector. The effects of different factors such as Approach, Availability, Time, Delivery and Infrastructure also had significant contribution towards the customers’ satisfaction.

A non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is applied to obtain Pareto optimal solutions in widely used advanced machining processes, i.e., electric discharge machining, electrochemical micromachining, ultrasonic machining, abrasive water jet machining. The solutions obtained using the proposed method is in the form of the Pareto-optimal front, thus, any solution is acceptable and can be utilized to obtain optimum performance of the considered processes. The obtained results using NSGA-II show good agreement with the results of previous researchers. Implementation of the proposed method shows benefits to the process engineer of the industries as they can select alternative parameters based on the requirement.

The constrained applications of conventional machining processes in generating complex shape ge-ometries with the desired degree of tolerance and surface finish in various advanced engineering materials are being gradually compensated by the non-traditional machining (NTM) processes. These NTM processes usually have higher procurement, maintenance, operating and tooling cost. Hence, in order to attain their maximum machining performance, they are usually operated at their optimal or near optimal parametric settings which can easily be determined by the application of dif-ferent optimization techniques. In this paper, 133 international research papers published during 2012-16 on parametric optimization of NTM processes are extensively reviewed to have an idea on the selected process parameters, observed responses, work materials machined and optimization techniques employed in those processes while generating varying part geometries for their industrial use. It is observed that electro discharge machining is the mostly employed NTM process, applied voltage is the identified process parameter with maximum importance, surface roughness and material removal rate are the two maximally preferred responses, different steel grades are the mostly machined work materials and grey relational analysis is the most popular tool utilized for para-metric optimization of NTM processes. These observations would help the process engineers to attain the machining performance of the NTM processes at their fullest extents for different work material and shape feature combinations.