The objective of this paper was to have a study on the perceptions of stakeholders of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects for factors affecting the attractiveness of road projects in India. A questionnaire survey was conducted among major PPP project participants of Indian PPP road projects. Fifteen attractive factors were shortlisted through a literature survey for designing the questionnaire. Collected data was analyzed with factor analysis and descriptive statistical analysis. The findings resulted in three components: effectiveness of the private sector, effective time and cost management, and the public sector’s economic benefit. Eight factors were identified as highly affecting the attractiveness of PPP in Indian road projects. PPP provides ample diversity of net benefits to both the public and private sectors. During the project development stage, both sectors have to formulate decisions based on appropriate assessment criteria. Therefore, the reflection of attractive factors will assist the public-sector to select PPP in the road sector. It also helps to establish the strategy for road projects using PPP.

An effective safety management requires attention to human factors as well as system compo-nents which make risky or safe situations at technical components. This study evaluates and ana-lyze ergonomic behaviors in order to select the best work shift group in an Iranian process in-dustry, in 2010.The methodology was based on the Ergonomic Behavior Sampling (EBS), and TOPSIS method. After specifying the unergonomic behaviors and with reference to the results of a pilot study, a sample of 1755 was determined, with a sampling accuracy of 5% and confi-dence level of 95%. However, in order to gain more confidence, 2631 observations were collect-ed. The results indicate that 43.6% of workers’ behaviors were unergonomic. The most frequent unergonomic behavior was amusing of legs while load lifting with 83.01% of total unergonomic behaviors observations. Using TOPSIS method, the most effective shift group and the least at-tractive alternatives for intervention were selected in this company. Findings declare high number of unergonomic behaviors. Catastrophic consequences of accidents in petrochemical industry ne-cessitate attention to workers’ ergonomic behaviors in the workplace and promotion of them.

The revolutionary alterations and conversions occurring in information and communication technologies, have triggered an increase in the electronic commerce applications. Airline tickets are one of the most popular items purchased on the internet. The airline websites have become a big distribution channel for the companies to sustain their competitiveness. At this moment, the competition is increasing as airlines try to acquire and retain customers in the airline industry. To acquire and retain customers in such a highly competitive market, it is important for airlines to understand their relative levels of quality in terms of critical elements affecting their competitive advantages. In this study, an integrated two-stage multi-criteria decision-making techniques were used for the measurement of the performance of the airline websites using the Entropy Weight Method and the Grey Relational Analysis approach. The performance of 11 airline companies’ websites operating in Turkey was evaluated in terms of seven criteria. The data of quality website from airlines websites were taken more than 30 trails on various occasions on different periods of times. The data has been taken from 1 December 2016 to 31 December 2016. The weights of the attributes were calculated by Entropy Weight Method, the evaluation of the alternatives using the Grey Relational Analysis method were given ranking of websites.

In the project management, buffers are considered to handle uncertainties that lead to changes in project scheduling which in turn causes project delivery delay. The purpose of this survey is to discuss the state of the art on models and methods for project buffer management and time optimization of construction projects and manufacturing industries. There are not literally any surveys which review the literature of project buffer management and time optimization. This research adds to the previous literature surveys and focuses mainly on papers after 2014 but with a quick review on previous works. This research investigates the literature from project buffer sizing, project buffer consumption monitoring and project time/resource optimization perspectives.

This work investigated and predicted the fatigue life durability of Austenitic Stainless Steel 316L due to its importance in plant industries worldwide. Modelling and simulations were performed to clarify the fracture as well as stress distribution using integrated mechanism. Experimental fatigue validations were also carried out to demonstrate the effect of various fatigue life parameters. Various loading conditions with variable load amplitudes were validated utilizing a frequency of 5 Hz and a stress ratio of 0.1. The accuracy of the simulation results were also verified based on the experimental data. High consistencies between the predicted fatigue life and the experimental results were achieved which increases the validity of the built model.

Turning the attention towards a net performance of the Indonesian oil and gas industry is important. Inconsistent performance of the oil and gas industry has shown the negative consequence for the nation’s economy. However, up to some extent, the issues can be resolved through green supply chain integration. Therefore, the ultimate purpose of this study is to investigate the role of green supply chain integration on the sustainable performance of the oil and gas industry of Indonesia. To collect the data, a survey questionnaire was used, and questionnaires were distributed among the employees of oil and gas companies in Indonesia. From total three hundred (300) distributed questionnaires, two hundred and one (201) were returned and used to analyze the data through Smart PLS 3. Findings reveal that green supply chain activities had a positive contribution in sustainable performance among oil and gas companies. Supplier integration, customer integration and technological integration had a substantial impact on economic sustainable performance and environmentally sustainable performance. Thus, the Indonesian oil and gas companies are recommended to use green supply chain activities to enhance performance.

The development of techniques that allow producing high-finish surfaces of geometrically-complex parts of difficult-to-machine materials by electrical discharge machining (EDM) is an emerging research area. The aim of this work is to study the application of electrolytic-plasma polishing technique for the high-quality surface finish of the parts obtained by EDM process. The structural alloy steel 38KH2N2MA (GOST 4543 – 71) was selected as the processing material. The morphology of the machined surface was examined using optical micrographs. It was observed that applying the electrolytic plasma polishing for the duration of 5 minutes results in reducing the surface roughness of the ED machined surface by a factor of 5. It is also concluded that the combined action of EDM with electrolytic plasma polishing method is suitable for attaining the desired surface finish.

Application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in modeling of combined cycle power plant (CCPP) with dry cooling tower (Heller tower) has been investigated in this paper. Prediction of power plant output (megawatt) under different working conditions was made using multi-layer feed-forward ANN and training was performed with operational data using back-propagation. Two ANN network was constructed for the steam turbine (ST) and the main cooling system(MCS). Results indicate that the ANN model is effective in predicting the power plant output with good accuracy.

The aim of the current study is to examine the role of competitive advantage and commodity strategic supply chain in the textile industry of Indonesia. Additionally, the mediating role of export performance was examined to expedite textile industry performance. The moderating role of supply chain top management team support was also investigated. To achieve the objectives, primary data were collected with the help of a questionnaire. Employees of textile companies were selected as the respondents and PLS-SEM was used in this study. Moreover, the preliminary analysis was performed through SPSS. Ten hypotheses were developed to examine the relationships among competitive advantage, commodity strategic supply chain, export performance, supply chain top management team support and textile industry performance. Findings of the study indicate that competitive advantage and commodity strategic supply chain played a valuable role to enhance textile industry performance. Export performance is a mediating variable between competitive advantage and textile industry performance, moreover, it is also a mediating variable between commodity strategic supply chain and textile industry performance. Likewise, supply chain top management team support as a moderating variable enhances the positive impact of competitive advantage on textile industry performance.

In this work, novel cellulosic fibers are extracted from Washingtonia Filifera (WF) plant using an environment friendly technique. Morphological, physico-chemical, thermal and mechanical properties are reported in this paper. Micro graphical SEM shows the presence of cells in the fiber. FTIR and XRD experimental analyzes show a cristinality index of 48.88%, and the WF fibers are found to be thermally stable until 201°C by using TGA and DTG thermo graphic analyzes with an appropriate activation energy of 72.46 kJ/mol, where Young modulus and tensile strength of strain were determined using tensile tests of single fiber at 2.17 GPa, 134 MPa and 26.55%, respectively. Mechanical properties are analyzed using a statistical method.