Material removal from the hard-to-machine materials as well as production of complex geometry is the important work of Electric Discharge Machining (EDM). The main applications of EDM are die and moulid making industries. To achieve effective machining in EDM, dielectric liquid is act as a important role. Ecological issues that are reported earlier are due to the usage of conventional dielectric liquid. To overcome this issue various alternative approaches are tried by researchers. Natural vegetable oil is one of the alternative approaches in dielectric liquid. In the present investigation, vegetable oil (sunflower and canola oils) is tried as dielectric liquid for machining of die steel. Performance comparison of vegetable oil with conventional dielectric liquid is made. Three different levels of input parameters are used in this investigation. Material Removal Rate (MRR), Tool Wear Rate (TWR) and Surface Roughness (SR). The outcomes demonstrated that better MRR when sunflower oil as dielectric liquid, and higher TWR and SR than conventional dielectric. Future work is noticed with vegetable oil as dielectric liquid for controlling the TWR and SR with increased MRR. The result of the experimental investigation indicated that the proposed sunflower oil and canola oil have good dielectric properties.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the analysis of barriers affecting the adoption of lean concepts to electrical and electronics component manufacturing. Design/methodology/approach Lean concepts are being increasingly applied by electrical and electronics component manufacturers to enhance product value through streamlined process. To facilitate smooth adoption of lean concepts, barriers need to be analyzed and prioritized. In this context, a structural model of 24 barriers is developed through total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) approach. Findings ‘Changing governmental policies,’ ‘poor selection of change agents and improvement teams,’ ‘lack of top management commitment understanding and support of the system,’ ‘lack of team autonomy,’ ‘lack of flexibility and versatility’ and ‘lack of customer focus/involvement’ are found to be the dominant barriers based on TISM study. Interpretation statements are being derived from TISM model. Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis is conducted. Research limitations/implications In the present paper, 24 barriers are considered. In future, additional barriers could be considered to deal with managerial advancements. Practical implications The paper reports the practical case of analysis of barriers to lean adoption in electronics component manufacture. Hence, the inferences have practical relevance. Originality/value The development of structural model for the analysis of barriers to lean implementation in electronics component manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises is the original contribution of the authors.

Agile manufacturing (AM) is a powerful manufacturing paradigm enabling the production of customised products coupled with time compression in a cost effective manner. The selection of best concept design from agility view point involves several criteria and it is a typical multi criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this study, integrated grey system rough set theory was applied. The computation of grey relational grades enables the selection of best agile concept design. The selected concept design (A3) of the automotive product was further subjected to subsequent phases of agile product development.

Styling of automotive products is a vital issue and it need to be imbibed with increased customer expectations during every stage of product design. In order to achieve effective styling, it is necessary to apply quality function deployment (QFD) approach which is an effective product and system development tool. This study presents a decision framework where analytic network process (ANP) integrated with QFD and zero–one goal programming (ZOGP) models are used in order to resolve the design requirements which are more efficient in achieving aesthetic design. The first phase of the QFD is the house of quality (HOQ) which transforms customer requirements into product design prerequisites. In this study, after determining the sustainable requirements named voice of the customers (VOCs) and Engineering metrics (EMs) of an automotive component, ANP has been employed to determine the importance levels in the HOQ considering the interrelationships among EMs and VOCs. Additionally ZOGP approach is used to take into account different goals of the problem. A case study was presented to exemplify the approach.