Reduction Of Idle Time Research Articles

A Fuzzy-Genetic Modelling Approach to Maintenance Scheduling for the Minimization of Fishing Vessel Idle Time in the Maritime Industry

As the marine industry becomes more complex and challenging to manage optimizing the idle time of vessels is critical. Although previous idle time reduction efforts in maintenance were through the evaluation of crisp numerical values in optimization models, none of the studies has considered the effect of uncertainty and imprecision on the system. Consequently, in this paper, a linguistic-based optimization model is developed using the fuzzy-genetic model for the discredited time-maintenance manpower-cost saving problem. The suggested model is moved for the following reasons: (1) it considers linguistic terms to express the optimization of vessels' idle time from a unique perspective of deploying genetic algorithm while considering the minimum and maximum number of times vessels may return for maintenance (2) it has an indirect measure of the quality of maintenance service which is absent in previous models (3) a cost-saving dimension is introduced where the ideas of low, medium and high-cost savings are examined. The results show the feasibility of the approach. The model advanced promises to provide vessel controllers with an idle time assessment framework, which enhances the chances of generating the utmost profit for companies.

Multimode variable resource-constrained time/cost trade-off problem in repetitive projects with adjustment strategy

Resource availability is the crucial factor of construction project scheduling decision, as it impacts the time and cost of the project. However, traditional researches assume that resource availability is fixed, which does not reflect the actual situation. This article proposes a model for addressing the multimode variable resource-constrained time/cost trade-off problem (Mvrc-DTCTP) in repetitive projects. To better capture the characteristics of repetitive projects, an adjustment strategy is designed to mitigate the impact of work continuity interruptions on idle time. Through simulation analysis, it was found that increasing resource supply can reduce project duration, but it is not directly proportional to cost. This phenomenon further increases the uncertainty in the relationship between duration and cost, inevitably affecting managers’ ability to develop effective scheduling plans. By employing the Mvrc-DTCTP model, project managers can obtain more and better solutions than traditional methods, with shorter duration, and lower total cost. The proposed adjustment strategy results in a 54% reduction in idle time, a $4000 cost reduction and more feasible solutions. Based on calculations for 30 randomly generated cases, the adjustment strategy achieves optimization rates ranging from 24.43% to 84.24%. The adjustment strategy demonstrates the best optimization effect when the resource supply level is moderate.

A multi-objective co-evolutionary algorithm for energy and cost-oriented mixed-model assembly line balancing with multi-skilled workers

Energy-saving, one of the most significant strategies for green manufacturing, has become the focus of more and more scholars and enterprise managers. Hence, this work addresses the minimization of energy and cost requirements on mixed-model multi-manned assembly line balancing with multi-skilled workers. A new mixed-integer linear programming model is proposed to define the problem. Additionally, a novel multi-objective co-evolutionary algorithm is designed to achieve the trade-off between energy and cost requirements. This algorithm includes a two-layer solution representation to achieve full coverage of the solution space and a new decoding mechanism with idle time reduction. A collaborative initialization as the first stage of the algorithm is extended to get high-quality and great-diversity initial solutions. A self-learning evolution for each sub-population with four problem-specific evolutionary operators is developed to explore task or worker assignment sequences, and a dual-cooperation strategy is proposed to enhance the interaction between sub-populations. The final experiments, based on 269 instances, demonstrate that the improvement components are effective and the proposed algorithm is superior to seven latest multi-objective evolutionary algorithms from numerical, statistical and differential analyses.

Human-Centered Design for Productivity and Safety in Collaborative Robots Cells: A New Methodological Approach

Nowadays, the current market trend is oriented toward increasing mass customization, meaning that modern production systems have to be able to be flexible but also highly productive. This is due to the fact that we are still living in the so-called Industry 4.0, with its cornerstone of high-productivity systems. However, there is also a migration toward Industry 5.0 that includes the human-centered design of the workplace as one of its principles. This means that the operators have to be put in the center of the design techniques in order to maximize their wellness. Among the wide set of new technologies, collaborative robots (cobots) represent one such technology that modern production systems are trying to integrate, because of their characteristic of working directly with the human operators, allowing for a mix of the flexibility of the manual systems with the productivity of the automated ones. This paper focuses on the impact that these technologies have on different levels within a production plant and on the improvement of the collaborative experience. At the workstation level, the control methodologies are investigated and developed: technologies such as computer vision and augmented reality can be applied to aid and guide the activities of the cobot, in order to obtain the following results. The first is an increase in the overall productivity generated by the reduction of idle times and safety stops and the minimization of the effort required to the operator during the work. This can be achieved through a multiobjective task allocation which aims to simultaneoulsy minimize the makespan, for productivity requirements, and the operator’s energy expenditure and mental workload, for wellness requirements. The second is a safe, human-centered, workspace in which collisions can be avoided in real time. This can be achieved by using real-time multicamera systems and skeleton tracking to constantly know where the operator is in the work cell. The system will offer the possibility of directing feedback based on the discrepancies between the physical world and the virtual models in order to dynamically reallocate the tasks to the resources if the requirements are not satisfied anymore. This allows the application of the technology to sectors that require constant process control, improving also the human–robot interaction: the human operator and the cobot are not merely two single resources working in the same cell, but they can achieve a real human–robot collaboration. In this paper, a framework is preented that allows us to reach the different aforementioned goals.

Training Balance Analysis Of 3 Kg LPG Tube Retester Repair Using Ranked Positional Weight Method In PT. Earth Trans Energy Wajo Regency South Sulawesi Province

PT. Bumi Trans Energi is one of the companies engaged in 3 Kg LPG cylinder retested repair, this company repairs 3 Kg LPG cylinders that have been damaged for 5 years, damage to the handguard, and footring, and welded joints on the tube. In the repair process, there are 5 stations and 21 work processes, PT. Bumi Trans Energi encountered a problem in the repair line at station 1, and a bottleneck occurred. This bottleneck occurs because the production flow is not smooth from one station to the next, this problem causes each work station in the repair path to have a different speed level, which causes material accumulation between work stations, and waiting times between work stations. For this reason, this study aims to determine the number of workstations needed to get maximum efficiency and balance the repair process line when bottlenecks occur. Observations were made in data collection 30 times, each work element was observed and calculated in the data uniformity test and data adequacy test to obtain standard time. The results of this study were the application of 3 work stations from 5 initial work stations, there was a reduction in idle time to 425,74 seconds ( 7 minutes) following the increase in track efficiency to 84,17 % the balance delay decreased to 15,83 %, and the Smoothness Index was 212,63. The actual idle time was 1004,97 seconds (17 minutes) while the proposed trajectory idle time used the Ranked Positional Weight method of 425,74 seconds (7 minutes). The difference between actual and proposed idle time is 10 minutes, and the placement of work elements at work station 1 (one) consists of 9 work operations, while work stations 2 (two) consist of 1 work process, and work stations 3 ( three ) consist of 8 work processes

СОЗДАНИЕ ЭЛЕКТРОННОГО АРХИВА СОВРЕМЕННОЙ СТРОИТЕЛЬНОЙ КОМПАНИИ

The concept idea of the companies’ archives, which become global storages of knowledge to which all employees can apply for information, changes in the modern digital economy. The electronic archive creation is more than the expansion of the electronic document management system in the construction company. The tasks which are to be solved by the means of creation of the electronic archive of the construction company are formulated in the article. The requirements to the platform of the uniform electronic archive of the company are designated. The main benefits, which gain the company thanks to the use of such electronic archive, are stated, including reduction of expenses on document storage (including the project documentation), simplification and reduction in cost of the access for employees to the documents, on copying the documents, reduction of idle times, stops of projects because of the inaccessibility of information, etc. The authors make the conclusion that though creation of a uniform electronic archive of the construction company is connected with significant investments, this innovation will repeatedly pay off as the result.

Vibration Diagnostics of Spiroid Gear

Abstract Spiroid gear is one of the progressive varieties of intersecting axis gears. It has a number of advantages: increased overlap coefficient, favourable contact conditions. Spiroid gears are notable for high loading and overloading ability, increased smooth running and less sensitivity to manufacturing and assembly errors, high reliability and durability. The analysis of the results of experiment on research of vibration of the spiroid gear PS-124 has shown, that the vibration level at frequency 200-300 Hz is reduced on 5 dB at increase of the resistance moment up to 1000 Nm at clockwise rotation of the reducer and at increase of the resistance moment up to 800 Nm at counterclockwise rotation of the reducer. The vibration level at frequency 700-800 Hz is also increased on 5 dB at increase of the resistance moment up to 1000 Nm at clockwise rotation of the reducer and at increase of the resistance moment up to 800 Nm. If these vibration levels are exceeded, a defect is likely to occur. Economic efficiency of application of diagnostics systems is caused by increase of reliability and quality, reduction of accidents, decrease in defects, reduction of idle time of expensive equipment, reduction of expenses for maintenance and repair.

Performance, Digestibility, Nitrogen Balance and Ingestive Behavior of Young Feedlot Bulls Supplemented with Palm Kernel Oil.

Simple SummaryVegetable oil can be used to increase energy density in diets; manipulate ruminal fermentation; alter nutrient degradation, digestion and absorption; and improve carcass characteristics and quality. Palm kernel oil (PKO) is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm (Elaeis guineenses), a plant of African origin adapted to tropical regions. The aim of this study was to evaluate PKO as a supplementary fat source in ruminant diets. Thus, two studies were developed to understand the effects of PKO inclusion on performance, ingestive behavior, nutrient digestibility, fermentation parameters and carcass characteristics. The results showed a reduction in dry matter intake with consequent negative effects on digestibility, performance and carcass characteristics due to the dietary inclusion of PKO. However, the addition of the lipid source reduced protozoa counts and the acetate/propionate ratio, important characteristics for reducing ruminal methanogenesis, in further studies.Vegetable oils can be used to increase energy density in diets; manipulate rumen fermentation; and alter the capacity for degradation, digestion and absorption of nutrients. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate palm kernel oil (PKO) in the diet of confined bulls with the inclusion of 0.0, 11.5, 23.0 and 34.6 g PKO/kg dry matter (DM). The first experiment evaluated nutrient intake, performance, ingestive behavior and carcass characteristics. In the second experiment, steers crossbred with a ruminal cannula were used to evaluate digestibility, nitrogen balance, microbial protein synthesis, short-chain fatty acid levels and protozoal counts. The results showed that the inclusion of PKO linearly reduced intake in kg/day (DM, crude protein—CP, neutral detergent fiber—NDFap, nonfibrous carbohydrates—NFC and total digestible nutrient—TDN) and digestibility (DM, NDFap and TDN). Ether extract intake increased quadratically with the predicted maximum intake of 15.4 g/kg DM. Regarding ingestive behavior, there was a quadratic increase in rumination time and a quadratic reduction in idle time. Nitrogen balance, nitrogen intake, nitrogen retention, microbial protein production, acetate, butyrate, acetate/propionate ratio and protozoa count showed linear decreases due to dietary PKO inclusion. Regarding the carcass characteristics, linear decreases were observed for the final weight, average daily gain, hot carcass weight, cold carcass weight, hot carcass yield, cold carcass yield, loin eye area and subcutaneous fat thickness. The inclusion of PKO at up to 34.6 g/kg DM in diets for confined bulls reduces intake, negatively affecting digestibility, performance and carcass characteristics.

Extending an asynchronous runtime system for high throughput applications: A case study

Current supercomputers are mostly composed of vast numbers of nodes enhanced with accelerators (usually in the form of GPUs). However, having these heterogeneous designs in the forefront have exposed the software toolchains and application designers to the underlying complexities of an ever evolving hardware substrate. The need for a more dynamic view from the system software (i.e., compilers and runtimes) has become more apparent in these environments. Due to this, adaptive, fine grain runtime systems have seen a rise in popularity in the past decades. With low overhead and small tasks, these runtimes help to hide long latency operations by exploiting the massive concurrency presented in different application workflows. Such features allow the reduction of idle time (a result from ever deeper and complex memory hierarchies and memory types) with the execution of unrelated work across the machine. Of these runtimes, the Asynchronous Many Task (AMT) Runtimes are excellent exemplars as they can efficiently map onto hardware substrates and exhibit a high degree of latency hiding. Because of their latency tolerant characteristics, applications such as Graph Analytics and Big Data applications (which are latency sensitive) can use these runtimes very efficiently. Thanks to these characteristics, we present how a careful design can help to exploit the properties of an AMT when running high latency applications such as the ones encountered in the Big Data domain. In addition, when combined with introspection / adaptive capabilities, the runtime can further exploit optimization opportunities during its execution based on the ever changing state of the underlying hardware substrate. As a vehicle for this exploration, we use the Performance Open Community Runtime (P-OCR) to test all these concepts with Big Data workloads.

Assessment of the project cost of the creation of a digital archive in the construction company

In modern digital economy the creation of electronic archive is more, than the expansion of electronic document management system in the construction company. Some benefits which are brought by the use of such electronic archives, including expense reduction on document storage, including the project documentation brings to construction company, simplification and reduction in cost of access for employees to documents, their copying, reduction of idle times, stops of projects because ofinaccessibility of information, etc. are revealed in the article. However, it is necessary to consider that the creation of uniform electronic archive of construction company is connected with significant investments, it demands expenses which have to be accurately defined and used for the assessment and justification of the efficiency ofthe project of the electronic archive creation.

An efficient migrating birds optimization algorithm with idle time reduction for Type-I multi-manned assembly line balancing problem

An efficient migrating birds optimization algorithm with idle time reduction for Type-I multi-manned assembly line balancing problem

Evaluation of Damages Due to Failures of Electric Motors in Technological Equipment of Enterprises

The subject of the study is electric equipment system of milk farms at agricultural enterprises. The purpose of this work was the enhancement of operational reliability of electric equipment designed for technological process at milk farms based on the use of results of calculations made for the value of expected economic damage caused by failures of electric motors, and owing to the advancement of technical maintenance system. Effectiveness of the work is defined by evaluation of damage and, therefore, reducing the idle time period for technological equipment involved in various processes, at milk farms, as well as increasing lifetime of electric equipment, at agricultural enterprises. Application of the results of these studies may increase the operational reliability of electric equipment and ensure economical savings owing to the reduction of idle time of technological equipment, at milk farms, making it possible to reduce assets for operation and maintenance purposes by 10% to 15% and to decrease electric power consumption as a result of effective use of electrified machinery.

Railway crew scheduling with semi-flexible timetables

We investigate the impact of coordinating the timetable and the crew schedule in an operational freight railway system. Usually, those problems are solved sequentially—resulting in suboptimal schedules for train drivers due to large idle times between two train rides. We seek to coordinate the timetable and the crew schedule on the operational level by adding flexibility to the timetable. We introduce small time windows that allow to shift entire trains forwards and backwards by discrete time periods. We present a mathematical model and solve it with a column generation heuristic. We test our model on three real datasets of a major European Freight Railway Operator and show that significant reduction in idle time and cost can be achieved.

Sustainable flexible flow shop scheduling optimization in flexible packaging industry using genetic algorithm

Flexible flow shop (FFS) scheduling optimization process has a high level of complexity and categorized as an NP-hard problem. X Co is a flexible packaging manufacturer that scheduled FFS manually with a low sustainability level. The objective of this research is to optimize FFS scheduling in X Co using Genetic Algorithm (GA) method to increase the sustainability level and measure its performance. The sustainability parameters contain three main aspects of sustainability. In this optimization process, makespan minimization used as the objective function, and elitism is applied in the GA method to make sure the makespan value is getting smaller in each generation. The result shows an increment of sustainability level in all parameters. Makespan value reduction by 135 hours, zero lateness, idle time reduction by 1755 (hour*machine), machine utility improvement by 5.58%, electricity consumption reduction by 23664 kWh which converted into a reduction of 16731 KgCO2e greenhouse gas, and also increase employee productivity as much as 0.066 jobs/shift. This research shows an optimal result with a higher level of sustainability in the implementation of optimization on FFS scheduling at X Co.

Intervenção multiprofissional na sala de espera do HiperDia: relato de experiência

O trabalho teve como objetivo discorrer sobre a atuação multiprofissional nas salas de espera com usuários do HiperDia. Trata-se de um relato de experiência, a partir de um projeto de extensão, realizado no período de abril a julho de 2018, em um centro de saúde escola no interior de Minas Gerais, desenvolvido por uma equipe de residentes multiprofissionais. Os temas foram trabalhados de forma lúdica e eleitos pelos usuários e profissionais da instituição de saúde. As salas de espera foram avaliadas pelos participantes ao final de cada ação. Trabalhou-se com os temas: Diabetes Mellitus, Hipertensão Arterial Sistêmica e Hanseníase. No total, foram realizadas 40 atividades de salas de espera, com 461 participantes. A educação em saúde possibilitou o esclarecimento de dúvidas para tomada de decisões conscientes, criação de vínculo e redução do tempo ocioso enquanto os usuários aguardavam atendimento.

Effectiveness of a clinical pathway for complete denture adjustment.

This study was performed to evaluate the usefulness of a developed clinical pathway (CP) to determine the sequence of dental treatment in patients who are edentulous and use maxillary and mandibular complete dentures. Sixty-two edentulous patients with maxillary and mandibular complete dentures were randomly allocated either to with (31 subjects) or without (31 subjects) a CP. The main categories of the CP were the examination, instructions, practice, idle time, evaluation sheet, preparation, and other steps. The subcategories were made with respect to the main categories. The participants were categorized as dentists, assistants, or patients. There was no significant difference in mean chair time between with a CP (27.5 min) and without a CP (28.0 min). The CP led to a significant reduction in idle time (waiting in the chair or no treatment) of dentists, assistants, and patients. In contrast, the instances of medical examination, patients' instructions, and the number of patients reporting improvement of symptoms significantly increased. These results indicated that there is an opportunity to improve the complete denture treatment with a CP.

A novel approach of information visualization for machine operation states in industrial 4.0

Abstract A cyber-physical system integrates the virtual world of the Internet with the physical world, primarily through information visualization. Before applying such a system, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is an important measure of the effectiveness of production operations and is a concept that encompasses equipment availability, performance, and quality. If machine utilization is not maximized, machines fail to achieve its maximum efficiency, thus increasing production costs. Using the concept of OEE, machine utilization can be improved through the reduction of idle time. Programmable logic controllers are used in factories to collect processing information in the manufacturing process; however, this approach is limited by the differences in the various machines and their operating software, complicating the information-gathering process. This paper presents a machine status signal analysis approach that uses noninvasive current-sensing equipment to collect processing information, with the objective of classifying the processing status during the production process to calculate machine availability and help to improve machine utilization and reduce equipment costs.

Abstract No. 599 Time-driven activity-based costing in interventional radiology: a pilot study

Healthcare represents 17% of the US’s GDP and is riddled with waste. Before managing or improving high costs, more effective methods are needed to measure them. Time-driven, activity-based costing (TDABC) aims to measure true costs throughout a patient’s care cycle using two inputs: (1) the amount of time that specific resources (e.g., physician, equipment, etc.) are used, and (2) their cost rate per unit time. This pilot study aims to apply this empirical costing tool to characterize resource allocation in an interventional radiology (IR) department at a tertiary care center. Our ultimate goal is to determine opportunities for improving efficiency of IR procedural delivery. Two IR rooms from staff arrival (7:30) to dismissal (17:30) for 6 randomly selected, non-consecutive days were observed; 66 procedures were performed over 180 hours of observation. The time-points measured included preparation time, attending time spent, procedural time, room turn-over time, and idle time. The staff did not know the independent observer was tracking these variables. Second, we modeled potential solutions and used cost rates to calculate the effect of improving inefficiencies. Average daily room usage, peak-time room usage, idle time, procedural time, and room-turnover time were computed revealing significant opportunities for improvement. Moreover, room usage fluctuated throughout the day, with low usage from 7:30 to 8:30, lunch time and 15:30 to 17:30. Not counted as idle, time spent waiting for the operator with the patient on the table averaged was also computed averaging 18.8 min per case. Extensive modeling was performed demonstrating that a reduction of idle time and attending waiting time by 10% could add approximately 500 cases per year. Idle time between cases is large; staggering lunch could reduce waste and operator-specific scheduling could eliminate overestimations of procedure time. Improved communication with physicians would prevent waiting and improve care delivery. Such simple observational studies demonstrate the importance of measuring waste to identify solutions and predict quantitative effects. TDABC is a critical first step to improving IR efficiency.

GPU-accelerated atmospheric chemical kinetics in the ECHAM/MESSy (EMAC) Earth system model (version 2.52)

Abstract. This paper presents an application of GPU accelerators in Earth system modeling. We focus on atmospheric chemical kinetics, one of the most computationally intensive tasks in climate–chemistry model simulations. We developed a software package that automatically generates CUDA kernels to numerically integrate atmospheric chemical kinetics in the global climate model ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC), used to study climate change and air quality scenarios. A source-to-source compiler outputs a CUDA-compatible kernel by parsing the FORTRAN code generated by the Kinetic PreProcessor (KPP) general analysis tool. All Rosenbrock methods that are available in the KPP numerical library are supported.Performance evaluation, using Fermi and Pascal CUDA-enabled GPU accelerators, shows achieved speed-ups of 4. 5 × and 20. 4 × , respectively, of the kernel execution time. A node-to-node real-world production performance comparison shows a 1. 75 × speed-up over the non-accelerated application using the KPP three-stage Rosenbrock solver. We provide a detailed description of the code optimizations used to improve the performance including memory optimizations, control code simplification, and reduction of idle time. The accuracy and correctness of the accelerated implementation are evaluated by comparing to the CPU-only code of the application. The median relative difference is found to be less than 0.000000001 % when comparing the output of the accelerated kernel the CPU-only code.The approach followed, including the computational workload division, and the developed GPU solver code can potentially be used as the basis for hardware acceleration of numerous geoscientific models that rely on KPP for atmospheric chemical kinetics applications.

Zone merge sequencing in an automated order picking system

This paper considers the zone automated order fulfilment systems with a number of zones linked by a main conveyor. Each zone has a number of dispensers and a buffer. Each dispenser holds one type of item and dispenses the items for an order into a buffer before the items are merged to the main conveyor. Due to variability of the mix of item types and number of items for each type in successive orders, idle time or open space on the conveyor can occur if the buffers merge the items to the conveyor sequentially. The idle time prolongs the order fulfilment duration. This paper aims to provide a solution to reduce the idle time or open space by optimising the merging sequences among zones. A model is developed to find merging sequences with minimum order fulfilment time. However, the model is strongly NP-hard. A greedy heuristic-based solution approach is thus developed. Experiment performance shows that the presented solution can reduce the order fulfilment time approximately 5% with both empirical data and simulation data. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis is conducted to measure the effect of the solution under the variation of zone numbers and order structures. Although the idle time reduction can be achieved with any number of zones and order structures, it was most significant in certain range of zone numbers and appropriate order structures.