High quality of product and service is always demanded by customers. Conversely, poor
quality of product and service will result with customer dissatisfaction. However, this linear
relationship is no longer accurate due to the complexity nature of customer needs. Non-linear
relationship should be considered for more accurate evaluation of customer needs. This paper
presents a concept of Kano model and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) integration to evaluate
the non-linearity of customer needs towards the quality of products or services. By a case study, the
developed Kano-QFD model is validated with the theory of Kano model and found to have well
agreement. Further application for product development is recommended for future research.
The selection of landfill, which happens to be an environmental issue, has attracted
the attention of many researchers from the fields of waste management and
environmental sciences worldwide. Hence, in the attempt to overcome this problem,
some decision-making techniques, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), have been widely utilized in prior studies,
where multiple criteria, particularly in site selection process, have been employed.
With that, this article identifies the selection criteria for landfill selection and presents
a review concerning decision-making techniques that have been used in past studies
for two important phases involved during the process of site selection, namely, (1)
preliminary site screening, and (2) assessment of site suitability. As such, some 82
articles chosen from 34 peer-reviewed journals had been investigated in detail. The
results showed that 42.68% of the selected articles integrated GIS and MCDA
techniques to solve the problem of landfill site selection, and this is followed by
integrating GIS and fuzzy MCDA technique (18.29%). Both these techniques are indeed
powerful tools that can guide decision-makers to solve problems in making decisions
on the basis of various criteria under certainty and uncertainty results, mainly involving
environmental issues.
The use of a sprinkler irrigation system is becoming more popular to reduce water
consumption and increase irrigation efficiency. Irrigation uniformity plays an important role in the
performance of the sprinkler irrigation system. The use of low operating pressure instead of high
operating pressure system offer many benefits including energy and water saving. An experimental
study was performed using two systems; a square 12x12 m system and a rectangular 10x12 m system
to investigate irrigation uniformity based on soil moisture content of the sprinkler irrigation system
under low operating pressure. In addition, irrigation uniformity was compared based on water
application and soil moisture content. In this study, different low operating pressures (62, 82, 102 and
122 KPa) were selected. Different nozzle diameters (4, 5, 6 and 7 mm) and different riser heights (0.5,
0.75, and 1.0 m) were also used. The soil moisture content uniformities of 10 min after irrigation are
more dependent on the initial soil moisture content uniformity than any other design factor. It is also
less influenced by water application uniformity.
Dividend policy is one of the most important element to measure changes in stock
prices. The relationship between dividend policy and stock price volatility shows
different results based on different studies. This paper focuses on the relationship
between dividend policy and stock price volatility through seminal literature on both
theoretical and empirical evidences from 1989 to 2016. The various consequences of
this relationship depend upon each country specific characteristics, different data
sample and different methodology techniques which utilized by researchers in
developed and developing countries. Most of the studies found negative relationship
between dividend policy and stock price volatility, while developed countries have
more impact on this relationship as compared to developing countries. Based on the
prior literature, this paper argues that the relationship between dividend policy and
stock price volatility is inconsistent and the organization needs to decide the dividend
policy according to their capability and organizational culture.
Malaysia is experiencing an encouraging socio-economic development, especially in its
quest towards Vision 2020 and achieving the status as a developed country. The success can be
attributed to the government’s efforts and commitment in developing projects, which include the
construction of new townships and public infrastructures. Through the implementation of
Environmental Management Plan (EMP) during the construction phase, the government has taken
great efforts and initiatives to ensure that construction projects are well-developed in a sustainable
manner. Unfortunately, these rapid physical developments affect and pollute the surrounding
environment, even though EMP is implemented at the construction site. The effectiveness of
sustainable construction methods in the plan has been found to be very limited in the actual industrial
practice. Hence, this paper aims to determine the important criteria needed to be incorporated into
EMP in enhancing and ensuring its effectiveness in managing environmental aspects during the
construction stage.
This review presents generally about Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in industrial
training. Virtual reality training is increasingly used for maintenance and operation,
assembly procedure, welding and operative construction training that allow the
workers to work on existing and new tasks in safe, and perceive on how an item takes
shape as it travels through the manufacturing system, which result more effective
training. For companies to spend the large amount of economic resources in training
people, thus VR systems for training may reduce in dealing with issues such as the high
economic costs of training for travel and living expenses for those who need to move
from work to training centers. An adaptive technology has been used for pilot training
and vehicle driver training that may improves accuracy of the procedure. VR training
could create a more effective and efficient learning even without the presence of a
trainer.
This paper presents the housing improvement proposition in the Melaka resident area.Quality Function Deployment is used as a method to analyze customer behavior regarding customer requirement, satisfaction and comparison among the developers. By using this method, the main requirement by the buyer for their bungalow is their need of sufficient space to place their appliances in the house. At the end of the study, the details of buyer requirements are plotted into House of Quality, where it is believed to improve the quality of future bungalow house development in Melaka.
Gas turbine cooling can be classified into two different schemes; internal and external
cooling. In the internal cooling method, the coolant provided by compressor is forced into the cooling
flow circuits inside turbine components. Meanwhile, for the external cooling method, the injected
coolant is directly perfused from coolant manifold to save downstream components from hot gases.
Furthermore, in the latter coolant scheme, coolant is used to quell the heat transfer from hot gas stream
to a component. There are several ways in external cooling. Film cooling is one of the best cooling
systems for the application on gas turbine blades. This study concentrates on the comparison of
experimental, computational and numerical investigations of advanced film cooling performance for
cylindrical holes at different angles and different blowing ratios in modern gas turbines.
This paper presents the historical development of description on how the flapping
hydrodynamics of fishlike structure grows from infancy to the current state. The paper divides the
development into four phases; the Inception Phase, the Frozen Phase, the Revival Phase and the
Discovery Phase. The key quintessential characteristics that mark the advancement of different phase
would be highlighted and elucidated, with some consolidating comments on the future trends of
research areas.
Urban Transit Network Design Problem (UTNDP) focuses on deriving useful set of
routes, manageable timetabling for each transit route and transit scheduling based on
available resources. UTNDP is commonly subdivided into Urban Transit Routing
Problem (UTRP) and Urban Transit Scheduling Problem (UTSP), respectively. There are
various approaches applied to solve the UTSP. The aim of this paper is to give a
comprehensive list of studies on UTSP that deals with metaheuristic approaches such
as Tabu Search, Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithm and their hybrid methods. This
review also addressed possible gaps of the approaches and the limitations of the
overall problem. It can be concluded that only some of the metaheuristic approaches
and sub-problems are highly studied in UTSP. This review will be useful for researchers
who are interested in expanding their knowledge and conduct research in UTSP using
metaheuristic approaches.
Healthcare facilities in a hospital has diverse indoor cleanliness due to the different health
needs by the patients. Among the facilities, an operating room was identified as a critical space that
required high cleanliness environment. In recent years, an ISO 14644-1 Standard of Class 1 to Class 7
is prescribed in operating room for better particles concentration and airflow controlled. The objective
of this article is to review the assessment of airborne particles transportation and airflow distribution
in an operating room. This study shows that two main types of ventilation strategies have been widely
installed to control airborne particles trajectory, namely unidirectional airflow system and mixing
airflow system.
This review paper describes in general the use of VR as a training tool in manufacturing
technology like design, rapid prototyping, and manufacturing with some practical
examples where VR is used and its benefits in manufacturing industries which reduces
a lot of cost in the design stages to the finish stages. VR is the closest man can get to
reality as the names implies with the present capabilities. The technique enables
engineers and designers to move around and interact with the object in real time. This
review paper looks into some challenges of VR applications in manufacturing
industries.