The pandemic and its impact on occupational health and safety among mechanical engineering industries in India

Workplace health and safety has been of paramount importance for any nation and the stakeholders- authorities, employers and workers – must have reasonable sensitization for the same. During the COVID 19 pandemic, lots of policy formulations and regulations had to incorporate within the industries for the health and welfare of the workers. The “new normal” will take some time for adjustments, challenges and implications to be implemented effectively and consistently. Certain processes in the workplace, especially in the mechanical engineering companies, are likely for high close contact incidences. Special situations pertaining to workers’’ health, like crowded accommodations, travel risks as well common canteens, all need to be reconsidered for providing safer environment to the workers, as far as the current pandemic is concerned. This requires coordinated efforts from all the stakeholders within the mechanical field through subconscious acceptance of the norms of safety and hygiene at all levels.

Corrosion Resistance, Evaluation Methods, and Surface Treatments of Stainless Steels

Stainless steels are widely recognized and find applications in many engineering industries and companies due to their excellent properties including high resistance to corrosion as a result of their minimum 10.5% chromium content, exceptional strength and durability, temperature resistance, high recyclability, and easy formability. In the present book chapter, the basic concepts of stainless steel including its applications, classifications, and corrosion properties will first be discussed. Thereafter, their corrosion behaviour will then be explained. The various methods by which the corrosion resistance behaviour can be significantly improved including surface treatments such as coatings/electrodepositions, alloying, mechanical treatment, and others will be discussed in detail.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship in the Light Engineering Industries: A Developing Country Perspective

The study strives to generate deep insights into sustainable entrepreneurship of the Light Engineering Industries (LEIs) from a developing country perspective. This exploratory research has conducted interview schedules with a total of 450 respondents (entrepreneurs 100, workers 350) from 100 LEIs scattered in different parts of Bangladesh. The LEIs belong to the green category as indicated by the environmental regulation of Bangladesh; however, the study has found a clear lack of environmental concerns to its day-to-day practices. Deficiencies are also observed in its value chain processes. This sector is lagging to take environmental initiatives for marketing their products and creating environmental and social risk awareness among workers. In addition to these, the study has found significant deficiencies in the workers' job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment factors that are hindering organizational effectiveness. For the current entrepreneurial activities to be sustainable, this sector needs to scrutinize its product, market, value chain, industry clusters, employee motivation and environmental concerns to its day-to-day operations.

Experimental Study of the Effects of Convective Drying on Some Selected Vegetables

Aim: This work gives the reports on experimental study of the effects of drying on some selected vegetables, namely fluted pumpkin (specimen I), spinach (specimen II), lettuce (specimen III), and waterleaf (specimen IV). Methodology: The vegetable specimens were dried at regulated drying temperatures of 323K, 333K, and 343K, and the percentage amount of water, fat, crude fibre, ash, protein, and carbohydrate, as well as the fungi and bacteria counts in the vegetable specimens was determined at these temperatures. Results: The results revealed that the amount of water in the vegetable specimens reached 0% earlier at the regulated drying temperature of 343K than at the other regulated drying temperatures. The results also indicated that the dried vegetable specimen II has highest fat content of 8.2%, the dried vegetable specimen III has highest crude fibre content of 14.5%, the dried vegetable specimen IV has highest ash content of 18.6%, the dried vegetable specimen I has highest protein content of 30.3%, and the dried vegetable s specimen III has highest carbohydrate content of 42.2% at the regulated drying temperature of 323K. The same trend of results was obtained for the regulated drying temperatures of 333K and 343K. Furthermore, the results showed that at the regulated drying temperature of 323K, the dried vegetable specimen III has the lowest bacteria counts of 4.3 x 107 CFU/g. The trend of result obtained for the regulated drying temperatures of 333K and 343K is similar to that of the 323K. At the regulated drying temperature of 323K, the dried vegetable specimen II has the lowest bacteria counts of 1.7 x 107 CFU/g. The same trend of results was obtained for the regulated drying temperatures of 333K and 343K. Conclusions: Drying has effects on the percentage amount of fat, crude fibre, ash, protein, and carbohydrate in the vegetable specimens. The microbial counts and the fungi counts decrease when the temperature increases. The present work can be applied in food engineering industries, and engineering in agriculture.

Review of Nanofluids and Their Biomedical Applications

Numerous researchers have reported significant improvements in nanofluid (NF) heat transfer (HT), suspension stability, thermal conductivity (TC), and rheological and mass transfer properties. As a result, nanofluids (NFs) play an important role in a variety of applications, including the health and biomedical engineering industries. The majority of the nanofluids (NFs) literature focuses on analyzing and comprehending the behavior of nanofluid models as heating or cooling mechanisms in various fields. This article represents a comprehensive study on nanofluids (NFs). It involves commonly used nanoparticles (NPs), magnetic nanofluids (MNFs), thermal conductivity (TC) enhancement, heat transfer (HT) enhancement, nanofluids (NFs) synthesis methods, stability evaluation methods, stability enhancement, nanofluids (NFs) applications in the biomedical field, and their impact on health and the environment. Nanofluids (NFs) play vital role in biomedical applications. It can be implemented in drug delivery systems, hyperthermia, sterilization processes, bioimaging, lubrication of orthopedic implants, and micro-pumping systems for drugs and hormones.

Introduction to Lean Waste and Lean Tools

In the turbulent and complex business environments, many Indian SMEs are facing stiff competition in the domestic as well as in the global market from their multinational counterpart. The concept of lean has gained prominence due to the fact that the resource based competitive advantages are no longer sufficient in this economy. Hence, lean is no longer merely an option but rather a core necessity for engineering industries situated in any part of the globe, if they have to compete successfully. Lean Manufacturing (LM) which provides new opportunities to create and retain greater value from the employee of the industry based on their core business competencies. The challenge of capturing, organizing, and disseminating throughout the aggregate business unit is a huge responsibility of the top management. The success of any industry depends on how well it can manage its resources and translate in to action. The adoption of lean manufacturing through effective lean practices depends on interpretations of past experiences and present information resides in the industry. Generally, in an industry, some tangible and intangible factors exist in the form of non-value adding activities which hinder the smooth lean implementation are known as lean manufacturing barriers (LMBs).

Laser Coatings via State-of-the-Art Additive Manufacturing: A Review

Ceramics and ceramic-reinforced metal matrix composites (CMMCs) demonstrate high wear resistance, excellent chemical inertness, and exceptional properties at elevated temperatures. These characteristics are suitable for their utilization in biomedical, aerospace, electronics, and other high-end engineering industries. The aforementioned performances make them difficult to fabricate via conventional manufacturing methods, requiring high costs and energy consumption. To overcome these issues, laser additive manufacturing (LAM) techniques, with high-power laser beams, were developed and extensively employed for processing ceramics and ceramic-reinforced CMMCs-based coatings. In respect to other LAM processes, laser melting deposition (LMD) excels in several aspects, such as high coating efficiency and lower labor cost. Nevertheless, difficulties such as poor bonding between coating and substrate, cracking, and reduced toughness are still encountered in some LMD coatings. In this article, we review recent developments in the LMD of ceramics and CMMCs-based coatings. Issues and solutions, along with development trends, are discussed and summarized in support of implementing this technology for current industrial use.

The Alignment of Civil Engineering Tools and Equipment Between TVET Colleges and Industries

This study was conducted in response to the call made by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa to strengthen the awareness levels of TVET colleges' readiness to embrace the 4IR era. The purpose of this study was to focus on equipment alignment between TVET colleges and industries. This study used Eulau and Karps' theory of responsiveness as a guide to explore the purpose. Also, this study purposefully sampled five TVET colleges in Limpopo province and two civil engineering industries linked to these institutions. This study used a descriptive qualitative research design. Document analysis and non-participant observations were used as data collection instruments. The study found that the working tools and equipment used by these TVET colleges were not fancy or showing prospects of Fourth Industrial Revolution. This was the same thing with the linked industries. Hence, all tools used were simply outdated when it comes to 4IR integration. And so, the study recommends that TVET colleges should institute new partnerships with 4IR responsive industries than being linked to industries that are using conventional tools and equipment.