The research has designed for studying the relationship between manufacturing strategy and its flexibility under the flexible manufacturing system with their reflection on the competitive environmental performance of the firm. To interpret and tackle the problem, a hypothesis has formulated stating that “ the competitive performance of a firm is interpreted by the manufacturing strategy and flexibility which are derived from the firm and its business  strategies under the flexible manufacturing system”. Related literatures with their theoretical dissertations, which enhanced the thoughtful content, have analyzed. An illustrative case study on the flexible manufacturing system at Toyota Motors Corporation working at the g

This paper presents a new design of a nonlinear multi-input multi-output PID neural controller of the active brake steering force and the active front steering angle for a 2-DOF vehicle model based on modified Elman recurrent neural. The goal of this work is to achieve the stability and to improve the vehicle dynamic’s performance through achieving the desired yaw rate and reducing the lateral velocity of the vehicle in a minimum time period for preventing the vehicle from slipping out the road curvature by using two active control actions: the front steering angle and the brake steering force. Bacterial forging optimization algorithm is used to adjust the parameters weights of the proposed controller. Simulation resul

In this paper, a cognitive system based on a nonlinear neural controller and intelligent algorithm that will guide an autonomous mobile robot during continuous path-tracking and navigate over solid obstacles with avoidance was proposed. The goal of the proposed structure is to plan and track the reference path equation for the autonomous mobile robot in the mining environment to avoid the obstacles and reach to the target position by using intelligent optimization algorithms. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) Algorithms are used to finding the solutions of the mobile robot navigation problems in the mine by searching the optimal paths and finding the reference path equation of the optimal

In this study, condensation polymerization was used to synthesize a number of novel liquid crystal polymers with 1,3,4-oxadiazole rings based on melamine. The new synthesized polymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1HNMR) spectroscopy. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and optical polarization microscopy (OPM) were used to investigate their liquid crystalline properties. The results demonstrated that throughout a wide temperature range, most of the polymers exhibited columnar (CohX) and nematic (N) liquid crystalline phases.

This study presents a practical method for solving fractional order delay variational problems. The fractional derivative is given in the Caputo sense. The suggested approach is based on the Laplace transform and the shifted Legendre polynomials by approximating the candidate function by the shifted Legendre series with unknown coefficients yet to be determined. The proposed method converts the fractional order delay variational problem into a set of (n ＋ 1) algebraic equations, where the solution to the resultant equation provides us the unknown coefficients of the terminated series that have been utilized to approximate the solution to the considered variational problem. Illustrative examples are given to show that the recommended appro

A bolted–welded hybrid demountable shear connector for use in deconstructable steel–concrete composite buildings and bridges was proposed. The hybrid connector consisted of a partially threaded stud, which was welded on the flange of a steel section, and a machined steel tube with compatible geometry, which was bolted on the stud. Four standard pushout tests according to Eurocode 4 were carried out to assess the shear performance of the hybrid connector. The experimental results show that the initial stiffness, shear resistance, and slip capacity of the proposed connector were higher than those of traditional welded studs. The hybrid connector was a ductile connector, according to Eurocode 4, with slip capacity higher than 6 mm. A nonli