Browsing by Author "Kang, Parminder Singh"

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    Applying lean principles to health economics transactional flow process to improve the healthcare delivery
    (IEEE, 2017-12-13) Alrashed, I.A.; Kang, Parminder Singh
    Abstract: Defects reduction and end-to-end process improvement are key to successful delivery of key services such as healthcare. This research paper investigates the implication of Lean management for healthcare service improvement. Transactional flow process is one of the key processes within the Saudi Arabian healthcare system. Transactional flow process in health economics needs to be defects free to insure an accurate healthcare delivery. This paper identifies and investigates two transactional flows within the health economics department. The anticipated outcome of this research paper is identification of two value streams and critical analysis of the Lean tools to improve the overall performance.
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    Classification and Clustering Approaches to Understanding Customer Ordering by Customers of a Fresh Food Supplier
    (The 20th Annual Conference of The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport, Logistics Research Network (LRN), Derby, UK, 2015-09-11) Clement, Ross; Kang, Parminder Singh; Duffy, A. P.; Hopewell, Ashley
    Purpose: This paper looks at characterization of B2B customers of a fresh food wholesale company supplying SME clients in terms of their weekly orders of a variety of fresh products. Customers whose orders can be predicted (days of the week order is placed, size of order) can easily be supplied without risk of waste due to the wholesaler ordering stock that is not sold to customers before it must be disposed of. Greater understanding of customer order patterns is necessary to improve demand prediction and reduce waste. Research Approach: Extensive real-world data from a fresh food wholesaler has been analysed in bulk. Customers’ weekly orders have been classified into one of nine classes depending on how each week’s order compares to the previous week. Equal order amounts on the same day (or days) of the week as the previous week are the most predictable class. Varying order amounts for orders placed on different days of the week are a much less predictable class. Other classes represent customers who either cease ordering after having made previous orders, or who place an order after not ordering in previous weeks. K-means clustering has also been used to extract clusters of customers showing similar ordering patterns from the customer base. These functions have been integrated into a data visualization tool which displays the clusters in terms of the frequency of occurrence of order classes, and their standard deviation within the clusters.
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    Continuous Process Improvement Implementation Framework Using Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms and Discrete Event Simulation
    (Emerald Publishing, 2018-09-17) Kang, Parminder Singh; Bhatti, R. S.
    Purpose Continuous process improvement is a hard problem, especially in high variety/low volume environments due to the complex interrelationships between processes. The purpose of this paper is to address the process improvement issues by simultaneously investigating the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a continuous process improvement implementation framework using a modified genetic algorithm (GA) and discrete event simulation to achieve multi-objective optimization. The proposed combinatorial optimization module combines the problem of job sequencing and buffer size optimization under a generic process improvement framework, where lead time and total inventory holding cost are used as two combinatorial optimization objectives. The proposed approach uses the discrete event simulation to mimic the manufacturing environment, the constraints imposed by the real environment and the different levels of variability associated with the resources. Findings Compared to existing evolutionary algorithm-based methods, the proposed framework considers the interrelationship between succeeding and preceding processes and the variability induced by both job sequence and buffer size problems on each other. A computational analysis shows significant improvement by applying the proposed framework. Originality/value Significant body of work exists in the area of continuous process improvement, discrete event simulation and GAs, a little work has been found where GAs and discrete event simulation are used together to implement continuous process improvement as an iterative approach. Also, a modified GA simultaneously addresses the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems by considering the interrelationships and the effect of variability due to both on each other.
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    Discrete Event Simulation to Reduce the Effect of Uncertainties on Project Planning
    (29th European Simulation and Modelling Conference,, 2015-10-27) Kang, Parminder Singh; Aboutaleb, Adam; Duffy, A. P.; Embley, Tim; Glenn, Jame; Adams, Colin
    Planning is a vital decision making activity that influences the future of an organization by determining what tasks are to be performed, who required resources are and in what sequence. Organizations often follow a rigorous process to plan and deliver projects optimally based on the given resource and budget constraints. However, uncertainties increase the complexity of the planning process and contribute towards increased cost, delays and resource allocation issues. Therefore, it is important to understand the uncertainties and constraints associated with project activities and their effect on both business processes and organizational goals. Understanding the causal relationships between activities and constraints could allow organizations to operate more effectively and efficiently even in uncertain environments and lead to a more informed decision making process. This paper exemplifies the use of discrete event simulation tool to develop a strategically focused project delivery plan founded on the assessment of uncertainties that could arise during the delivery of the project. Proposed methodology follows a structured and systematic approach in order to identify the factors that can affect the delivery of the project and evaluate solutions that may mitigate or reduce the risk to As Low As Reasonably Practical (ALARP). The main objective is to complement the existing project planning activities rather than replace the existing tools.
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    Investigating the Demand for Short-shelf Life Food Products for SME Wholesalers
    (World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2016-06) Raju, Y.; Kang, Parminder Singh; Moroz, Adam; Clement, Ross; Hopwell, Ashley; Duffy, A. P.
    Accurate forecasting of fresh produce demand is one the challenges faced by Small Medium Enterprise (SME) wholesalers. This paper is an attempt to understand the cause for the high level of variability such as weather, holidays etc., in demand of SME wholesalers. Therefore, understanding the significance of unidentified factors may improve the forecasting accuracy. This paper presents the current literature on the factors used to predict demand and the existing forecasting techniques of short shelf life products. It then investigates a variety of internal and external possible factors, some of which is not used by other researchers in the demand prediction process. The results presented in this paper are further analysed using a number of techniques to minimize noise in the data. For the analysis past sales data (January 2009 to May 2014) from a UK based SME wholesaler is used and the results presented are limited to product ‘Milk’ focused on café’s in derby. The correlation analysis is done to check the dependencies of variability factor on the actual demand. Further PCA analysis is done to understand the significance of factors identified using correlation. The PCA results suggest that the cloud cover, weather summary and temperature are the most significant factors that can be used in forecasting the demand. The correlation of the above three factors increased relative to monthly and becomes more stable compared to the weekly and daily demand.
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    Knowledge Engineering Based Forecasting to Improve Daily Demand Prediction for Refrigerated and Short Shelf-Life Food Supply Chains
    (The 20th Annual Conference of The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport, Logistics Research Network (LRN), Derby UK, 2015-09-11) Kang, Parminder Singh; Clement, Ross; Hopewell, Ashley; Duffy, A. P.; Garicia-Taylor, Marilu
    The accuracy of demand forecasting for companies in the food industry is highly important, especially for those that deal with products that require refrigeration or that have short shelf-life, given the fact that the freshness and overall quality of the products offered can affect the profit margins for business and the health of the consumers (Doganis et al., 2006). Furthermore, Agrawal and Schorling (1996) as cited by Chen and Ou (2008) highlighted that having easy access to accurate and up-to-date information about demand forecasting is vital for any company aiming to maintain high levels of competitiveness in their market sector. This is even more important for fresh foods wholesalers, whose profit is directly affected by wasted or unsold products and unsatisfied customers (unfulfilled demand), especially when storage facilities are limited.
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    Lean Cables – A Step towards Competitive, Sustainable and Profitable Processes
    (IWCS - International Wire & Cable Symposium, 2014-11) Kang, Parminder Singh; Duffy, A. P.; Shires, Nigel; Smith, Trevor; Novels, Mike
    In the business world, one of the key challenges is how to survive in ever changing business environments and outperforming the competitors, while keeping the operational cost at minimum and profits at maximum level. In other words, this can be described as the problem of improving operational efficiency and reducing cost. Over the past few years due to global financial challenges, it has become even more important to improve the operational efficiency and reduce costs to survive through these tough conditions. Like other successful implementations of Lean philosophy, especially in automobile, aerospace, steel and healthcare, it can be applied in cable manufacturing to achieve competitive, sustainable and profitable processes. The main focus of Lean philosophy is to create value for the stakeholders and end customers by reducing the non-value added activities or waste, and laying a strong foundation towards sustainable growth, by focusing on continuous process improvement. The overall philosophy provides a focused approach for continuous process improvement and the targeting of a variety of tools and methods to bring improvements. This paper presents case studies for Lean scheduling of manufacturing processes (Semiconductor and cable industry) and exemplify how Lean scheduling processes allow organisations to maintain the continuous improvement philosophy. This paper also addresses the key elements of rescheduling processes i.e. how to schedule and when to schedule. Further, the paper will exemplify key benefits of Lean scheduling and how the Cable industry could benefit from the proposed approach.
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    Lean Improvements to Passenger Departure Flow in Abu Dhabi Airport: Focus on Data from the Check-in Element
    (International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, 2015-07) Al-Dhaheri, Abdulla; Kang, Parminder Singh
    This is the second paper of three which concerns improving Passenger Departure Flow. The main aim of this paper is provide a summary of the research results, which includes both the reporting of empirical data collected at the Airport and the results obtained from simulation of existing flow for passenger departure process. The large quantity of data means this paper focuses on reporting data for the economy check-in element only. The project led towards development of rules for process of improvement for the entire departure process and explored the benefits of using the Lean philosophy for improving a range of airport processes. Airport processes are completely different than the manufacturing and other service sectors due to the complex interlinking between different stake holders such as airline regulations, national/international law etc.
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    Lean Six Sigma Approach to Improve the Admissions Process for a Nigerian HE Institute
    (International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, 2015-05) Oko, Anthony; Kang, Parminder Singh
    Lean as a management paradigm has been applied extensively in manufacturing industries, and so little has been done in the area of its studies and application in managing affairs in education. This paper exemplifies the applicability of Lean Six Sigma approach for higher educational institutes. The problem solved is that of ineffective and inefficient admission process in the ELITE state polytechnic. The project is aimed at proffering a workable and a viable improvement process for the admission of candidates for the ELITE state polytechnic that will be more attractive and have more value for customers and above all, create more wealth for the polytechnic community. The need for improvement is presented in responses from respondents in the question two of the questionnaires. A total of 70 respondents, representing 85% indicate their dissatisfaction with the admission process. To improve the admissions process, the Lean Six Sigma based methodology, DMAIC was applied. A qualitative research analysis was used in analyzing the questionnaires, since the method seeks to understand and the research problems from the perspective of the local population. A test shows positive results when compared with the old practice. There were improvements in a circle, takt, lead and utilization times, reductions in idle time and rework, likewise the process circle efficient (PCE). The results are presented in the current flow chart and the value stream maps.
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    Passenger Departure Process Modelling to Investigate the Effect of Variability for a Major International Airport
    (2018-05-27) Al-Dhaheri, Abdulla; Kang, Parminder Singh; Al-Halafi, M.
    The special environment of any airport, especially a major international hub made process improvement and analysis difficult. This is due to the variability induced by several factors and which could potentially change, dramatically, at short notice. This made current research paper significantly different from previous simulation based approaches applied to improve the airport operations. Also, large, cumulative variations in demand set in an environment where rapid expansion of the airport is taking place also created major difficulties because of the shifting flow of passengers. This research paper demonstrated the application of discrete event simulation model of the airport much more accurate and detailed than those described in previous studies of passenger departure processes. This paper proposes a detailed modelling approach for departure process and several recommendations are made for further work to improve the airport check-in process operations.
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    Process Control Parameters Evaluation Using Discrete Event Simulation for Business Process Optimization
    (Proceedings of the 64th IWCS Conference, 2015-10-08) Kang, Parminder Singh; Aboutaleb, Adam; Silva, Christopher Ugo; Duffy, A. P.; Erhart, Alexandre; Todeschini, Victor
    The quest for manufacturing process improvement and higher levels of customer satisfaction mandates that organizations must be equipped with advanced tools and techniques in order to respond towards ever changing internal and external customer demands by maintaining the optimal process performance, lower cost and higher profit levels. A manufacturing process can be defined as a collection of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. To achieve internal and external objectives, significant process parameters must be identified and evaluated to optimize the process performance. This even becomes more important to deal with fierce competition and ever changing customer demands. This paper illustrates an integrated approach using design of experiments techniques and discrete event simulation (Simul8) to understand and optimize the system dynamic based on operational control parameter evaluation and their boundary conditions. Further, the proposed model is validated using a real world manufacturing process case study to optimize the manufacturing process performance. Discrete event simulation tool is used to mimic the real world scenario, which provides a flexible and powerful way to comprehensively understand the manufacturing process variations and allows controlled 'What-If´ analysis based on design of experiments approach. Finally, this paper discusses the potential applications of the proposed methodology in the cable industry in order to optimize the cable manufacturing process by regulating the operational control parameters such as dealing with various product configurations with different equipment settings, different product flows and work in process (WIP) space limitations.
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    Simulation-based Reactive Scheduling for the Concrete Delivery Problem Using Actual Data and Delivery Site Constraints
    (2019-05) Kang, Parminder Singh; Duffy, Alistair; Samarghandi, Hamed
    Construction project control requires reliable delivery schedules. The delivery schedule decisions examine the information available regarding material, equipment, concrete quality controls, delivery times, construction site delays and other external factors such as congestion and traffic conditions. This paper investigates a sector-specific problem for a non-fixed construction project (highway sector) to generate a daily concrete delivery schedule. The objectives of the delivery schedule are to maximize daily throughput and minimize queues at the construction site by considering constraints from the concrete supplier and construction site — comparison of Simulation-based reactive schedule with current manual practice in industry demonstrates 13% throughput improvement by having deliveries just-in-time.
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    Standalone closed-form formula for the throughput rate of asynchronous normally distributed serial flow lines
    (Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 2017-03-15) Aboutaleb, Adam; Kang, Parminder Singh; Hamzaoui, Raouf; Duffy, A. P.
    Flexible flow lines use flexible entities to generate multiple product variants using the same serial routing. Evaluative analytical models for the throughput rate of asynchronous serial flow lines were mainly developed for the Markovian case where processing times, arrival rates, failure rates and setup times follow deterministic, exponential or phase-type distributions. Models for non-Markovian processes are non-standalone and were obtained by extending the exponential case. This limits the suitability of existing models for real-world human-dependent flow lines, which are typically represented by a normal distribution. We exploit data mining and simulation modelling to derive a standalone closed-form formula for the throughput rate of normally distributed asynchronous human-dependent serial flow lines. Our formula gave steady results that are more accurate than those obtained with existing models across a wide range of discrete data sets.
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    Using Agent-Based Simulation to Investigate Daily Order Variation of a B2B Fresh Food Supplier
    (29th European Simulation and Modelling Conference, 2015-10) Clement, Ross; Kang, Parminder Singh; Hopewell, Ashley; Duffy, A. P.
    Agent-based simulation has been used to simulate customers of a B2B fresh food supplier, in order to examine why total orders vary considerably on a day by day basis. Different types of virtual customers can be included in the simulation, ordering products using different strategies including their own demand prediction. This simulation suggests that customers changing the day of their order is the largest cause of daily order variance.
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    Using Lean Philosophy to Improve Passenger Departure Flow in Abu Dhabi Airport
    (IJSER Publications, 2015-07) Kang, Parminder Singh; Al-Dhaheri, Abdulla
    Lean is an established process improvement philosophy to achieve the operational excellence and the benefits can be more than just improving the process. This is evident as the benefits of Lean are truly exploited in automotive, aerospace and manufacturing sectors. There are numerous implementations of Lean philosophy in service sector such as banking, higher education, software development etc. The main aim of this paper is provide an overview of Lean philosophy and explore the benefits for airport processes. The airport processes are completely different than the manufacturing and other service sectors due to the complex interlinking between different stake holders such as airline regulations, national/international law etc. This paper exemplifies the Lean philosophy by drawing examples form Passenger Departure Process (PDP) in Abu Dhabi International Airport (a major international airport). This paper starts with examining the background to the project and why airports have many characteristic features, which are fundamentally different to the manufacturing environment in which Lean was originally devised. Since its origins, Lean philosophy has been also applied to many service environments. Further, Lean philosophy is introduced and Lean principles and waste is discussed from the PDP perspective. Along this, a brief literature review is presented on the existing process improvement approaches used in the airports. The ultimate aim of the project which it has achieved was to develop a practical methodology of applying Lean principles to the PDP help airline managers and staff eliminates the waste of available resources and so increases the passenger flow through various stages of the process in line with Lean philosophy.
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    Value Stream Mapping and Simulation Modelling for Healthcare Transactional Process Improvement
    (2019-05) Alrashed, I. A.; Kang, Parminder Singh; Duffy, Alistair
    Lean management philosophy was originated in Japan from the Toyota production system. The main idea is to determine and eliminate waste. The concept of end-to-end value allows organizations to achieve competitive advantage through best quality product and services through minimum operational cost. These days there is more to be achieved by applying lean to services and transactional processes floors. Lean facilitators are facing challenges when trying to transform an organization to be a lean enterprise because it is possible in production systems, but that is not easier in the services and transactional sectors, which means there are challenges that should be considered. Some of the challenges for the service sector are; complex and mixed value streams, information and people are processed instead of parts and human interaction is a major part of the service sector.