A Review on Challenges and Opportunities for Implementing Industry 4.0 in India

The globalization and the competitiveness are enforcing organizations to readdress and innovate their production processes. The world is entering a new era of industrial emanating technology in automation and data exchange through the use of Internet of Things called fourth technological revolution or Industry 4.0. It represents the amalgamation of tools already used in the past such as big data; cloud, robot, 3D printing, simulation, etc. are now connected into an internet to transmit digital data. For the implementation of this new paradigm, there are many opportunities and also many challenges. This paper highlights brief introduction on challenges and opportunities for implementation of Industry 4.0 in India

Pandemic intake questionnaire to improve quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of outpatient neurologic and developmental care at the Kennedy Krieger institute during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic uniquely affects patients with neurologic and developmental disabilities at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. These patients are at increased risk of co-morbidities, increasing their risk of contracting COVID-19. Disruptions in their home and school routines, and restrictions accessing crucial healthcare services has had a significant impact.MethodsA Pandemic Intake questionnaire regarding COVID-19 related medical concerns of guardians of patients was distributed using Qualtrics. Data from May-December 2020 were merged with demographic information of patients from 10 clinics (Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD), Neurology, Epigenetics, Neurogenetics, Center for Development and Learning (CDL) Sickle Cell, Spinal Cord, Sturge-Weber syndrome (SWS), Tourette's, and Metabolism). A provider feedback survey was distributed to program directors to assess the effectiveness of this intervention.ResultsAnalysis included responses from 1643 guardians of pediatric patients (mean age 9.5 years, range 0–21.6 years). Guardians of patients in more medically complicated clinics reported perceived increased risk of COVID-19 (p < 0.001) and inability to obtain therapies (p < 0.001) and surgeries (p < 0.001). Guardian responses from CARD had increased reports of worsening behavior (p = 0.01). Providers increased availability of in-person and virtual therapies and visits and made referrals for additional care to address this. In a survey of medical providers, five out of six program directors who received the responses to this survey found this questionnaire helpful in caring for their patients.ConclusionThis quality improvement project successfully implemented a pre-visit questionnaire to quickly assess areas of impact of COVID-19 on patients with neurodevelopmental disorders. During the pandemic, results identified several major areas of impact, including patient populations at increased risk for behavioral changes, sleep and/or disruptions of medical care. Most program directors reported improved patient care as a result

A study of the effect of tool pin profiles on tensile strength of welded joints produced using friction stir welding process

Friction stir welding (FSW) has evolved into a process focused on joining of arc-weldable (5xxx and 6xxx) and which are difficult to weld (2xxx and 7xxx) aluminium alloys. The method described in this article for the prediction of tensile properties and optimization can eliminate the need for performing experiments on the basis of conventional trial and error method. The present study is aimed to identify the most influencing significant parameter and percentage contribution of each parameter on tensile strength of friction stir welded AA 7075-T6 aluminium joints by conducting minimum number of experiments using Taguchi orthogonal array. In this study, tool pin profiles like square head and conical head are used. Signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are employed to find the contribution of the main welding parameters like tool rotational speed, weld traversing speed, and plunge depth on tensile strength of the welded joint. Confirmation experiments were conducted to validate the estimated value of tensile strength. It has been also observed that in both the tool profiles, the tool rotational speed exhibits more influence on tensile strength than weld traversing speed (welding speed) and plunge depth, and that the tool having conical profile results in better joint efficiency than the tool having square profile. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Assessment of friction stir weld quality by analyzing the weld bead surface using both digital image processing and acoustic emission techniques

The success of Friction Stir Welding (FSW) depends upon how well the tool shoulder interacts with base material, generating required frictional heat, controlling flow of material to ensure proper containment and consolidation resulting in a defect free weld. In the present work, the weld bead surface of AA6082-T6 specimens produced by shoulders of different geometry (Flat and Concentric rings) with selected welding parameters are assessed by using digital image processing. The images of the weld bead surface are captured, processed, and analyzed by extracting first and second order statistical image parameters along good and defect weld regions in comparison with X-Ray Radiography. The variations in statistical image parameters of weld bead images are observed, enabling digital image correlation to assess weld quality. The results obtained are also verified by Acoustic Emission (AE) data acquired during FSW, showing variations similar to that of image data along good and defect weld regions