Nkemakonam Igbokwe | Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka-Nigeria (original) (raw)

Papers by Nkemakonam Igbokwe

Archives of Current Research International, 2019

The survival of manufacturing small and medium enterprises depends on its capability to anticipat... more The survival of manufacturing small and medium enterprises depends on its capability to anticipate and prepare for setbacks, challenges and risks, rather than waiting for it to happen. Thus the purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of risk management implementation in manufacturing small and medium enterprises in Nigeria. A survey methodology was applied during this investigation. And the results revealed that as the owner/manager entrepreneurial experience grows, risk management experience is gained. Thereby leading to a better risk perception, where a more sophisticated risk management approach is implemented that ensures its survival during political or economic crises.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Nov 1, 2022

This study aims to address the issue of production inventory overstocking and understocking in a ... more This study aims to address the issue of production inventory overstocking and understocking in a small and medium enterprise. Three years' worth of production data were acquired and accurately evaluated using multiple linear regression analysis in the case study to ensure successful inventory management. The MINITAB program was used to create a multiple linear regression model to predict the amount of inventory needed. By entering the amount of each raw material utilized in the model, the management of the company can use the model to predict the monthly total quantity of output. This will aid in stifling any type of employee misconduct. Accurate forecasting of inventory needs is necessary for effective inventory control. By employing historical data in specialized software to create models that can efficiently develop the appropriate policies for inventory requirements in small and medium firms, this work adds to the expanding body of research on data driven inventory management.

Archives of current research international, Dec 15, 2022

An optimal maintenance strategy for cost effective maintenance and machine reliability in food ma... more An optimal maintenance strategy for cost effective maintenance and machine reliability in food manufacturing industries was developed in this study. Maintenance and cost parameters were employed to develop cost-reliability based model in terms of an optimal maintenance using lingo solver. The developed cost-reliabilitybased model considered system's reliability, cost of equipment failure, preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance and downtime cost associated with-equipment maintenance. A case of a food manufacturing company in Nigeria was observed and the data wasused to evaluate the model. It is imperative to know that, the developed optimal maintenance strategy provided better cost savings and improved system reliability than the current maintenance cost and machine reliability of the industrial case study.

Archives of Current Research International, 2022

International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, 2022

This study is a concise review of improvement methodologies implementation and adoption in manufa... more This study is a concise review of improvement methodologies implementation and adoption in manufacturing systems in the Nigerian manufacturing sector. A total of two hundred and twenty four research publications were reviewed from the period 2000 to 2016. The review found out that there are gaps in literature outlining the success and failures of improvement methodologies implementation in the Nigerian manufacturing sector. Thereby concluding that there are no authoritative statistics on the scope and size of improvement methodology implementation, and that there is still uncertainty as to what critical success factors or variables that ensures the successful implementation of an improvement methodology in a manufacturing system in Nigeria

Globalization has really affected businesses all over the world, it is therefore pertinent for ma... more Globalization has really affected businesses all over the world, it is therefore pertinent for manufacturing Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) to remain competitive in the market, since they contribute significantly to the Gross Domestic Product of every nation. One method of improving business competitiveness is by applying the concept of Continuous Improvement (CI), which is also known as Kaizen. This paper provides an insight into the implementation stages, critical success factors, and challenges of Kaizen Manufacturing Technique's (KMT) implementation, before analyzing the benefits of its implementation in an SME that specializes in tissue production. Planning, setting up of cross-functional teams, and Plan-Do-Check-Action Cycle were listed as the different stages of the manufacturing strategy, while management support, effective communication, education and training, organizational culture, skills and expertise, kaizen champion, and organizational structure were discussed in detail as the critical success factors of its implementation. On the barriers, the paper noted that resistance to change, failure to motivate the workforce, lack of understanding of a firm's strategic goal, as well as difficulties in managing continuous improvement are the main challenges of KMT successful implementation. MATLAB software was applied to analyze and compare the pre and post KMT daily production, defective products, and quality of products in the tissue manufacturing company. The results of the comparisons showed that the Kaizen technique outperformed the traditional production system in terms of daily production rate, defects, and product quality, as they recorded up to 60%, 31%, and 51% improvements respectively. The results showed that kaizen strategy even after reducing the staff strength from thirteen to twelve, also has the potential to reduce the rate of defects, and also increase the quality of products, and production throughput.

Journal of Scientific Research and Reports, 2017

The occupational influx of foreign expatriates in the country and the technical preference of the... more The occupational influx of foreign expatriates in the country and the technical preference of these foreign competitors over our indigenous engineers have shown that most of our university outputs do not bring forth the presumed outcome. This odd position has limited us further from the global technological theatre, and has been a contentious issue in various academic symposium and conferences. The research was conducted to examine the university system's operational strategies and their underlying teaching policies. Some of the notable variables that has link with the output quality of students in the university system were assessed in the study. The input variable (staff: student ratio) and some of the process variables were examined. An exponential model was developed, and used to determine the appropriate staff requirement in the faculty of Engineering, in accordance with the National university commission's specified staff-to-student benchmark ratio. A qualitative method of investigation was used in assessing the process variables, and four hypotheses were generated from the study. The outcome of the study has widely disclosed a dysfunctional feedback system in the faculty, lack of technology support initiatives, inappropriate teaching methods, lack of proper academic guidance and counseling supports. The researchers in this study now likened these weak outcomes as part of the drawbacks in producing highly prolific engineering graduates in the society at large.

Journal of Engineering Research and Reports, 2021

In food manufacturing, maintenance of manufacturing equipment is one of the most important essent... more In food manufacturing, maintenance of manufacturing equipment is one of the most important essentials for an efficient manufacturing as this sector continuously face challenges that makes maintenance very critical due to the nature of manufacturing, thus as a result food manufacturing companies must add or modify their maintenance strategies in order to keep production running efficiently. The aim of this study is to carry out a maintenance performance evaluation and downtime analysis in a food manufacturing company and suggest areas for further improvement. In this study, an empirical case study was carried out in order to evaluate the maintenance performance and downtime analysis. Overall equipment effectiveness and Pareto analysis were used to carry out a maintenance performance evaluation and downtime analysis on the manufacturing equipment using three years historical data obtained from the food manufacturing company as an industrial case study. The study found that the averag...

Journal of Scientific Research and Reports, 2019

This conceptual paper presents a review of the developing trends in engineering education in Nige... more This conceptual paper presents a review of the developing trends in engineering education in Nigeria for engineering graduates in the 21 st century. A case study approach was used for this study, chronicling several issues that impact quality engineering education presently in Nigeria. However in dealing with the issues this paper recommends that there is a need for Nigeria to become signatory to the international engineering alliance to ensure consistency in standards and the mobility of engineering graduates, encourage university/industrial linkage through the creation of technological parks, and to adapt the system of endowment to gain financial independence.

Advances in Research, 2018

The goal of this study is to provide insights into total productive maintenance implementation as... more The goal of this study is to provide insights into total productive maintenance implementation as a business strategy in a manufacturing SME in Nigeria that has had success in implementing it. A combination of a qualitative and quantitative investigation was used for this study, which comprises of literature review, questionnaire survey, comprehensive interviews, and direct observation. In order to achieve competitive advantage in the manufacturing sector, implementing TPM is an effective business strategy, thus this study reviewed Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation as a business strategy in a manufacturing SME in Nigeria, and it was found that Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) not only improved overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) but also created a safe working environment enabling workers to achieve goals working as a team, thus increasing morale in the enterprise.

Journal of Engineering Research and Reports, 2020

In this study, an extrusion process was studied in a cable manufacturing company located in South... more In this study, an extrusion process was studied in a cable manufacturing company located in Southeastern Nigeria. The critical-to-quality (CTQ) characteristic considered in the study was the cable diameter and the design effort was to reduce the possibilities of having cables with inconsistent dimensions. Taguchi Orthogonal Array Design L16 (4˄2) was used to achieve the optimum parameter settings after statistically investigating the assumed correlations between the process parameters in relation to cable dimension. Thereafter, an appropriate engineering tolerance interval for the improved process was designed to tighten the existing tolerance of the process from T±0.185 to T±0.032, thus reducing the engineering tolerance by 82.7% from the initial tolerance limit. After the process improvement, the Taguchi loss function approach was used to estimate cost attributed to deviations. The loss function estimation result has shown that the cost attributed to cable diameter deviations from...

An optimal maintenance strategy for improved cost and machine reliability in food manufacturing w... more An optimal maintenance strategy for improved cost and machine reliability in food manufacturing was developed in this study. Failure time parameters and cost data were obtained from a food manufacturing firm. The data obtained were applied to the mixed integer non-linear multi-objective optimization algorithm developed in this study, and solved using GANetXL. Overall, the developed optimal maintenance strategy provided better cost savings at N7, 349,397 than the current maintenance cost and machine reliability of the industrial case study at N9, 207,979. In general, the developed optimal strategy would serve as a practical tool for adoption by food manufacturing companies and other manufacturing sectors in order to achieve optimum levels of system reliability while maintaining minimum cost expenditure through an efficient maintenance schedule.

Advances in Research, 2018

Journal of Engineering Research and Reports, 2021

International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, 2020

Asian Journal of Advanced Research and Reports, 2021

Compromised Insulation thickness of a cable product is essentially linked to several quality prob... more Compromised Insulation thickness of a cable product is essentially linked to several quality problems ranging from energy leakage, electric shocks and increased chances of electrocution incidence, loss of customer goodwill, difficulty in product usage, material waste, etc. However, identifying the cause of this extrusion defect is a lengthy process due to complexities in extrusion coating processes and its economic effect is harsh on organization's financial bottom line. The extrusion complexities and the financial implications of compromised cable products require the need for a systematic decision approach in identifying vital defect causes for proper containment. A multi-criteria decision-making approach-AHP was deployed to solve similar real-life quality problems in cable manufacturing. With the aid of the decision technique, a hierarchy of decision was modeled and defect causes were properly identified and prioritized based on the members aggregated judgments on Insulation thickness failures. The technique has helped the case organization in having a deeper understanding of their process by guiding the interest of their improvement team towards vital defect warnings while acknowledging the possible influence of the trivial many.

Nkemakonam Igbokwe | Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka-Nigeria (original) (raw)

Papers by Nkemakonam Igbokwe

Conference Presentations by Nkemakonam Igbokwe