Modelling of vehicle fuel consumption and emissions has emerged as an effective tool to help develop and assess vehicle technologies and to help predict vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. A review to identify the current state-of-the-art on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions modelling is elucidated. This review categorises vehicle fuel consumption and emissions models into five classifications. The relevant main models to each of these classifications are presented. These models are then compared with regard to assumptions, limitations, merits, drawbacks, characteristic parameters, data collection techniques, accuracy, and relevance to road traffic. The study demonstrates that the trends of vehicle fuel consumption and emissions provided by current models generally do satisfactorily replicate field data trends. In addition, the paper demonstrates that mesoscopic models, empirical models, mean value-based models, and quasi dimensional models strike a balance between accuracy and simplicity and thus are very suitable for transportation and control applications. The study shows as well that no one model as yet fully meets the needs of transportation applications.

The lean production system has been successful in the cost-based winning order criterion markets. However, the automotive market has been volatile and the new criterion of winning orders has been availability, which has called for an agile system. The present paper argues that because of fierce competition the current automotive market winning order criterion is now a blend of cost and availability. It shows how a hybrid lean-agile system can strategically meet such a challenging criterion. The study presents the drivers, attributes and providers in lean manufacturing, agile manufacturing, and hybrid lean-agile manufacturing systems. It investigates how the strategic facet of the proposed hybrid lean-agile manufacturing system addresses the six manufacturing competitive dimensions. It presents as well the hybrid lean-agile manufacturing key performance indicators. The strategic facet of the proposed hybrid lean-agile manufacturing system has been validated through industrial case studies in automotive sector. A cost-benefit ratio qualitative analysis has been conducted on the proposed system and the benefits outweigh corresponding costs resulting in positive present value.

Climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions has led to new vehicle emissions standards which in turn have led to a call for vehicle technologies to meet these standards. Modeling of vehicle fuel consumption and emissions emerged as an effective tool to help in developing and assessing such technologies, to help in predicting aggregate vehicle fuel consumption and emissions, and to complement traffic simulation models. The paper identifies the current state of the art on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions modeling and its utilization to test the environmental impact of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)’ measures and to evaluate transportation network improvements. The study presents the relevant models to ITS in the key classifications of models in this research area. It demonstrates that the trends of vehicle fuel consumption and emissions provided by current models generally do satisfactorily replicate field data trends. It shows as well that microscopic modeling is the most accurate type of vehicle fuel consumption and emissions modeling and macroscopic modeling is most helpful in estimating aggregate emissions inventories. In addition, the paper demonstrates that mesoscopic models and empirical models strike a balance between accuracy and simplicity so that they are highly suitable for evaluating the environmental impact of the ITS’ measures and transportation network improvements. The study indicates that there is a significant impact of ITS measures on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions rates. It identifies as well the relation among transportation models, cold start excess emission modeling subcategories, and hot-stabilized emission models. The study concludes that no one model as yet fully meets the needs of ITS applications.

In order to strike a balance between cost and availability, the present study presents the strategic implementation of the hybrid lean-agile manufacturing system. The proposed implementation is based on literature review and statistical analysis. The study presents short term and long term proposed plans for implementing this newly developed system in a sustainable way. It shows how the strategic facet of the hybrid lean-agile manufacturing system addresses the key manufacturing competitive dimensions. The paper presents as well a cost-benefit analysis in comparison with the lean manufacturing system and agile manufacturing system based on the net present value. The study shows that the expectedly most efficient among the manufacturing systems is the Hybrid Lean-Agile Manufacturing System with normalized comparative improvement of about 58% and 42%, respectively. The study concludes through a statistical sample that about one third of the variation in successfully dealing with the sources of competitive advantage in automotive sector can be explained by adopting the strategic facet of the hybrid lean-agile manufacturing system. The study is limited to the automotive manufacturing sector. The paper would be of interest to the seekers for efficient manufacturing systems such as lean manufacturing practitioners and agile manufacturing practitioners.

In the Industry 4.0 environment, being sustainably competitive is essential in global markets. In an endeavor to optimize the added value in the design process of complex products such as robots, managing the development process of such products is studied. The present study identifies the level of product performance that yields maximum return on product development in Industry 4.0. The study also identifies and reviews the key approaches to understanding and managing the design process of such complex products. It has been found that the hybrid approach is the most efficient approach. The study proposes an approach to effectively manage risk in the product design process that hybridizes attributes of both the lean and agile design paradigms. The proposed approach has been validated using five case studies with 99% level of statistical confidence. The results of this study enable efficient development of complex products such as robotic systems towards realizing sustainable competitiveness.