Development of Total Quality Management System in Seafood (Freezing) Industry in Kerala

Quality related problems have become dominant in the seafood processing industry in Kerala. This has resulted in the rejection of seafood sent from India to many destinations. The latest being the total block listing of seafood companies from India from being exported to Europe and partial block listing by the US. The quality systems prevailed in the seafood industry in India were outdated and no longer in use in the developed world. According to EC Directive discussed above all the seafood factories exporting to European countries have to adopt HACCP. Based on this, EIA has now made HACCP system mandatory in all the seafood processing factories in India. This transformation from a traditional product based inspection system to a process control system requires thorough changes in the various stages of production and quality management. This study is conducted by the author with to study the status of the existing infrastructure and quality control system in the seafood industry in Kerala with reference to the recent developments in the quality concepts in international markets and study the drawbacks, if any, of the existing quality management systems in force in the seafood factories in Kerala for introducing the mandatory HACCP concept. To assess the possibilities of introducing Total Quality Management system in the seafood industry in Kerala in order to effectively adopt the HACCP concept. This is also aimed at improving the quality of the products and productivity of the industry by sustaining the world markets in the long run.

Gap Analysis For Implementing Tqm In Seafood Exporting Firms

Gap analysis is a very useful tool for firms contemplating adoption of a new system. This paper envisages the use of the gap analysis tool as a precursor for Indian seafood exporting firms to adopt total quality management. Total quality management (TQM) is a management philosophy which strives to put quality at the forefront of all its decision-making, thereby satisfying customers. We therefore recommend that firms adopt the TQM system for better alignment of management goals. The gap analysis tool serves as a roadmap for TQM implementation, by showing the management where they actually are and where they want to be. The main gaps were found to be in the areas of usage of SPC tools (66.7%), benchmarking (65.6%), top management commitment (56.25%) and customer focus (48.1%).

A Reinforcement Learning Algorithm to Economic Dispatch Considering Transmission Losses

Reinforcement Learning (RL) refers to a class of learning algorithms in which learning system learns which action to take in different situations by using a scalar evaluation received from the environment on performing an action. RL has been successfully applied to many multi stage decision making problem (MDP) where in each stage the learning systems decides which action has to be taken. Economic Dispatch (ED) problem is an important scheduling problem in power systems, which decides the amount of generation to be allocated to each generating unit so that the total cost of generation is minimized without violating system constraints. In this paper we formulate economic dispatch problem as a multi stage decision making problem. In this paper, we also develop RL based algorithm to solve the ED problem. The performance of our algorithm is compared with other recent methods. The main advantage of our method is it can learn the schedule for all possible demands simultaneously.

Development of Safety and Quality Management System in Shrimp Farming

Shrimp Aquaculture has provided tremendous opportunity for the economic and social upliftment of rural communities in the coastal areas of our country Over a hundred thousand farmers, of whom about 90% belong to the small and marginal category, are engaged in shrimp farming. Penaeus monodon is the most predominant cultured species in India which is mainly exported to highly sophisticated, quality and safety conscious world markets. Food safety has been of concem to humankind since the dawn of history and the concern about food safety resulted in the evolution of a cost effective, food safety assurance method, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). Considering the major contribution of cultured Penaeus monodon to the total shrimp production and the economic losses encountered due to disease outbreak and also because traditional methods of quality control and end point inspection cannot guarantee the safety of our cultured seafood products, it is essential that science based preventive approaches like HACCP and Pre requisite Programmes (PRP) be implemented in our shrimp farming operations. PRP is considered as a support system which provides a solid foundation for HACCP. The safety of postlarvae (PL) supplied for brackish water shrimp farming has also become an issue of concern over the past few years. The quality and safety of hatchery produced seeds have been deteriorating and disease outbreaks have become very common in hatcheries. It is in this context that the necessity for following strict quarantine measures with standards and code of practices becomes significant. Though there were a lot of hue and cry on the need for extending the focus of seafood safety assurance from processing and exporting to the pre-harvest and hatchery rearing phases, an experimental move in this direction has been rare or nil. An integrated management system only can assure the effective control of the quality, hygiene and safety related issues. This study therefore aims at designing a safety and quality management system model for implementation in shrimp farming and hatchery operations by linking the concepts of HACCP and PRP.

Management of Newspaper Industry in Kerala with Special Reference to Marketing

The general objective of the study is to examine in depth the organisation and management practices of newspaper industry in Kerala with particular reference to the marketing aspects, with a View to suggesting measures for improving the economics and the managerial efficiency of the industry. The detailed investigation into the management aspects of the industry is done with particular reference to the two most popular Malayalam dailies in Kerala, namely, the Malayala Manorama and the Mathrubhumi. The purposeful selection of these two papers for the study is amply justified as these two dailies together account for about 80 percent of the total circulation of the newspapers in Kerala. Technically speaking, both these papers are owned by organisations registered as public limited companies and are, to a large extent professionally managed. The Malayala Manorama, though a public limited company in principle, functions, however, more or less as a private company or a family concern. These two papers therefore provide a scope for studying the management of newspaper industry practically under two different organisational set up, namely private limited company and public limited company The study has been divided into eight chapters. Chapter-I spells out an introduction about the newspaper industry and its unique features.Chapter-II, deals with a review of literature, objective, scope, methodology and limitations of the study. Chapter-III deals with origin, growth and status of newspaper industry. Chapter—IV examines the cost, revenue and profitability of the Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi. Chapter-V deals with the Organisation and Management. Chapter-VI examines the Marketing Management of Newspapers. Chapter-VII deals with the Marketing Strategy and Performance of Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi: An Assessment. Chapter-VIII presents the main findings of the study.