The effect of tool eccentricity on the joint strength in clinching process was investigated. The objective is to understand the mechanical behavior of the clinched joint where proper control on the alignment setting of tools can be considered. In this research, a clinching process to form a round joint was carried out by offsetting the centre line between the upper punch and lower die. The experimental results were compared between offset conditions. Coated mild steel sheet were used for the evaluation. It is found that the strength values by offset clinching exhibit variation in sinusoidal relationship with respect to the in-plane offset direction.

A computational technique of rigid-plastic finite element method by using the Eulerian meshing method was developed to deal with large deformation problem in metal forming by replacing the conventional way of applying complicated remeshing schemes when using the Lagrange’s elements. During metal forming process, a workpiece normally undergoes large deformation and causes severe distortion of elements in finite element analysis. The distorted element may lead to instability in numerical calculation and divergence of non-linear solution in finite element analysis. With Eulerian elements, the initial elements are generated to fix into a specified analytical region with particles implanted as markers to form the body of a workpiece. The particles are allowed to flow between the elements after each deformation step to show the deforming pattern of material. Four types of cold forging and sheet metal clinching were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the presented method. The proposed method is found to be effective by comparing the results on dimension of the final product, material flow behaviour and punch load versus stroke obtained from simulation and experiment.

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Manufacturing industries had embraced the trend of conceiving a robust manufacturing system and enhancing business performance with the implementation of Industry 4.0 digital technologies and lean manufacturing practices. Despite multiple studies being conducted to identify the correlation between Industry 4.0 digital technologies, lean manufacturing practices, and business performance, ambiguous and conflicting statements are often being debated among researchers. Hence, this study aims to provide empirical evidence gathered from Malaysian manufacturing industries using questionnaires to investigate and model their correlation and explore the mediating influence of Industry 4.0 digital technologies on lean manufacturing practices and business performance using PLS-SEM. Consequently, the findings from 124 respondents were compared with prior studies and revealed that both Lean Manufacturing Practices and Industry 4.0 Digital Technologies are positively correlated with one another, and they positively influence business performance, which findings are coherent with prior studies and fortifying the urgency of implementing both concepts for business performance enhancement. Moreover, this study successfully revealed that Industry 4.0 digital technologies mediate lean manufacturing practices and business performance proving the importance of Industry 4.0 to solving Lean’s limitation, which is not studied in prior studies. In addition, the framework in this study is more practical in providing appropriate theoretical and managerial insights for future action and works due to its medium predictive power associated. In a nutshell, this study effectively implies the substantial roles and reinforced the pragmatisms of implementing both lean manufacturing practices and Industry 4.0 digital technologies concurrently for business excellence.

In this study, A356 aluminum alloy was heated up to semi-solid state and used as a billet for forward and backward extrusion. The workpiece will undergo solidification at the contact between billet and the tools when the material flowing through the die cavity during the semi-solid extrusion. The plasticity of A356 with 0.3wt% Y at semi-solid state was investigated by performing compression test. A numerical simulation code based on thermo-viscoplastic finite element method was developed to simulate the material flow and study the yttrium-modified A356 aluminum alloy under forward and backward extrusion. A minimum average punch strain rate is proposed for semi-solid extrusion.