Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative Production Management Towards Sustainable Growth

The paper studies the role of co-orientation, i.e., the alignment of attitudes and activities, in the development of collaborative business processes and how a facilitator can support the emergence of co-orientation and the organizing of collaboration. The development of collaborative business processes is seen as a communicative process of collaborative organizing. Conversations in a co-creative workshop are analyzed to understand the process. The paper sheds light on communication tactics that a facilitator can employ to enable collaborative organizing of inter-organizational business processes towards sustainability.

This paper increases scientific knowledge about developmental interventions in inter-organizational processes by applying coordination theory. The interventions interfere intentionally with the process they aim to develop, reveal interdependencies between the participants, and coordinate their interaction for knowledge creation. The three elements of the developmental intervention are: (1) the participants from the different organizations, (2) the boundary objects that represent the inter-organizational business process, (3) the external facilitator, responsible for designing the other two elements, and for establishing among the participants the knowledge-creating conversational interaction mediated by boundary objects. In a successful intervention, the facilitator and the participants co-develop the necessary coordination mechanisms to support the knowledge co-creation of the participants from the different companies towards the common goal, i.e. the shared knowledge about the inter-organizational process.

Today, smart manufacturing systems (SMS) are being developed to improve manufacturing competitiveness. Digital manufacturing (DM) is a technology that supports the carrying-out of tasks and decision-making based on digital models and simulation in a virtual environment, without physical prototypes or experiments. A DM system helps in the design and redesign and analysis of a factory, sustainably and efficiently, to optimize its performance in an SMS. In this paper, the contributions of DM systems in SMS and the application barriers of DM systems are described. A real case that has been developed to overcome the barriers is introduced. Finally, future directions of DM systems in SMS are discussed.

Service-oriented manufacturing systems need to be supported by formal reference models for effective service description, discovery, and composition. A reference model should evolve continuously throughout its lifecycle to respond to changing requirements. The objective of this work is to propose a formal process for collaborative and community-based reference-model evolution and identify the computational components required for effective model evolution. The main steps of the proposed process include service registration, vocabulary extraction, evolution triggering, change evaluation and approval, and change implementation. An important feature of the proposed process is the use of a Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) thesaurus for the initial stages of knowledge elicitation and organization.

Production planning is carried out at the enterprise, operation, and process levels. Although production plans at higher levels constrain those at the lower levels, the processes for generating those plans are typically not well integrated in practice. Because of that, the schedules at lower levels may not accurately reflect what was planned at the higher levels while the plans at the high level may not be based on prevailing conditions at the lower levels. Simulation models that evaluate the performance of a production plan also need to be integrated with production management systems. This paper provides a background to integration problems associated with simulation-based multi-level production planning by exploring current practices, standards, and tools. We lay a foundation for a standards-based simulation for integrated production planning.

Engineering of systems is highly influenced by rapid technological changes, such as the emergence of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). These are interconnected embedded systems enabled by human-machine interaction. Realisation of CPS require a collaboration between mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science since different components are delivered and developed by different disciplines. Consequently, the Requirements Engineering (RE) process needs to consider multi-disciplinary perspectives. The objective of this paper is to elaborate the specific challenges of RE for CPS in a distributed environment and to identify knowledge sources and targets in CPS engineering. It describes the relevant types of knowledge and defines appropriate exchange mechanisms and standards.

New approaches and technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and Big Data are giving rise to another industrial revolution. We propose here an implementation of an industrial gateway architecture adopting the idea of IoT, intelligent methods, Machine-to-Machine and Cyber-Physical Systems. The proposed gateway creates a virtual representation of the physical world scanning the technological layer’s devices in real time. It creates a uniform communication interface for the heterogeneous technological layer, enables self-management of devices, diagnostics and self-reconfiguration to improve Quality of Service aided with cloud SCADA and MES services. We have tested the proposed gateway in an experimental setup with a programmable logic controller.

Production companies are required to notice the importance of the paradigm shift from “use value” into “value in use” about their products and services. Value co-creative activity between the producers and consumers is essential to realise the paradigm shift in practical business case. The IoT(Internet of Things) is a powerful infrastructure to digitalise and increase the integration of vertical and horizontal value chains in the business process. We propose a value co-creative production system model under IoT environment with an innovative “Thinking factory” concept. Our current target is the rubber industry which is required to provide tailor-made products as human-machine delicate interface.

Smart Manufacturing Systems have the ability to adapt to rapidly changing requirements. Software components of the manufacturing system—services under Service Oriented Architecture—must be configured dynamically to meet such requirements. Currently, software vendors provide packaged services, so they are not easily reconfigurable. Thus, engineers or production managers face difficulty in composing services with the appropriate functionality and quality. The objective of this paper is to discuss high-level requirements for such a unit service concept and provide an initial use case to illustrate how the unit service concept may apply new technologies to improve service. We propose a decomposition of target service according to standard model, and we claim the limitations of decomposed unit services, and new technologies and opportunities for each decomposed services.

Presented in this paper is a framework of a simulation-based ‘smart’ operation management system (OMS) for semiconductor manufacturing. Also described are changes in the semiconductor market environment and key modules in the smart OMS. The proposed smart OMS is being implemented for a couple of IC chip makers in Korea.

The performance of the supply chains is highly linked with the quality of relationship between partners. Web portals are more and more used for facilitating this relationship, but the consequences of their implementation on real cases are still seldom analysed. Such analysis is provided in this communication, highlighting the interest but also the problems of supplier portals thanks to a questionnaire filled by more than 130 suppliers of a large company.

National competitiveness in the manufacturing sector requires continuous investments in innovation, research, and education. Swedish manufacturing industry have joined forces with universities and research institutes to initiate Produktion2030, a successful public-private-partnership research and innovation programme. In this programme, industry is at the helm, to strengthen sustainable production and to increase investments towards advanced manufacturing in Sweden.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate linkage between delivery frequency and food waste of chilled products by testing the hypothesis – the higher the delivery frequency, the lower the food waste. Multiple case studies have been used to test the hypothesis. Food waste ratios of five product groups have been compared in three delivery frequency scenarios, namely low delivery frequency, medium delivery frequency and high delivery frequency scenario. Moreover, food waste ratios of different product groups have been compared to each other within each delivery frequency scenario. The findings show a strong negative correlation between delivery frequency and the food waste ratio for each investigated product group, which supports the hypothesis. On the other hand, food waste ratios among different product groups within the same delivery frequency scenarios vary significantly.

The Japanese manufacturing industry has sought to increase its international competitiveness by developing higher value-added products. Simultaneously, R&D that exploits external resources – as typified by open innovation – is also taking hold.

Although collaborative product development research between public research institutions and private-sector companies is widely conducted, there are many instances when the results are not achieved due to differing perceptions of the partnership. Under such conditions, especially when the research is publically funded, methods for better managing the projects are being sought at the policy level. Using examples of publically funded industry-academia collaborative projects, this paper considers efficient management methods for projects aimed at such development.

The research focuses on changes to the collaborative research system used in partnership projects and shows that it is more effective to conduct collaborative research that incorporates other companies as needed, without fixating on the original make-up of the collaborative system at the start.

Additive manufacturing is heralded as a revolutionary process technology. While it has yet to cause a dramatic transformation of the manufacturing system, there are early signs of how the characteristics of this novel production process can improve resource efficiency and other sustainability aspects. In this paper, we draw on examples from a wide range of products and industries to understand the role of additive manufacturing in sustainable industrial systems. We identify four main areas in which the adoption of additive manufacturing is leading to improved resource efficiency: (1) product and process design; (2) material input processing; (3) make-to-order product and component manufacturing; and (4) closing the loop.

Additive manufacturing is shifting business models towards mass customisation and responsible production paradigms. Such a technology is fostering re-localisation and value-added approaches in order to increase customer involvement into a more flexible and sustainable production process. This paper provides both theoretical tools and case studies to frame the additive manufacturing realm and the distributed fabrication background.

With an ever growing diffusion of Additive Manufacturing (AM) system in industrial and commercial level, as well as the direct and indirect dynamics which are being introduced resulting from its inclusion as a possible production technology on companies’ portfolio, the need to reconfigure production system and adapt the production strategy becomes even more relevant than before. There are several studies which have emphasized on the importance of a paradigm shift in order to exploit advantages of AM, not only considering changes within design and functionality of the product, but also concerning AM’s impact on the entire value chain (re)configuration. Thus, it is of crucial importance to take into consideration that for this shift to be feasible and manageable, there is a need to include both technical and managerial aspects of manufacturing. This work proposes an economic insight in order to provide a guideline for the proper evaluation of AM system implementation.

Advanced manufacturing technologies are changing how and where goods are produced, with established organisational practices and value chains being disrupted by the adoption of these technologies. The 3DP-RDM network has been created to explore the changes caused by such technologies, focusing on the emergence of 3D printing and the effects it is having on the re-distribution of manufacturing. This paper reports on the first activities of this network, describing the process used in a multi-disciplinary scoping workshop and the selection criteria for the feasibility study competition, and how these help to achieve the network achieve its objective of defining the research agenda for 3D printing-enabled re-distributed manufacturing.

A major driver of planning complexity in dynamically changing ETO shipbuilding is design uncertainty far into the design planning and production processes. This leads to uncertainty in task and project completion time, and complex dependencies and correlations driven by the uncertainty in multiple task parameters. The problem is difficult to be solved exactly, and decision-making is largely based on experience and gut feeling, with subsequent behavioral challenges. We build a mockup stochastic program to draw attention to- and analyze the complexity of formulating and solving the engineering design planning problem. We demonstrate how design uncertainty is affecting the planning complexity and solutions.

Global trade is steadily increasing and among the vast amount of traded goods are not only standardized cargo but also a selection of large and bulky heavy loads. Heavy loads often require special attention when it comes to identifying suitable shipping and loading means within logistic processes. In this paper the challenges of heavy load logistics are identified and discussed. Whereas the main goal of the paper is to highlight the challenges and problems in this domain, a possible solution approach within the Design for X framework is introduced briefly.

Norway’s shipyards have combined with a large network of maritime suppliers to become world-leading builders of offshore vessels for the oil and gas industry. This study analyzes a Norwegian shipyard and two of its suppliers in order to explore how such relationships are and should be managed. The paper presents an exploratory case study that mainly used qualitative data. The findings indicate that, by following the principles of the inter-organizational theories, the companies will reduce risks and create incentives for better performance. Implementing a real-time information sharing system between the buyer and supplier would improve both operational and managerial performance. The study also suggests that increasing value creation by leveraging the capabilities of the supply network and early involvement of suppliers will have the potential to increase this. Based on the discussion in this study, a performance measurement system for buyer-supplier relationships was developed.

Recently, the interest in the phenomenon of backsourcing has increased, which has been inspired by awareness of the real costs of global outsourcing and the importance of keeping manufacturing in-house or in geographical proximity. However, backsourcing research is still in its infancy. In particular, this strategy requires a successful knowledge re-integration process when organizations employ backsourcing as their new sourcing strategy, which is addressed in this paper. To expand the understanding of backsourcing, a literature review of this phenomenon is given, and based on findings from a case company in the Norwegian shipbuilding industry, we present critical success factors for knowledge re-integration when bringing manufacturing back in-house.

The purchasing function is assuming an increasingly relevant role within companies in the last decades, taking over the main responsibility for the costs of goods purchased as well as for supplier management. Its relevancy is due to the fact that purchasing can contribute to develop competitive advantages by aligning its strategy to the business strategy. Purchasing strategy is usually deployed per (purchasing) category and operationally executed in the so called tactical purchasing process. One key step is the negotiation/bidding where there is a lack of empirical research regarding the application of game theory. This paper contributes by discussing how game theory can be systematically utilised for designing negotiations (i.e. games) and getting more efficient results –by presenting an empirical study on automotive sector company, specifically on a bidding process for constructing a new production facility in Mexico.

Companies seeking to implement lean practices in engineer-to-order environments experience major difficulties due to a high degree of non-standard products and non-repetitive processes. Current lean methods need to be further developed to be more efficiently applied in manufacturing environments with high variety and complexity. This paper presents a new approach for value stream mapping adapted to engineer-to-order production systems. The approach combines the classic value stream mapping approach with recent works dealing with lean methods in high mix and complex production systems. Also, it proposes a stronger focus on the choice of location of the customer order decoupling point compared to previous research.

Ship design and construction involves numerous activities that have to be effectively performed, coordinated and integrated. Various elements can influence the effectiveness of the process due to projects’ large number of stakeholders and the high level of uncertainty. One of the most challenging issues is the delay in product delivery. However, the elements which might result to delay do not develop overnight and there might be early warning signals addressing that the delay, is likely to happen. This paper discusses that by following an early warning procedure, it will be possible to identify possible early warning signs of potential problems which might cause delay. These signs can provide an aid for the project team to take actions before the problem reaches its full impact, thus delaying the project delivery.

Increasing competition and fast innovation take up new challenges for engineer-to-order (ETO) companies to address special requests from customers without losing efficiency. The optimization of the trade-off between customization and operational efficiency is a core competence for ETO manufacturers. Most advanced companies are reacting by introducing an ETO Enabling Process, which is the process of transforming special requests alongside the ETO value chain into know-how to be subsequently reused with a gain in productivity. This paper, therefore, presents relevant best practices implemented within a research project with three ETO companies while adapting the ETO Enabling Process to their specific organizational settings.

Shipbuilding industry in Norway, mainly operating in the Engineer-to-order environment, is one of the most innovative in the world in terms of technology and production methods. In this paper we investigate the applicability of the concept of remanufacturing in the shipbuilding industry. The research takes a case study approach to study the topic and also presents an overview of the existing literature on remanufacturing and its benefits for businesses and environment. A five stage framework is proposed for integrating the concept of remanufacturing into the strategic decision making process in shipbuilding companies. This framework would streamline the decision making process of shipbuilding companies entering the vessel remanufacturing business.

Engineered-to-order (ETO) networks are dynamic and hard to define, and their planning and control functionalities are commonly affected by the actions of suppliers and customers. Frequently, projects experience delays, budget overruns, and quality defects. Consequently, there is a need for project management that synchronizes engineering and production processes throughout the network.

The aim of this study is to develop a project planning maturity model (MMPP) in order to improve project performance in ETO manufacturing networks. Moreover, a multiple case study approach is used to test the applicability of the developed maturity model. The results of the case studies from three ETO case companies show that there is (1) no or low degree of standardization of the planning processes, and (2) there is little or no integration between engineering and production planning processes.

There is generally agreed that lean pull production principles like Kanban, ConWIP or takt time are successful tools within repetitive production where with one-piece flow, where each job produces exactly what the next job needs, when it is needed and with no inventory in between the stations. To our knowledge, very little research is done on implementation of these concepts within Engineer-to-Order (ETO) environment. This paper presents a case study on implementing the three principles within a Norwegian company that builds complex and highly customized vessels for the offshore industry.

Researchers have recognized engineering changes affecting operations as a major obstacle to the delivery of the product in ETO environment. However, there is little academic literature addressing sources of engineering changes that affect materials management throughout the order fulfillment process in an ETO environment. The key research question addressed in this paper is how the substantive sources of engineering changes impact materials in ETO environment can be identified and categorized. Due to the nature of different supply chain configurations different engineering change situations exists within and across these companies.

In this study we aim to understand how performance indicators should be designed and implemented across various phases and levels in materials management in the order fulfilment process under engineering changes. The paper address questions such as how can such systems help managers to handle and manage materials management under engineering change situations? How do we convince potential users and obtain their support when starting to develop such a system? How can we aggregate performance indicators? How do we present results? Then using the literature review and the results of the empirical study from a Norwegian company operating in ETO product delivery strategy, we develop a framework.

There are numerous different bottleneck detection methods both in academia and in industry. However, most do not take the shifting of bottlenecks into account. This paper compares a number of methods, namely methods based on cycle times and utilizations, waiting times and queue lengths, the arrow method, the turning point method, the active period method, and the bottleneck walk. All methods are tested against two different manufacturing systems, a pseudo static system consisting of a static system that changes once halfway through the production run and is designed to have shifting bottlenecks, and a dynamic system that includes variations for a multitude of different processes.

Modern lean production systems most often use a pull-based production control, usually implemented as kanban or CONWIP. The material flow in pull systems is managed using both FIFO lanes and supermarkets as inventories, which are well described in academic literature. However, there is so far little guidance as for when to use a supermarket and when to use a FIFO lane. This paper aims to provide an exhaustive list of considerations regarding the selection of a supermarket or FIFO lane between processes. While the detailed decisions depend on the particularities of the system, a number of general recommendations and considerations can be made. To the best knowledge of the authors, no such effort has been undertaken before, and we believe that this summary of considerations is long overdue and of immense value for the practitioner.

The side negative effects of Lean Management implementations are well known among practitioners. Recently they became a subject of systematic research. This paper presents conclusions from a causal analysis of the unlikely results, which were identified along case studies. The research was conducted in the machine building industries in EU. The insights from interviews and expert-panels were systemized by cause-and-effect models, thus suggesting the root causes of the negative effects. The synthetized results are considered herein as an input for constructing a method for multi-perspective assessment, to enable better planning and control of the Lean Management implementations.

This paper investigates planned and side effects from Lean Management implementations. Case studies from machine building industries in Europe were used as an empirical base. The focus of presented research is to provide a relevant data, that could help to explain, why the side negative effects of Lean Management implementations take place. The empirical evidence presented herein with regard to the issue, is wider than in any available publication. Also the way of analyzing effects in this paper goes beyond the existing literature.

Supply chain risk management is becoming increasingly necessary due to large-scale disasters. However, there is a trade-off between the long-term benefits of a supply chain and the disruption mitigation costs. Therefore, it is difficult to justify the high cost of risk countermeasures against such rare disruptions. Previous studies have discussed reducing risk in terms of mitigation and responsiveness to disruption events; however, many companies maintain low inventories and a single source supplier represented by just-in-time or lean manufacturing. Through interviews, we found that in addition to providing long-term benefits, maintaining low inventory can increase the efficiency of recovery activities. This study clarifies the effectiveness of a buffer inventory while considering risk mitigation and responsiveness by creating an evaluation model. A simulation model is used to determine the relationship between disruption time and buffer inventory.

Although lean popularity is rapidly growing, its implementation is far from problem free and companies may experience difficulties sustaining long term success. In this paper, it is argued that the human behaviour, affected by the implementation of both hard (defined as technical and analytical tools) and soft lean practices (concerning people and relations), plays a key role in achieving long-term superior performance. Through a single case research, the relationships between lean practices implementation, human behaviour and operational performance are explored. From the analysis a new construct emerged, namely “Individual characteristics”. As a result, an alternative research model for further statistical testing including individual behaviour as mediating variable and individual characteristics as moderating variable has been built.

This study extends a single-model assembly line balancing problem to an integrated mixed-model assembly line balancing problem by incorporating unskilled temporary workers, who enhance productivity. An integer program that minimizes the sum of total workstation costs and salaries of skilled permanent and unskilled temporary workers within a specific cycle time is developed. The proposed models is based on particular features of a real-world problem including simultaneous assignments of skilled permanent and unskilled temporary workers as well as precedence restrictions for the tasks.

Managing the continuous growth of modern-day IT developments and its transformation consequences in manufacturing and service organizations is arduous. It burdens organizations and supply chain management. For decades, supply chain managers have outsourced their non-specialized IT activities to third-parties. Competition compels organizations to look for ever more effective services from their suppliers. Solely outsourcing IT activities is no longer sufficient. Monitoring and optimization has become decisive. Lean, a successful philosophy to pursue continuous improvement, is extending its contributions from manufacturing and services to IT processes. This paper explores the success factors for the implementation of Lean in IT outsourcing relationships. It aids managers in designing a dashboard to optimize and monitor the implementation of Lean in IT outsourcing relationships. The causal-relationships among success factors in the context of a system, based on multiple case studies, is decoded through a causal-loop diagram and sensitivity analysis inspired by the system dynamics methodology.

Clean Energy Vehicles (CEVs) are gradually growing in popularity worldwide due to environmental characteristics. However, they are slowly attracting attention in the world due to high prices and infrastructural constraints. Over the past century there has been a dramatic increase in usage of energy, especially in the transportation industry. The purpose of this study is to analyse the development of the CEVs market in Poland while considering economic and energy security issues. The objective of the study is to create a future scenario of automotive portfolio in 2030 that will sustain energy security. The first step is to qualitatively investigate the problem by carrying out interviews with the pundits. The second step is a quantitative analysis. This study adopts an optimization technique to uncover an optimal portfolio of the CEVs and focus on Polish market.

The introduction of clean energy vehicles (CEVs) is one of the measures expected to be employed against global warming. Because the structures of CEV parts are different from those of gasoline vehicles, the popularization of each CEV type has two different types of impacts: economic and environmental. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the optimal mix of CEVs before deciding upon a policy for the introduction of CEVs. However, most conventional studies do not consider the economic effects on industries. This paper proposes a new optimization model considering the production-induced effects as well as environmental impacts. The model is applied to estimate the impacts on the portfolio of CEVs in 2030 in Japan.

Cloud Manufacturing is considered to be one of the paradigms that could revolutionize the way manufacturing has been realized in the industrial sector. Cloud Manufacturing services could be applied in most sectors of manufacturing since services can get integrated in the existing workflows. However, one of the most challenging while also most promising aspect is the reinterpretation of workflows and the creation of new workflows which could lead to more cost effective operations in the manufacturing industry. In this paper a framework for the optimization of cutting conditions in machining as part of a Cloud Manufacturing environment is presented. The aim of the framework is to provide users with an easier to use, cost efficient and well-informed solution that promotes sustainability in workshops. The main challenges, drivers and limitations in creating such an environment are discussed.

The intelligent sense of equipment is a key link in cloud manufacturing. Identical fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) have a flexible multiplexing number and are unaffected by the laser’s bandwidth. A distributed identical grating system oriented to cloud manufacturing equipment’s intelligent sense is developed by combining wavelength tunable laser and broadband laser source in this paper. The system collects the reflect spectroscopy to calculate the center wavelength of each FBG by Gaussian fitting. Some optimization is also done to the Gaussian fitting algorithm to increase the demodulation speed in this paper. In the system, 100 reflective FBGs of only 0.1 % reflection with the interval space of 5 m are connected to a long fiber. All the central wavelengths and positions of the FBGs can be measured. The results show that the linearity of the center wavelength with temperature is up to 99.8 % in range of −10 °C to 60 °C.

Living a “low-carbon” life has been widely recognized and is gradually adopted by the public. Such a trend becomes one of the main drivers for manufacturing innovations. Meanwhile, to meet the emerging requirements, such as providing highly customized product, building flexible and collaborative production, cloud manufacturing is proposed in recent years. A close examination of its environmental benefits is needed. In this paper, resource utilization is focused. In the architecture of cloud manufacturing, energy consumption is analyzed and re-evaluated systematically, including energy characteristics, added energy segments and required functions. Three key merits are identified, better resource integration and optimization, higher resource utility rate, and facilitated knowledge sharing mechanism. However, these improvements can be cancelled in an energy-unattended cloud manufacturing system, for example, ignorance of energy data or inadequate energy models. A framework is then designed for performing energy analysis in a cloud environment. Conclusions are given at the end.

Nowadays, the sustainable manufacturing capability of manufacturing devices has attracted more and more attention from academia and industry, in order to coordinate the conflicts between serious environmental impacts and economic benefits. As one kind of advanced manufacturing devices with intelligence, the industrial robot (IR) is an important driving force to make the production activities more efficient, safe and sustainable. A unified sustainable manufacturing capability model for representing IR systems in cloud manufacturing based on ontology was proposed in this paper, so as to solve the description problems in terms of the various capabilities of IR systems, and also to facilitate the factories to effectively manage the IR systems’ manufacturing activities during the whole production life-cycle. The case study and its implementation show the developed ontology model is suitable for all types of IR systems, and can comprehensively reflects their sustainable manufacturing capabilities in real-time.

Sustainability has been attracted extensive attention in manufacturing industry for the increasing excessive resource consumption and serious environmental pollution. The assessment of sustainable manufacturing capability is a vital factor, especially in cloud manufacturing, in which the capability assessment of the manufacturing resources is the premise of selecting the optimal manufacturing services. While the CNC machining tools are the basic manufacturing resources in production process, so the dynamic assessment of their sustainable manufacturing capabilities is investigated in this paper. A set of indicators is established considering manufacturing sustainability and a new dynamic assessment model is proposed based on a modified “vertical and horizontal” method. The model is verified through a case study and it can comprehensively evaluate the capability performance of the CNC machining systems, and also effectively follow the dynamics of their production activities.

In today’s knowledge economy, intangible knowledge assets have become the key drivers of organisational success. Protection of intellectual properties for all parties is a challenging issue in cloud manufacturing environment. This paper focuses on the protection of intellectual property in the cloud manufacturing environment. Several strategies for protecting intellectual properties are proposed in this paper. In addition, a privacy enhanced business interaction mechanism is presented. Furthermore, this paper discusses some practical technologies in the cloud context.

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a novel business paradigm with resource service (RS) sharing being one of the most important purposes. From the perspective of enterprise business interactions, how to achieve full RS sharing is an important research issue in CMfg as it plays a critical role in enhancing the performance and efficiency of a CMfg system. However, the research on CMfg RS sharing is challenged by the complexity of a CMfg system, mainly coming from the vast number of involved enterprises and their complex business interactions. In this paper, we propose a modeling framework for CMfg RS sharing by regarding a CMfg system as a complex system and elaborating the problem from the perspective of complex systems modeling and simulation. We summarize systematically the factors that need to be considered for building a system of CMfg RS sharing, which is followed by the modeling procedure.

In today’s competitive market, OKP companies operate in the “engineer-to-order” business mode, whereby analysing the “voice of customer” promptly and accurately in the early design stage determines the success of product development. However, OKP companies have limited resources. They may not be able to afford the cost of the complicated Quality Function Deployment (QFD) product planning process, nor can they obtain abundant CRs information effectively in traditional internet-based environment. This paper proposes a QFD-based approach in the cloud manufacturing (CMfg) environment to enhance OKP companies’ product planning process. CMfg (a newly emerged manufacturing paradigm) utilizes advanced information technologies and business mode, which may provide sufficient and cost-effective resources to OKP companies. The interaction process among different cloud service roles is introduced in detail, which contains six main parts: pre-process, identify CRs, competitive marketing analysis, determine final importance ratings, mapping CRs to engineering characteristics (ECs), and customer-centric decision making.

With the widely use of smart sensor devices in the product lifecycle management (PLM), it creates amount of real-time and muti-source lifecycle big data. These data allow decision makers to make better-informed PLM decisions. In this article, an overview framework of big data based analysis for product lifecycle (BDA-PL) was presented to provide a new paradigm by extending the techniques of Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analysis to manufacturing field. Under this framework, the real-time lifecycle data of products can be active perception and collection. Considering the challenges of processing the lifecycle big data into useful information and exchange it among various lifecycle phase, a graphical model of big data mining was designed to achieve knowledge discovery. Finally, a case has been used to illustrate the proof-of-concept application of the proposed BDA-PL.

For Configure-to-Order manufacturing firms, Product Configuration System (PCS) is one of a key components. PCS has been introduced for decades and its technology has matured, providing the industry with a set of usability standards and best practices. However, even the state-of-the-art PCS performs poorly in terms of connectivity, customisation freedom management and implementation. In this regard, this paper first reviews the impact of manufacturing paradigms on product customisation and take Cloud Manufacturing, a nascent manufacturing model, as a disruptive technology to surmount existing obstacles. Then, a general architecture of PCS for Cloud Manufacturing (CM-based PCS) is proposed to conduct configuration reasoning based on cloud-sourced configuration knowledge, to diversify configurable options by introducing proper Cloud Manufacturing services and to fulfil configuration orders through a cloud-based design and manufacturing platform.

Modern production industry calls for a new generation of production systems. As a novel information technology, Cloud provides new service models and business opportunities to manufacturing industry. In this research, a Cloud-based manufacturing system is developed to support distributed production management. Recent Cloud manufacturing approaches are reviewed. The Cloud-based production management and localisation mechanisms are proposed and evaluated during case study. It is shown that the Cloud-based manufacturing system is capable of supporting distributed and customised production services and managements.

It is inevitable that the dynamic is occurs in the operation of the production logistics (PL). Production logistics synchronization (PLS) can solve the dynamic of production logistics operation process by collaboration the both or among of the production, shipping and storage. Cloud manufacturing mode can quickly respond to the shortage of resources in the production logistics operation process, and provide cheap cloud resource services, such as cloud forklift. This paper is aimed at the problem for the dynamic of production logistics operation, and the dynamic of production logistics is classified. The PLS mechanism and cloud-based PLS information framework are established. By using collaboration optimization (CO) method, the optimization method of PLS is put forward. Finally, the PLS optimization model of production and storage is presented with an industrial case, and the effectiveness is also demonstrated and analyzed.

Semantic technologies are recognized as crucial in those domains, which intensively exploit information and communication technologies (ICT) and automation technologies (AT). Ontology engineering means can facilitate new functionalities, organizational structures and processes. Intra- and inter-organizational integration of different layers, functions, domains and processes may be simplified or enabled. Knowledge-driven solutions can be also facilitated. This paper investigates functional aspects of ontology-aided manufacturing and supply chain management by a literature review. The purpose is to assess potential for further research and to suggest its future key directions, aiming at novel solutions in terms of structures, controls, processes and functionalities.

This paper takes closer look at inner structure of an

eScop

RTU device, a highly configurable PLC-like embedded device developed in Node.js environment for low level physical layer of Intelligent Manufacturing Systems.

The paper illustrates a production systems ontology that models the discrete manufacturing, process production and the logistics domains. This ontology is used to allow semantic interoperability within a control architecture based on semantically-enriched Web Services that has been developed within the European funded project eScop. This architecture would facilitate the responsiveness and agility of the manufacturing companies, helping them to be more competitive thanks to the higher flexibility and re-configurability of their production systems.

This paper proposes a method of evaluation of novel technologies, like ontology engineering based solutions, in conditions when a paradigm based on the balance of economy, society and environment is adopted. The evaluation applies a holistic approach. The proposed method is based on the idea of integrated efficiency evaluation of technical and organizational projects. Its key elements are the assessment measures and the management control procedures.

Ontologies attract growing interest as a mean for semantic integration of knowledge, applications, models and systems. This particularly applies to the ICT and automation intensive industries. The paper discusses possible novel ontology-aided solutions for managing manufacturing and logistics operations, which result from a foresight research of industries. The professionals from European companies along semi-structured interviewing and brainstorming provided a range of suggestions, mostly in terms of functional requirements. Some novel solutions have been derived and conceptualized this way.

In the event of a machine fault, feasible machine changes have to be reviewed by the operation scheduling and dispatching to avoid remarkable delays. In this approach, this is achieved by an automated identification of alternative machine tools and a reliable validation. First, a capable machine that satisfies the requirements of the NC program is searched within an ontology. Therefore, the ontology contains a description of all relevant characteristics of specific machine tools and expert rules to derive provided capabilities. Second, the NC program is validated on a virtual machine tool to ensure its accuracy.

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are a bridge between the enterprise solutions and factory shop floors. MES allows the performance of contemporary factories by closer integration of the needs of enterprise stakeholders with the actual manufacturing hardware and software components. Considering different nature of the factories the application of MES has significant difference across industry. Such constrain requires a sophisticated solutions to contain the generality of application. Most of currently available solutions are proprietary and tightly coupled to the ecosystem of devices and enterprise resource planning systems. In current paper the architecture for the open, knowledge-driven MES is discussed. Authors argue that such MES will provide smart extensibility based on base-of-breed approach and hence will improve the quality of MES application, while reducing the introduction costs and system downtime due to reconfiguration.

Agility and fast reaction to changes is required in today’s turbulent manufacturing environment. Unfortunately, the commonly used user interfaces (UIs) on the factory floor don’t support such rapid reaction. Even though the human involvement improves agility and reactivity of production systems, it is also a source of uncertainty, especially when it comes to information inputting. Therefore, specific attention should be placed on human-friendly UI design, in order to improve the reliability of collected data and productivity of operations, as well as to make the workplaces more attractive for the future operators. This paper gives generic guidelines for human-friendly UI design and represents a case study in the context of manufacturing IT-system design.

Talented workforce is one of the main strengths in Europe to overcome the economic crisis and address the challenges ahead. The most valuable knowledge the employees have, is tacit and, therefore, hard to utilize in the companies. This paper presents two alternative facilitation methods to capture tacit knowledge related to the manufacturing process, thus allowing the employees participate in activities developing the manufacturing process and the development of positive company culture. The first method focuses on operational tacit knowledge, and the latter method extracts the production related tacit knowledge from the project members. Both of the methods use facilitation to guide the employees through the experience-based learning process and provide support for information and knowledge sharing.

Sustainable manufacturing has been focus of the industry for some time. Due to the holistic nature of sustainability not only the manufacturing processes but the whole life cycle and the environmental, economic and social aspects of the product should be taken in to account. In order to leverage from the concept of sustainability it is necessary to involve it in decision making process in the supply chain. It is essential to have an evaluation procedure so as to involve it in decision making which should be capable of assessing economic, environmental and social performance of the product. Unfortunately the social dimension of sustainability is the least developed and even neglected because it is difficult to evaluate due to its quantitative and subjective nature. The social aspects of holistic life cycle approach will be presented in this paper.

Human-centricity in manufacturing is becoming an essential enabler to achieve social sustainable manufacturing. In particular, human-centric automation can offer new means to increase competitiveness in the face of new social challenges for the factories of the future. This paper proposes a Human-Centred Reference Architecture that can structure and guide efforts to engineer Next Generation Balanced Automation Systems featuring adaptive automation that take into account various criteria in the operating environment such as time-lapse, performance degradation, age-, disability- and inexperience-related limitations of operators to increase their working capabilities.

Our understanding of the interplay between product-services and social sustainability is still very limited. This paper sheds light on the interconnections between social sustainability and product-services throughout their life-cycle, and identifies a set of common topics and practices to be investigated by experts of Advances in Production Management Systems. In doing so, the paper sets the stage for future efforts aimed at exploiting the opportunities identified and exploring new synergies between product-services and social sustainability.

The adoption of advanced manufacturing intelligence technologies offers opportunities for new profitable business models. The basis for this is the data that is related to the manufactured product, the physical components used for the manufacturing and the services that are applied in this context. In such a Product-Service System (PSS) there are several interactions and corresponding dependencies between physical products and services that have to be managed to obtain an optimal added value from the PSS. A first step is to make the informational interactions between Product and Service Lifecycle Management (PLM and SLM) transparent and visualize them. The objective of this paper is therefore to identify and visualize the interactions between SLM and PLM in general and as a subsequent step in a use case of a manufacturing enterprise.

This paper examines the social implications of introducing a new technology into the product-service system (PSS) of electronic waste management (EWM). Using a previously established set of social sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) targeting the operations level (i.e. impacts on EWM operators), social implications are examined in a case where a specific innovative new technology is introduced to replace manual sorting of e-waste into re-use, refurbish and recycle fractions. The social sustainability KPIs were applied to the case as a structured interview guide. The results showed that the KPI framework provided a good basis for examining the social impacts and also stimulated discussions about potential business impacts based on the human resources in the system. The framework showed that the implementation supported proactive social sustainability, but some additional conditions need to be addressed by the customer organization to make sure that potential risks (identified in the interview) are mitigated.

Recently, industries have shifted their focus on the combined ecosystem of products-services. The innovative business strategy of PSS provides an integrated solution that gives the potential for sustainability gains for both company and customer. Similarly to other business aspects, the PSS efficiency design is evaluated through performance indicators, during the phase of concept evaluation, which is the last phase before launching a product-service. This phase plays a critical role for the success of a PSS. A successful evaluation prevents design modifications or redesign, significantly reduces the cost and lead time of PSS development. There is however, limited work on integrated evaluation approaches for PSS design models, and also a lack of a collective accounting of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) devoted on PSS. The present work attempts to contribute in these directions, and proposes a conceptual framework for the effective evaluation of PSS design using important KPIs.

This paper examines features of energy consumption in the food service industry considering the possible effects caused by properties of service such as intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability, and simultaneity. This study examines four food service businesses: restaurant services with a cook-chill system, restaurant services with a cook-serve system, delivery of prepared food services, and home-meal replacements. The service provision process is analysed along with the energy input for each process. Subsequently, a conceptual model of energy demand management considering the simultaneity of service is proposed as a first step goal to enhance energy demand management.

To support managerial decision making, this paper investigates the linkages among service, timeliness, product quality, price reasonableness, and customer satisfaction in a hospital. Considering the practical needs, we proposed STQP-SERVQUAL (customer satisfaction model of hospital foodservice) on the basement of SERVQUAL. Data from 281 questionnaires was analyzed. Using structural equation modeling, the results suggest that service, timeliness, and product quality have a positive significant impact on patients’ satisfaction with hospital foodservice. Moreover, the impact caused by price reasonableness is not significant. But price reasonableness is the lowest satisfied factor; it also calls for managers’ attention. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. Although the case study is in a large hospital, the application of the results can be extended to other health industries.

In recent years, the network vulnerability events draw the attention to the issue of the information management on the World Wide Web. The detected vulnerability was not only restricted to individuals, but also to enterprises and governments. Over the past decade, networks have become an affordable way for several computer services, but also a major challenge for network managers to maintain its operation. The main problem is the difficulty to deal with big amount of data generated by user requests, which in turn ultimately generate increasing information logs. Moreover, the dynamics of the services can lead to detect false positive and negative ones, so uncertainty is a theme to be considered. The employment of classical logic may not be adequate to solve problems of this nature. The aim of this paper is to present the development of a Paraconsistent analyzer, in order to extract some computer networks patterns of interest.

No matter the segment, enterprises are adding value to their final product through services. A service of quality can make the difference in the market. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the dimensions of SERVQUAL are adequate to the characteristics of the small business tourism segment in Brazil, whose customers are small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The research used a descriptive approach with a quantitative procedure, and the data was collected in two groups of customers. The conclusion was that the SERVQUAL questionnaire is an appropriate tool for the characteristics of SMEs and assesses the punctual quality of service. Besides, the inclusion of three questions of the SERVPERF questionnaire helped to identify whether the quality of service was converted into customer satisfaction or not. Additional research was suggested to identify why the service was considered of quality.

The use of performance measures and how they effect in practice for accident and emergency department has been studied in a Danish hospital case. The main findings are that having unified performance targets has consequences for the actual flow of various incoming patients, organization structure, and workflow. Moreover, this study suggests that measuring process lead time and length of stay differentiated by sites and various patient flows will provide a clearer overview of the actual operational performance.

Nowadays, a lot of manufacturing companies are shifting their value proposition from a product-centric perspective to sustainable Product-Service-Systems (PSS). This transition allows companies to improve the customization of their offer and to contribute to the reduction of material flow and consumption; nonetheless, it poses some new challenges in terms of mindset and organization. In particular, the analysis of the literature about PSS shows that there is still a gap concerning the evaluation and the monitoring of new or reengineered PSS provision processes using business process simulation. Few examples of simulation in PSS field can be found, and multidimensional models considering customer perspective and environmental sustainability beyond the economic driver are not yet available. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to compare different simulation paradigms and to define the most suitable to support the engineering phase of a sustainable, customer-oriented PSS. Two possible alternatives were identified and discussed through a test-case.