Engineering Digital Transformation

The standard responses to public sector management issues in developing countries have failed in some respect to attend its agenda. Proceeding with so many intangibles and uncertainties managers need to find a new approach using better strategic planning indicating to institutions how to reach goals and achieve its intended vision. IFTO is a federal institute of education in the heart of Brazil. Its mission is to provide educational, scientific and technological development in the state of Tocantins through personal training and professional qualification. This case study presents how IFTO transformed itself by using a new planning tool.

The objective of this work is to identify conditions for knowledge worker productivity and satisfaction. Two variables are proposed as key influencers: role clarity and knowledge content in the job position. To test the importance of these variables a questionnaire was prepared and 167 managers and knowledge professionals answered it. Strong and positive relationship between role clarity, knowledge content in the job position and satisfaction is confirmed.

Abengoa Solar New Technologies (ASNT) is a relevant R&D actor in solar energy EPC/Turnkey sector, its innovation strategy being characterized by the aggressive patenting strategy they have deployed since year 2008. On that same year ASNT got its innovation management system certified under UNE 166002 standard, combining two divergent issues such as standardization and innovation. This paper presents the main features of the innovation model put into practice at ASNT, detailing its implications for knowledge management and R&D employee incentive system.

University and industry research collaboration hugely impacts on academic and industrial doctorates research career and curriculum development. The collaboration brings new opportunities of research areas of interest, real world problems and research challenges, and new skill and abilities in curriculum development. The collaboration also creates innovation and provides regional and national economic benefits. The paper presents the industrial Ph.D. training itinerary framework for creating and testing new business opportunities aligned with the research projects in the space university-business research collaboration. This itinerary provides a training journey based on different workshops along the process, testing the results obtained in their applied research with the real market. The framework encompasses the global learning itinerary with the driving criterion being ideation for industry and society, transforming knowledge into innovations Doctoral students follow the ideation for industry-society training itinerary in order to identify an initial business idea.

The following article presents a brief literature review conducted to extend our knowledge of what Industry 4.0 means and its impact on business models. Based on the results of the research three challenges related to the digital transformation of the companies are suggested such as: a service-oriented approach, a network-oriented approach and a user-driven approach. Furthermore, the implications on Business Model Innovation based on the identified issues are presented. As a result, four different ways to innovate in business models based on different degrees of innovation are proposed to embrace digital transformation.

This study investigates the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis of “voting with one’s feet”, using NUTS5-level data for the year of the first real estate appraisal in Slovenia, 2011. The general approach is developed and the case study for Slovenia is presented. This analysis differs from previous related studies by Tullock, Cebula and other authors because the income tax burden in Slovenia is equal in all spatial units. However, the housing property tax burdens, which have not been introduced yet, but will be in the near future, are supposed to be different in different municipalities. We have found that the existence of local property taxes has strongly influenced migration patterns over time, therefore it can also influence the dynamics of needed real estate construction. From the study, we can conclude that the flows to the areas of smaller percentage of total population are more sensitive to changing housing property burdens. This finding means that spatial planners, who are planning the future construction of housing, and investors in constructions in the municipalities need to adjust their forecasts regarding the supply and demand of housing units also to the future real estate taxation policies, whereas the local authorities have to be aware how their taxation policy might influence the growth or decline of their urban area. The numerical results are limited by parameters of the gravity model on the NUTS5-level in Slovenia.

The level of workers’ commitment and participation has a huge impact on the success of continuous improvement initiatives. One of the non-written duties of middle managers is creating a trust-culture that enhances commitment and participation, which can be achieved with the appropriate directive style. In this paper, we present a pre-scale of four dimensions and fifty-five middle managers’ behaviors that encourage employee commitment towards and participation in continuous improvement activities. The list has been developed putting together the opinions of operators and supervisors, as well as businessmen, university professors and consultants.

Mandatory Convertibles Notes (MCNs) mean only a small fraction of all the securities issued by corporate or financial institutions, however, they represent nearly a 30% in volume of the convertible securities issued every year. MCNs share characteristics of equity and debt securities but rating agencies assign them a high equity component and are commonly treated as equity by accounting standards. Despite the high facial coupon that MCNs seem to pay, a deeper analysis shows that the cost of MCN can be lower than the cost of issuing hybrid or subordinated debt and in some cases similar to the cost of issuing senior debt. Mandatory convertibles were profusely issued by financial institutions amid the global crisis as a means to increase capital and could be considered as a predecessor of some types of AT1 and Contingent Convertible. The academic literature about Mandatory Convertibles is scarce and we consider necessary to shed some light on a type of security that can be very useful for the real economy.

The present research points out how engineering students from two different countries, and therefore subject to different cultural and role models, show different entrepreneurial intentions. A questionnaire was submitted to engineering students divided into two groups on the basis of their country origin: Italy and Spain. The sample in use is for students attending Engineering Schools, as engineers are considered as possible founders of future innovative start-ups. The results of the survey show that Italian students have higher entrepreneurial intentions than Spanish ones. This is attributed to their different cultural origins and in particular, the sub-dimensions of individualism and masculinity from Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Theory. Among the results of the research, it has been proved that students whose parents are entrepreneurs present higher entrepreneurial intention than those whose parents are not self-employed.

Governments support the use of electric. These vehicles have environmental, economic and technical advantages. However, drivers of electric vehicles perceive the environmental benefits as most important advantages.

Sharing economy is a socio-economic model, built around the sharing of human and physical resources, which give consumers the possibility of accessing to product and assets without having the individual ownership. The present research has the purpose of analysing consumers’ intentions to join in with sharing economy system, and, in particular, of focusing on how this participation is influenced by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Materialism. Data for this study were collected by distributing a questionnaire among engineering students from two technical universities, respectively in Italy and Spain, in order to observe the different behaviour about sharing intention. The obtained results point out that cultural dimensions like Collectivism and Femininity foster sharing intention and that, therefore, consumers’ attitude to join in with sharing economy, whereas Individualism and Masculinity inhibit sharing intention. It is possible to say the same thing about Materialism that, as demonstrated by the results of the research, has a negative impact on sharing intention, considered as one of the principal inhibitors of sharing.

With the analysis by researchers and institutions regarding experiences in designing public R&D&I policies, to strengthen the capacity of innovation in the industrial sector, international cooperation was possible to understand the difficulties and recommendations for linking and integrating SMIs with the other members of the Innovation System. With this information, four levels of implementation of public policy models in R&D&I are presented. Among the proposed alternatives level 4 is the one recommended since it presents the best model of integration, coordination and governmental evaluation in the design of public R&D&I policies.

When we think or make decisions, we must not forget that there are several internal “pitfalls” that cause our brain to make decisions incorrectly. Many authors have written on various pitfalls that may affect us. In this paper, five of them are identified and they are: The use of patterns when thinking, the relativity of things, the anchor effect, loss aversion, value attribution and diagnosis bias.

Maturity is a stage in the technology life cycle where technology is highly competitive and it can (safely) be integrated into products or processes. This article analyzes the most important methods to assess maturity and proposes a method based on their best features. On the one hand, Future-oriented Technology Analysis, an approach that incorporates different decision-taking techniques. On the other hand, Technology Readiness Levels, a quantitative scale used to measure technology’s progress. The proposed approach uses logistic-growth fitting to match technology publication trends to the Technology Readiness Level scale. Three technologies at different maturity levels were successfully tested.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are important contributors to the economic growth of a country; however, maintain high performance levels for long periods of time is always a latent challenge. Research activity analysis through a bibliometric analysis helps to understand the development level that has the performance measurements for SMEs. The aim of this study was to analyze this development in the period of (2006–2016), VOS viewer was used as a graphic visualization tool from the extracted records from the Scopus database. Since 388 analyzed records a slight increase in the performance measurement of SMEs in the last decade was identified. Around of the performance measurement terms and supply chain management it was identified a concentration of investigative relationships; countries and leading research groups in the area were recognized, countries and leading research groups in the area were determined.

Several research contributions have shown that SMEs, in their path towards development and competitiveness have incorporated new trends of configuration and organization with the collaborative axis. Which in addition to performance measurement systems play a fundamental role in the management of organizations both individually and agglomerated. The aim of this study was to identify spaces for the research contribution from the review of relevant work in the recent years in the field of performance measurement in SMEs. The evaluated proposals indicated the performance measurement as a key element inside the performance management due to its results support strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making. In addition, the need for validation of the proposed frameworks was also evidenced because they come from specific case studies. Which was achieved reinforced the idea that performance measurements for SMEs is an open space to theoretical and practical contributions.

Resilience Engineering is a new safety paradigm that considers that the way duties are normally performed is something that is subject to variability, and since change is necessary to achieve success it should not be restricted. People in this complex context are continuously making adjustments to the original design, enabling them to achieve success, but occasionally accidents also arise due to an incomplete analysis of the current conditions. Thus, linear, simple or complex causation models do not reflect the ongoing reality, which is essentially non-linear, besides being complex. The accident “emerges” from normality, due to concurrent events that “resonate”, and are not “caused” by a simple chain of errors. Therefore, new tools are required to analyse accidents and indicators to monitor processes, even though most simple incidents continue to be dealt with in the usual manner.

The intangible assets of the company are those non-tangible aspects that have been identified as internal strengths and external opportunities, while intangible liabilities are internal weaknesses and external threats of a tacit and non-explicit nature. Both, in most cases, do not become visible outside the company. However, these intangible assets have a specific accounting item, an issue that does not occur for intangible liabilities, which prevents their recognition and effects for the company. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the existence of intangible liabilities in the company as factors that, as opposed to intangible assets, produce losses that are difficult to quantify, but absolutely necessary to know the generation of strategic value And accounting, of the company.

The experience is described in this paper, it is a small game for drawing a little house. The experience tries to innovate in the traditional methodologies of learning of theoretical subjects and is shown a small game that can be used to introduce the concept of production assembly orders or in order picking systems by relays or “Bucket Brigades”. This concept is explained in the subject of “Logistical decision systems” developed in the field of “Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering” at the University of Seville.

This paper describes a project to increase a food manufacturer’s productivity by applying several Lean Manufacturing techniques to the company’s manufacturing organization and production quality. As a conclusion, the paper highlights the company’s developed performance as a result of addressing such issues as clean and order at the workplace, machinery breakdowns, and quick tools changeover.

This study arises from the need to improve the goals or objectives set for the supply chain management department of a multinational company in the electric sector given the successive poor results achieved in service rates, and also from the need to merge two different management models: the traditional company model and the multinational company model. To fulfill this objective, a simulation model was built by the system dynamics method and using the Vensim® simulation software. After simulating the different processes that encompass the activity of the supply chain under study, the obtained results were analyzed and different scenarios were simulated according to the proposed objectives. Then whether these objectives were actually fulfilled was verified, the best economic results were selected and possible future lines of action were set out.

Lean Production has been widely applied in the last decades and it is generally accepted as a tool to improve the operations of organisations. However, how to properly quantify such an improvement is still not clear from a global and integrated point of view. The fact that the data gathered from applying LP production techniques—at the operative level—should be somehow correlated with the enterprise strategic objectives one—at the strategic level—presents important challenges to decision makers. This papers sets up this research topic, covering some relevant scientific literature, moving then to define a classification of important factors to take into account when deciding what quantitative technique to apply to this topic. Then, following such a classification, it assesses some quantitative techniques that could be used, mainly broken down into either objective or subjective. From this evaluation, it concludes that, from the evaluated, the most appropriate technique to be used should be the Analytic Network Process.

Additive manufacturing technologies have the potential to change the paradigm of manufacturing. In this scenario, the main objective of this research work is to gain, through a patent study, an overall view of the trends of laser-based additive manufacturing technologies. The database used in order to retrieve patent information is Patseer and the data have been analyzed through the text mining and analytics package called VantagePoint. From the data obtained it can be concluded that, Laser-based additive manufacturing is an emerging technology with huge market potential. Undoubtedly, China is the prime mover of basic research in this technology development. However, Germany and the United States are the ones who are developing the market applications.

Fuzzy clustering algorithm has demonstrated advantages in data mining, especially in problems with large collections of imprecise or fuzzy data. This methodology is widely used in the context of pattern recognition. It is proposed this methodology to use in the forecast of the comfort area of building or in the forecasting of consumption. In this paper the concept of fuzzy clustering, which is widely used in the context of pattern recognition. Based on the study of the fuzzy algorithm, we propose a method to forecast the comfort and consumption.

A good competence and knowledge management is required in smart companies to achieve and maintain competitive advantages. In this context, competence acquisition, encouragement and development are needed to hire and retain talented employees in these companies. In this paper, we describe briefly some examples according to these three dimensions.

This research draws on theories in discrete event simulation, order statistics and record-breaking statistics to develop a methodology for deciding when to stop a combinatorial optimization search. During the first optimization period, the objective function improves rapidly with the iterations, and the improvement slows gradually until it almost stalls. We adopt a popular method to detect the period of rapid improvements of the “warm-up period”, and then we propose a special control chart technique to identify with a given certainty reaching a steady state. Then, we suggest using the theory of record-breaking to decide on a stopping criterion. In addition, the paper develops estimates for the optimum bounds and estimates for value and timing of the next expected improvement. The advantages of this approach are discussed.

In the context of the Business Management degrees Operation Management subject provides a wide variety of tools related with skill like decision making, solving problems and information management. Usually this subject is taught by master classes for the theoretical part of the subject and problem solving for the practical one. The present paper presents a new methodology used for teaching theoretical part in this subject. For the authors the students should learn Operation Management doing Operation Management. In this way the teachers have develop a Project-Based Learning for this subject. This paper present also the motivation for this teaching innovation, the problems encountered in its implementation and the results obtained.

Patents are an output of the level of innovation of a company or region. Patent quantitative studies are performed by simply counting the number of these documents. For the qualitative evaluation, there is a certain consensus among the authors to consider the citations as the most adequate indicator. However, this indicator presents several problems regarding its correct interpretation. In the present study, in order to avoid the typical citation interpretation biases, a precise methodology is presented. As an illustrative example, we present a comparative study of the quality of patents in technological sectors of the Basque Country region over the period 1991–2011.

Complex humanitarian emergencies caused by war disaster necessitates fulfillment of shelter, health and education requirements of refugees. Developing countries hosting refugees are tackling with challenges and overstretching of available resources in meeting sheltering and education requirements of refugees. This study proposes a mathematical model that minimizes costs while deciding on the location of refugee camp sites, and allocation of refugee education demand to the existing and additional shifts in schools. Proposed model aims to help policy makers for decision making in camp site selection and school capacity building. A computational study using data of Nizip town in Gaziantep/Turkey is presented for model application.

In this paper, the behaviour of Twitter activity under an emergency situation is explored. Concretely, the chemical accident occurred on February 8, 2017 in Paterna (Valencia) is analyzed. Then, we analyse how the information regarding this event is propagated through the twitter network in the hours and days following this disaster.

Any sport event can count with volunteers to support the rest of participants (organizers, officials…). This group usually concentrates an important number of collaborators who work selflessly, but with heterogeneity of profiles. The organizational success of these events depends to a large extent on their efficiency in the assigned tasks. Here, it is designed a methodology that generates an assignment of volunteers to tasks, taken into account the suitability of each person to the operations to be performed. One of the stages in the methodology is based in the resolution of a Mixed Integer Linear Program. This methodology is evaluated and applied to data from a world event.

Tax planning is a matter of increasing interest to large corporations. Complex tax systems must be optimized using mathematical programming methods. As an example, this paper considers the special tax system in the Canary Islands (REF), which includes incentives for investments in the region and can be used by companies to improve the return of their investments plans. A model for tax planning is implemented and solved with standard software.

One of the main purposes for a Project Management course under the Industrial Engineering grade is to lead the students by early applying their multidisciplinary competences to a professional framework, in order to develop their active profile to encourage them to always look for the best available techniques to brings organizations up to date. This paper summarizes how the McLuhan Tetrad help the students to handle the laser cleaning technique as a case of study.

The increase in environmental and social awareness has triggered numerous green initiatives at companies. Traditionally, companies’ training related to environmental management focuses on technical aspects and theoretical concepts. In addition to these theoretical contents, it is necessary to carry out practical activities to impart the desired behaviors and skills. Serious games have been found to improve employees understanding of practical environmental sustainability challenges, by offering opportunities to obtain first-hand experiences that may otherwise be too costly and difficult to reproduce in reality. This work presents Pizz@green, a serious game which simulates the productive and environmental efficiencies generated by the improvements of processes in a pizza shop. The purpose of the game is the practical learning of the environmental impact caused by the production processes of a company.

Rapid and precise modelling to design robust industrial processes is a key element in the competitiveness of companies. This paper describes Methodology of design and modelling of robust processes based on Design of Experiments, and applies it to a case. The concrete case in which the methodology has been applied has been used to train people from industrial environments in the use of tools of experimentation, analysis and improvement. Through the application of the methodology, is obtained information about the significant variables that affect to the response and the model that governs the process. The objective of the methodology is to facilitate the use of statistic applied to the Design of Experiments in the industry, reducing the number of experiments required and facilitating their analysis.

The Universitat Politècnica de València has introduced thirteen transversal competences in the curricula of undergraduate and graduate degrees. One of the transversal competences is “Analysis and Problem Solving”. This competence had been assessed non-uniformly in the Master Degree in Advanced Engineering Production, Logistics and Supply Chain due to the fact that the assessment lacked a comprehensive and accessible tool to the students that exposed the indicators and levels of achievement of the competence. In addition, it was important to design a tool where all the instructors agreed on the main features so that the tool could be used in both semesters by instructors aiding to support the formative assessment of the competence. This paper presents a methodology and the design of a tool to perform formative assessment of analysis and problem solving competence. It had been implemented in three courses (three pilot applications) and five learning activities to support the formative assessment as well as to update the tool with the feedback collected by each pilot application. The analysis of the pilot applications show the positive results obtained and the recommendation of students for its implementation.

The main ambition of a supply chain manager is to ensure correct flows of goods and information through all the supply chain nodes to guarantee the right goods in the right place at the right time. To achieve these results, it is very important to consider the flow of items and finances to and from supply chain nodes, which is generated by market demand and productive capacity. In line with a supply chain manager’s objective, this paper presents an overview of supply chain modeling methodologies, and analyzes the applicability of current methods and tools to model econometric systems for supply chain planning.

Nowadays, good supply chain management is most important to guarantee a competitive advantage and to accomplish the value promise offered to the company’s clients. To this end, it is important to reduce uncertainty associated with demand, and it is important that demand forecast is as accurate as possible. To achieve this, it is necessary to know the features of the demand to be forecast and, based on this, to build or choose the best and the most accurate model or technique, which is based normally on that with fewer errors. Many statistical techniques exist, but for some 20 years, many heuristic algorithms have been developed that allow to absorb the variance associated with demand, and to reduce forecasting errors with better results than those obtained by statistical methods. These methods are normally adaptive and allow to hybridize techniques to construct different models. This document reviews these adaptive techniques, such as neural networks (NN) and hybrid methods, and in particular models based on case-based reasoning (CBR).

The additive manufacturing studies has been increased in the last years, positioning in the scientific community. This paper analyze the literature about the relation between Additive Manufacturing and Supply Chain, with the final purpose of giving an exhaustive vision and to present and initial parameter in future researches. Using a bibliometric analysis 497 published articles in the last 25 years were evaluated, 78 articles of which were selected that are related in the AM and SC topic, identifying the publishing tendency, the principles authors and the impact of the articles and the magazines. Also, there are knowledge networks and geographic location of the most influential countries.

The Agri-food Supply Chain (ASC) has received increasing attention lately due to environmental and social impacts. This is likely to lead to tighter regulations and closer control of these supply chains, where the traditional ASC practices will be reviewed and changed. One of the key solutions may be the necessity of establishing procedures accounting for the sustainability of the whole ASC. This is directly related to the increasing presence of different ASC third parties offering this type of services. In this paper, different aspects about ASC sustainability are reviewed from the literature, with the aim of finding out which are the most addressed and remarkable ones. These ones will be used as a benchmark against an example of a real sustainable ASC management model implemented by the UK established company (LEAF-Linking Environment And Farming).

Despite the links between forecasting and inventory control, both areas have evolved separately. This work presents a supply chain simulation library developed in Simulink to bridge that gap. To simulate a supply chain is important to define the number of companies/echelons that belong to the same supply chain and the policies that each company employs to demand forecasting and stock control. The potential user can find in this library forecasting and stock control blocks to simulate a supply chain in a modular design. We show how to implement: i) Forecasting policies. For example, the widely used exponential smoothing; ii) Replenishment models. For instance, typical order-up-to-level stock control policies as (s, S); and finally, how to connect the forecasting and stock control blocks to describe the performance of a company and to extend such relationships to define the whole supply chain.