AI for Improving the Overall Equipment Efficiency in Manufacturing Industry

Industry 4.0 has emerged as the perfect scenario for boosting the application of novel artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions to industrial process monitoring and optimization. One of the key elements on this new industrial revolution is the hatching of massive process monitoring data, enabled by the cyber-physical systems (CPS) distributed along the manufacturing processes, the proliferation of hybrid Internet of Things (IoT) architectures supported by polyglot data repositories, and big (small) data analytics capabilities. Industry 4.0 paradigm is data-driven, where the smart exploitation of data is providing a large set of competitive advantages impacting productivity, quality, and efficiency key performance indicators (KPIs). Overall equipment efficiency (OEE) has emerged as the target KPI for most manufacturing industries due to the fact that considers three key indicators: availability, quality, and performance. This chapter describes how different AI and ML solutions can enable a big step forward in industrial process control, focusing on OEE impact illustrated by means of real use cases and research project results

Modelling collective learning in design

In this paper, a model of collective learning in design is developed in the context of team design. It explains that a team design activity uses input knowledge, environmental information, and design goals to produce output knowledge. A collective learning activity uses input knowledge from different agents and produces learned knowledge with the process of knowledge acquisition and transformation between different agents, which may be triggered by learning goals and rationale triggers. Different forms of collective learning were observed with respect to agent interactions, goal(s) of learning, and involvement of an agent. Three types of links between team design and collective learning were identified, namely teleological, rationale, and epistemic. Hypotheses of collective learning are made based upon existing theories and models in design and learning, which were tested using a protocol analysis approach. The model of collective learning in design is derived from the test results. The proposed model can be used as a basis to develop agent-based learning systems in design. In the future, collective learning between design teams, the links between collective learning and creativity, and computational support for collective learning can be investigated

Desk study on homeopathy in organic livestock farming: Principles, obstacles and recommendations for practice and research

Organic livestock farming has its own concept of health and welfare. The approach to health can be characterised by the key words human, preventive, self-regulating and holistic (Chapter 1). This has consequences for the way we deal with diseases and problems, the nature of the solutions and the use of medication, among other things. In terms of therapeutic and regulatory measures this health concept is based primarily on natural food supplements and homeopathic remedies, which in view of their origin fit in well with the natural character of organic agriculture (Verhoog et al., 2002). Apart from various forms of potentised remedies (classic, clinical, anthroposophic, isopathic; Chapter 2) and all manner of applications within phytotherapy (Bach flower, aromatherapy), there is interest in organic livestock farming in complementary health treatments other than acupuncture. We also need more detailed research into the practical implications of possible self-medication by animals (Engel, 2001). Complementary medicine demands a new type of knowledge in relation to its working mechanism, testing for authenticity and the way it is used (Chapter 3). The thinking behind the use of homeopathic remedies often based on a preventive approach to health. With the aid of these remedies the doctor seeks to create a more balanced environment in and around the animal and to improve the animal’s resistance to infections (Baars en Ellinger, 1997). Striezel (2001) calls homeopathy a regulatory therapy, which heals the body by stimulating the individual immune system and regulating the metabolism. The use of homeopathic remedies is still limited in practice, partly due to a lack of suitably trained veterinary practitioners (Chapter 4). In the elaboration of the research questions the authors discovered that the use of homeopathic remedies meets with particular resistance which can be traced back to philosophical assumptions (sections 4.1-4.3). As the research is fleshed out it is therefore important that it is not simply carried out in conformity with currently valid scientific standards. The research design must also be in line with the philosophy of homeopathy in terms of both quantity and quality (Chapter 5). This is particularly important for homeopathy because its therapeutic methods are based on principles which do not fit in with conventional notions about life. The similia principle (law of similars) is an important feature of homeopathy and homeopathy shares the second key concept of potentisation with anthroposophy (Chapter 2). There is limited acceptance of homeopathic remedies in particular, despite the fact that there is some empirical evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic treatments. Both outcome research into homeopathic treatments of humans and animals and fundamental empirical research into the validity of the similia law and the efficacy of high dilutions produce results which tend to bear this out. However, it is rejected out of hand on ontological grounds and because of the assumed working mechanism. Follow-up research into homeopathic remedies is desirable, but must be in line with the underlying complementary health and welfare concept of organic agriculture, which includes treatment with veterinary medicines. Randomised Clinical Trials are thus only of limited use, since they disregard the individually tailored nature of the treatment. In practice however, sufficient alternative therapies have been developed which can be used in outcome research. The researchers propose a graduated structure for the outcome research (Chapter 6). The first step is to join in with the monitoring of experience in practice, and follow this with casuistic outcome research

An ever-winding stream : (re)surfacing competing for advantage from the continuous entwinement of navigation and wayfinding

Error on title page – year of award is 2023.This research is a strategy coup de grâce. It has helped mend deeply-rooted, intuitive, in situ sponte sua beliefs about the nature of strategy’s river-flow—echoed from a minuscule, scarcely-inhabited river-cave of the strategy field-flow—with its actual unfolding in real, earth-bound organisational settings. In a nutshell, the research charted the until-now uncharted becoming of competing for advantage. For what Sheryl Crow sings in her immensely popular ‘Everyday is a winding road’ is simply the sentiment Bob Dylan so effectively describes ‘Like a rolling stone’ in a way that completely resonates with what the Beatles had sung even before in their ‘Long and winding road’. Namely, that strategy is wayfaring, meandering, and forever oblique. And hence, strategy is not either linear or curve, but both linear and curve. Deliberate and emergent. Content and process. Planning and wayfinding, in a universal, uninterrupted coping, which echoes ‘the best-laid plans of mice and men’ (Burns, 1785, added emphasis) so beautifully captured in the evocative poetics of Scotland’s national bard. Over a 9-month immersion during most of 2018, in an automotive manufacturing site in the outskirts of Glasgow’s Green-Glen, the research amassed a comprehensive volume of data anchorings following a ‘near documentary’ style of inquiry (Chia and Holt, 2009). A wayfinding methodology-of-sorts emerged, which included extensive field note-makings, reflecting-in-action, photographic animations, and annotated information supported by news articles, company records, semi-formal interviews, live off-the-cuff conversations, shadowing-in-observation, and attendance of both formal, fixed meetings, and informal, impromptu coming-together gatherings. Analysis followed to reconstruct the river-flow of the case-streams. Namely, the metamorphosis of Rosti Automotive Larkhall (RAL), from being a general plastic injection moulder, to becoming a tier 1 automotive supplier, in the period covering 2016-2018. Overarchingly, the research crystalizes a triple-win of exciting possibilities for the field of strategic management and the social sciences more broadly. Namely, (i) a tried-and-tested wayfinding-process philosophical-methodology focused on explicating the dynamics of processes-in-motion; (ii) a fresh reconceptualization of a central construct—the central construct, perhaps—of the strategy field, competitive advantage, towards a forever becoming-idea—the primordial hunch of strategy—competing for advantage; and (iii) this new conceptualisation is born out of the two most basic motions—currents—of the competing river-flow: competere and concurrere, from which concurrere emerges as the vital traversing of strategy, its wayfinding and zero-degree of organisation (Chia and Holt, 2009; Cooper 1986: 321).This research is a strategy coup de grâce. It has helped mend deeply-rooted, intuitive, in situ sponte sua beliefs about the nature of strategy’s river-flow—echoed from a minuscule, scarcely-inhabited river-cave of the strategy field-flow—with its actual unfolding in real, earth-bound organisational settings. In a nutshell, the research charted the until-now uncharted becoming of competing for advantage. For what Sheryl Crow sings in her immensely popular ‘Everyday is a winding road’ is simply the sentiment Bob Dylan so effectively describes ‘Like a rolling stone’ in a way that completely resonates with what the Beatles had sung even before in their ‘Long and winding road’. Namely, that strategy is wayfaring, meandering, and forever oblique. And hence, strategy is not either linear or curve, but both linear and curve. Deliberate and emergent. Content and process. Planning and wayfinding, in a universal, uninterrupted coping, which echoes ‘the best-laid plans of mice and men’ (Burns, 1785, added emphasis) so beautifully captured in the evocative poetics of Scotland’s national bard. Over a 9-month immersion during most of 2018, in an automotive manufacturing site in the outskirts of Glasgow’s Green-Glen, the research amassed a comprehensive volume of data anchorings following a ‘near documentary’ style of inquiry (Chia and Holt, 2009). A wayfinding methodology-of-sorts emerged, which included extensive field note-makings, reflecting-in-action, photographic animations, and annotated information supported by news articles, company records, semi-formal interviews, live off-the-cuff conversations, shadowing-in-observation, and attendance of both formal, fixed meetings, and informal, impromptu coming-together gatherings. Analysis followed to reconstruct the river-flow of the case-streams. Namely, the metamorphosis of Rosti Automotive Larkhall (RAL), from being a general plastic injection moulder, to becoming a tier 1 automotive supplier, in the period covering 2016-2018. Overarchingly, the research crystalizes a triple-win of exciting possibilities for the field of strategic management and the social sciences more broadly. Namely, (i) a tried-and-tested wayfinding-process philosophical-methodology focused on explicating the dynamics of processes-in-motion; (ii) a fresh reconceptualization of a central construct—the central construct, perhaps—of the strategy field, competitive advantage, towards a forever becoming-idea—the primordial hunch of strategy—competing for advantage; and (iii) this new conceptualisation is born out of the two most basic motions—currents—of the competing river-flow: competere and concurrere, from which concurrere emerges as the vital traversing of strategy, its wayfinding and zero-degree of organisation (Chia and Holt, 2009; Cooper 1986: 321)

Acceptance in Incomplete Argumentation Frameworks

A Abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs), originally proposed by Dung, constitute a central formal model for the study of computational aspects of argumentation in AI. Credulous and skeptical acceptance of arguments in a given AF are well-studied problems both in terms of theoretical analysis-especially computational complexity-and the development of practical decision procedures for the problems. However, AFs make the assumption that all attacks between arguments are certain (i.e., present attacks are known to exist, and missing attacks are known to not exist), which can in various settings be a restrictive assumption. A generalization of AFs to incomplete AFs was recently proposed as a formalism that allows the representation of both uncertain attacks and uncertain arguments in AFs. In this article, we explore the impact of allowing for modeling such uncertainties in AFs on the computational complexity of natural generalizations of acceptance problems to incomplete AFs under various central AF semantics. Complementing the complexity-theoretic analysis, we also develop the first practical decision procedures for all of the NP-hard variants of acceptance in incomplete AFs. In terms of complexity analysis, we establish a full complexity landscape, showing that depending on the variant of acceptance and property/semantics, the complexity of acceptance in incomplete AFs ranges from polynomial-time decidable to completeness for Sigma(p)(3). In terms of algorithms, we show through an extensive empirical evaluation that an implementation of the proposed decision procedures, based on boolean satisfiability (SAT) solving, is effective in deciding variants of acceptance under uncertainties. We also establish conditions for what type of atomic changes are guaranteed to be redundant from the perspective of preserving extensions of completions of incomplete AFs, and show that the results allow for considerably improving the empirical efficiency of the proposed SAT-based counterexample-guided abstraction refinement algorithms for acceptance in incomplete AFs for problem variants with complexity beyond NP. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge