Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

Utilizing industry 4.0 on the construction site : challenges and opportunities

In recent years a step change has been seen in the rate of adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies by manufacturers and industrial organisations alike. This paper discusses the current state of the art in the adoption of industry 4.0 technologies within the construction industry. Increasing complexity in onsite construction projects coupled with the need for higher productivity is leading to increased interest in the potential use of industry 4.0 technologies. This paper discusses the relevance of the following key industry 4.0 technologies to construction: data analytics and artificial intelligence; robotics and automation; buildings information management; sensors and wearables; digital twin and industrial connectivity. Industrial connectivity is a key aspect as it ensures that all Industry 4.0 technologies are interconnected allowing the full benefits to be realized. This paper also presents a research agenda for the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies within the construction sector; a three-phase use of intelligent assets from the point of manufacture up to after build and a four staged R&D process for the implementation of smart wearables in a digital enhanced construction site

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions

Towards a Framework for Smart Manufacturing adoption in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Smart Manufacturing (SM) paradigm adoption can scale production with demand without compromising on the time for order fulfillment. A smart manufacturing system (SMS) is vertically and horizontally connected, and thus it can minimize the chances of miscommunication. Employees in an SME are aware of the operational requirements and their responsibilities. The machine schedules are prepared based on the tasks a machine must perform. Predictive maintenance reduces the downtime of machines. Design software optimizes the product design. Production feasibility is checked with the help of simulation. The concepts of product life cycle management are considered for waste reduction. Employee safety, and ergonomics, identifying new business opportunities and markets, focus on employee education and skill enhancement are some of the other advantages of SM paradigm adoption. This dissertation develops an SM paradigm adoption framework for manufacturing SMEs by employing the instrumental research approach. The first step in the framework identified the technical aspects of SM, and this step was followed by identifying the research gaps in the suggested methods (in literature) and managerial aspects for adopting SM paradigm. The technical and the managerial aspects were integrated into a toolkit for manufacturing SMEs. This toolkit contains seven modular toolboxes that can be installed in five levels, depending on an SME’s readiness towards SM. The framework proposed in this dissertation focuses on how an SME’s readiness can be assessed and based on its present readiness what tools and practices the SMEs need to have to realize their tailored vision of SM. The framework was validated with the help of two SMEs cases that have recently adopted SM practices

When Internet of Things meets Metaverse: Convergence of Physical and Cyber Worlds

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) is studied in the context of the Metaverse to provide users immersive cyber-virtual experiences in mixed reality environments. This survey introduces six typical IoT applications in the Metaverse, including collaborative healthcare, education, smart city, entertainment, real estate, and socialization. In the IoT-inspired Metaverse, we also comprehensively survey four pillar technologies that enable augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), namely, responsible artificial intelligence (AI), high-speed data communications, cost-effective mobile edge computing (MEC), and digital twins. According to the physical-world demands, we outline the current industrial efforts and seven key requirements for building the IoT-inspired Metaverse: immersion, variety, economy, civility, interactivity, authenticity, and independence. In addition, this survey describes the open issues in the IoT-inspired Metaverse, which need to be addressed to eventually achieve the convergence of physical and cyber worlds.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

ICT-based solution approach for collaborative delivery of customised products

© 2016 Taylor & Francis. Growing interest on business collaboration motivates todays industries, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical business networks to respond to market opportunities with added business benefits. This business environment requires concurrent work and real-time information sharing between key business partners in order to design and develop customised products. The use of traditional communication media such as e-mail, phone and fax is not satisfactory to get real-time information and is time-consuming and most often ineffective. In such environments, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Web-based technology supports real-time information sharing among networked SMEs for the collaborative design and manufacturing of customised products. This study proposes an innovative ICT platform supporting SMEs collaboration, through Web and the Internet of Things technologies, which follows the Net-Challenge conceptual approach and methodological guidelines for SMEs to form and operate virtual organisations for the collaborative development and delivery of customised products. The ICT Platform was assessed in three different industry domains, namely the textile and apparel, the footwear and the machine tools, respectively. This ICT solution promotes collaboration, with substantial advantages for SMEs including the reduction of costs and delivery time and improvement of the innovation potential

Blockchain enabled industrial Internet of Things technology

The emerging blockchain technology shows promising potential to enhance industrial systems and the Internet of things (IoT) by providing applications with redundancy, immutable storage, and encryption. In the past a few years, many more applications in industrial IoT (IIoT) have emerged and the blockchain technologies have attracted huge amounts of attention from both industrial and academic researchers. In this paper we address the integration of blockchain and IIoT from the industrial prospective. A blockchain enabled IIoT framework is introduced and involved fundamental techniques are presented. Moreover, main applications and key challenges are addressed. A comprehensive analysis for the most recent research trends and open issues is provided associated with the blockchain enabled IIoT