Special Session on Industry 4.0

No abstract available

Intelligent Products: Shifting the Production Control Logic in Construction (With Lean and BIM)

Production management and control in construction has not been addressed/updated ever since the introduction of Critical Path Method and the Last Planner® system. The predominant outside-in control logic and a fragmented and deep supply chain in construction significantly affect the efficiency over a lifecycle. In a construction project, a large number of organisations interact with the product throughout the process, requiring a significant amount of information handling and synchronisation between these organisations. However, due to the deep supply chains and problems with lack of information integration, the information flow down across the lifecycle poses a significant challenge. This research proposes a product centric system, where the control logic of the production process is embedded within the individual components from the design phase. The solution is enabled by a number of technologies and tools such as Building Information Modelling, Internet of Things, Messaging Systems and within the conceptual process framework of Lean Construction. The vision encompasses the lifecycle of projects from design to construction and maintenance, where the products can interact with the environment and its actors through various stages supporting a variety of actions. The vision and the tools and technologies required to support it are described in this pape

Interactive situation modelling in knowledge intensive domains

Interactive Situation Modelling (ISM) method, a semi-methodological approach, is proposed to tackle issues associated with modelling complex knowledge intensive domains, which cannot be easily modelled using traditional approaches. This paper presents the background and implementation of ISM within a complex domain, where synthesizing knowledge from various sources is critical, and is based on the principles of ethnography within a constructivist framework. Although the motivation for the reported work comes from the application presented in the paper, the actual scope of the paper covers a wide range of issues related to modelling complex systems. The author firstly reviews approaches used for modelling knowledge intensive domains, preceded by a brief discussion about two main issues: symmetry of ignorance and system behaviour, which are often confronted when applying modelling approaches to business domains. The ISM process is then characterized and critiqued with lessons from an exemplar presented to illustrate its effectiveness

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Eco‐Holonic 4.0 Circular Business Model to Conceptualize Sustainable Value Chain Towards Digital Transition

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a circular business model based on an Eco-Holonic Architecture, through the integration of circular economy and holonic principles. A conceptual model is developed to manage the complexity of integrating circular economy principles, digital transformation, and tools and frameworks for sustainability into business models. The proposed architecture is multilevel and multiscale in order to achieve the instantiation of the sustainable value chain in any territory. The architecture promotes the incorporation of circular economy and holonic principles into new circular business models. This integrated perspective of business model can support the design and upgrade of the manufacturing companies in their respective industrial sectors. The conceptual model proposed is based on activity theory that considers the interactions between technical and social systems and allows the mitigation of the metabolic rift that exists between natural and social metabolism. This study contributes to the existing literature on circular economy, circular business models and activity theory by considering holonic paradigm concerns, which have not been explored yet. This research also offers a unique holonic architecture of circular business model by considering different levels, relationships, dynamism and contextualization (territory) aspects

Integration of decision support systems to improve decision support performance

Decision support system (DSS) is a well-established research and development area. Traditional isolated, stand-alone DSS has been recently facing new challenges. In order to improve the performance of DSS to meet the challenges, research has been actively carried out to develop integrated decision support systems (IDSS). This paper reviews the current research efforts with regard to the development of IDSS. The focus of the paper is on the integration aspect for IDSS through multiple perspectives, and the technologies that support this integration. More than 100 papers and software systems are discussed. Current research efforts and the development status of IDSS are explained, compared and classified. In addition, future trends and challenges in integration are outlined. The paper concludes that by addressing integration, better support will be provided to decision makers, with the expectation of both better decisions and improved decision making processes

AI and OR in management of operations: history and trends

The last decade has seen a considerable growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for operations management with the aim of finding solutions to problems that are increasing in complexity and scale. This paper begins by setting the context for the survey through a historical perspective of OR and AI. An extensive survey of applications of AI techniques for operations management, covering a total of over 1200 papers published from 1995 to 2004 is then presented. The survey utilizes Elsevier's ScienceDirect database as a source. Hence, the survey may not cover all the relevant journals but includes a sufficiently wide range of publications to make it representative of the research in the field. The papers are categorized into four areas of operations management: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Each of the four areas is categorized in terms of the AI techniques used: genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems, fuzzy logic and hybrid techniques. The trends over the last decade are identified, discussed with respect to expected trends and directions for future work suggested

Micro-manufacturing : research, technology outcomes and development issues

Besides continuing effort in developing MEMS-based manufacturing techniques, latest effort in Micro-manufacturing is also in Non-MEMS-based manufacturing. Research and technological development (RTD) in this field is encouraged by the increased demand on micro-components as well as promised development in the scaling down of the traditional macro-manufacturing processes for micro-length-scale manufacturing. This paper highlights some EU funded research activities in micro/nano-manufacturing, and gives examples of the latest development in micro-manufacturing methods/techniques, process chains, hybrid-processes, manufacturing equipment and supporting technologies/device, etc., which is followed by a summary of the achievements of the EU MASMICRO project. Finally, concluding remarks are given, which raise several issues concerning further development in micro-manufacturing

Interactive situation modelling in knowledge intensive domains

Interactive Situation Modelling (ISM) method, a semi-methodological approach, is proposed to tackle issues associated with modelling complex knowledge intensive domains, which cannot be easily modelled using traditional approaches. This paper presents the background and implementation of ISM within a complex domain, where synthesizing knowledge from various sources is critical, and is based on the principles of ethnography within a constructivist framework. Although the motivation for the reported work comes from the application presented in the paper, the actual scope of the paper covers a wide range of issues related to modelling complex systems. The author firstly reviews approaches used for modelling knowledge intensive domains, preceded by a brief discussion about two main issues: symmetry of ignorance and system behaviour, which are often confronted when applying modelling approaches to business domains. The ISM process is then characterized and critiqued with lessons from an exemplar presented to illustrate its effectiveness.