On the role of Prognostics and Health Management in advanced maintenance systems

The advanced use of the Information and Communication Technologies is evolving the way that systems are managed and maintained. A great number of techniques and methods have emerged in the light of these advances allowing to have an accurate and knowledge about the systems’ condition evolution and remaining useful life. The advances are recognized as outcomes of an innovative discipline, nowadays discussed under the term of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM). In order to analyze how maintenance will change by using PHM, a conceptual model is proposed built upon three views. The model highlights: (i) how PHM may impact the definition of maintenance policies; (ii) how PHM fits within the Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) and (iii) how PHM can be integrated into Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) programs. The conceptual model is the research finding of this review note and helps to discuss the role of PHM in advanced maintenance systems.EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020, 645733 - Sustain-Owner - H2020-MSCA-RISE-201

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

A reliable next generation cyber security architecture for industrial internet of things environment

Architectural changes are happening in the modern industries due to the adaption and the deployment of ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ for monitoring and controlling various devices remotely from the external world. The most predominant place where the IoT technology makes the most sense is the industrial automation processes in smart industries (Industry 4.0). In this paper, a reliable ‘Next Generation Cyber Security Architecture (NCSA)’ is presented for Industrial IoT (IIoT) environment that detects and thwarts cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities. It helps to automate the processes of exchanging real-time critical information between devices without any human intervention. It proposes an analytical framework that can be used to protect entities and network traffics involved in the IIoT wireless communication. It incorporates an automated cyber-defense authentication mechanism that detects and prevents security attacks when a network session has been established. The defense mechanism accomplishes the required level of security protection in the network by generating an identity token which is cryptographically encrypted and verified by a virtual gateway system. The proposed NCSA improves security in the IIoT environment and reduces operational management cost