Data Mining: Techniques and Applications in the Manufacturing Industry

Data mining and knowledge discovery in databases are increasingly attracting a significant number of academics, professionals, and the attention of the media. It is regarded by many industrial organisations as an important tool in knowledge discovery with the potential for substantial profits. However, data mining is a relatively new field that has emerged as a result of advancements in many different subjects such as statistics and computing and has only recently began to attract the attention it deserves. As a result, this dissertation provides an overview of this emerging field and demonstrates the potential applications of data mining that can be applied to many domains, in particular to the manufacturing industry. The work starts with distinguishing between the different components of working knowledge. These components are then related to the knowledge discovery process by illustrating the components of this iterative process. Data mining, which is one of the steps in the knowledge discovery process, is then described by discussing the requirements, challenges, techniques, and specific applications in different domains. Finally, two data mining applications in manufacturing will be proposed for future research. The first model tackles the productions strategy decision issues that manufacturers encounter. The production strategies discussed include make-to-order, assemble-to-order, stock-to-order and engineer-to-order strategies. The second model enhances the efficiency of the supply chain by assessing the supplier's risk and facilitating a better outsourcing policy

Design of an innovation platform for manufacturing SMES

This paper reports on the conception of a collaborative, internet-based innovation platform with semantic capabilities, which implements a new methodology for the adoption of a systematic innovation process in globally-acting networked SMEs. The main objective of the innovation platform is to stimulate the generation of ideas, the selection of good ideas and their ultimate implementation. The platform will support SMEs to manage and implement the complex innovation processes arisen in a networked environment, taking into account their internal and external links, by enabling an open multi-agent focused innovation system, facilitating customer, provider, supplier and employee- focused innovation. The solution is specifically focused on the needs of manufacturing SMEs and will observe product, process and management innovation. The paper presents the key elements of the innovation model and makes references to a novel approach concerning the development of a robust and flexible Central Knowledge Repository for the innovation platform

Service Knowledge Capture and Reuse

The keynote will start with the need for service knowledge capture and reuse for industrial product-service systems. A novel approach to capture the service damage knowledge about individual component will be presented with experimental results. The technique uses active thermography and image processing approaches for the assessment. The paper will also give an overview of other non-destructive inspection techniques for service damage assessment. A robotic system will be described to automate the damage image capture. The keynote will then propose ways to reuse the knowledge to predict remaining life of the component and feedback to design and manufacturing

Towards In-Transit Analytics for Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0, or Digital Manufacturing, is a vision of inter-connected services to facilitate innovation in the manufacturing sector. A fundamental requirement of innovation is the ability to be able to visualise manufacturing data, in order to discover new insight for increased competitive advantage. This article describes the enabling technologies that facilitate In-Transit Analytics, which is a necessary precursor for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) visualisation.Comment: 8 pages, 10th IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings-2017), Exeter, UK, 201

Linking Innovative Potential to SME Performance: An Assessment of Enterprises in Industrial South Wales

The attraction of inward investment from the UK and from overseas was the main focus of regional development policy in Wales for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst Wales has been particularly successful in attracting foreign enterprise, the contribution of new investors to improving longer term regional economic prospects has been questioned at several levels. With concerns over inward investor stability, embeddedness, and contribution to local value added, increasing weight has been given to the encouragement, and development of innovative indigenous SMEs in the Welsh economy. General and sectoral initiatives to encourage SME development and innovation in Wales have also taken place against a background of historically low levels of new firm formation in the region, together with the presence of factors expected to hinder SME growth including low levels of capital availability. Ultimately, it is hoped that a strongly performing indigenously controlled and innovative SME sector will go some way to improving regional growth prospects, and hence play a role in reducing the GDP per capita gap between Wales and the UK. During the 1990s a series of research and consultancy studies in Wales have been undertaken seeking to audit SME activities, define needs and identify market failures in provision of information and services. These have formed the basis of revised policy and then for new resource directions emanating at the European, regional and local levels. Encouraging innovative activity has been at the forefront of the network of initiatives currently underway in Wales. New initiatives have often been instituted without a clear appreciation of the nature of innovation, and how innovative activities link to innovative outputs and then feed through to improved business performance. This paper examines the link between innovative activity, outcomes and the performance of SMEs in Wales. A range of European, UK and locally developed initiatives in Wales seek to encourage innovative activity in indigenous SMEs. However, it is the contention of this paper that these initiatives have often been instituted without a clear appreciation of how, if, and which innovative activities feed through to improved business performance. The paper offers a general method of assessing the innovative potential (the configuration of management practices, capabilities, internal and external linkages facilitating the generation of appropriation of ideas) of manufacturing SMEs. This then leads on to an examination of how far innovative potential is connected to operational and general business performance. The paper describes how the model was developed and used to assess the innovative potential of a sample of manufacturing SMEs in Industrial South Wales, and how far the innovative potential can be linked to improved operational and business performance. The introduction to the paper reviews current literature on innovation in SMEs, and demonstrates how far recent studies have succeeded in measuring, and then linking innovative inputs of SMEs to innovative outputs and firm performance. The second section builds upon the review to develop a working model of an innovative SME. Innovation is considered not only in terms of new product or process development but more generally as practice. The model reveals the innovative firm as one that identifies, interprets, and applies knowledge effectively, and as appropriate throughout the organisation. The model described represents a synthesis of previous research. Key factors in the model include strategy and the techniques and practices deployed to facilitate the development and appropriation of ideas for innovation. Broadly this focuses on SME commitment to innovation, and management practices supporting this commitment. The third section describes how the model was operationalised into an auditing tool, and then used to assess the innovative potential of a sample of manufacturing SMEs in Industrial South Wales. The fourth section summarises the results from the initial research programme, and in particular, considers whether the unique operating structures usually associated with SMEs hinder or facilitate the adoption of new structures for organisational learning. Moreover the section examines whether the existence of certain configurations of practices coincide with improved business performance and operational efficiencies. The conclusions consider these results in the context of the directions being adopted by current regional SME policy initiatives in Industrial South Wales.

On the Interface Between Operations and Human Resources Management

Operations management (OM) and human resources management (HRM) have historically been very separate fields. In practice, operations managers and human resource managers interact primarily on administrative issues regarding payroll and other matters. In academia, the two subjects are studied by separate communities of scholars publishing in disjoint sets of journals, drawing on mostly separate disciplinary foundations. Yet, operations and human resources are intimately related at a fundamental level. Operations are the context that often explains or moderates the effects of human resource activities such as pay, training, communications and staffing. Human responses to operations management systems often explain variations or anomalies that would otherwise be treated as randomness or error variance in traditional operations research models. In this paper, we probe the interface between operations and human resources by examining how human considerations affect classical OM results and how operational considerations affect classical HRM results. We then propose a unifying framework for identifying new research opportunities at the intersection of the two fields

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 New Consumerism: The influence of social technologies on product design

Social media has enabled a new style of consumerism. Consumers are no longer passive recipients; instead they are assuming active and participatory roles in product design and production, facilitated by interaction and collaboration in virtual communities. This new participatory culture is blurring the boundaries between the specific roles of designer, consumer and producer, creating entrepreneurial opportunities for designers, and empowering consumers to influence product strategies. Evolving designer-consumer interactions are enabling an enhanced model of co-production, through a value-adding social exchange that is driving changes in consumer behaviour and influencing both product strategies and design practice. The consumer is now a knowledgeable participant, or prosumer, who can contribute to user–centered research through crowd sourcing, collaborate and co-create through open-source or open-innovation platforms, assist creative endeavors by pledging venture capital through crowd funding and advocate the product in blogs and forums. Social media- enabled product implementation strategies working in conjunction with digital production technologies (e.g. additive manufacture), enable consumer-directed adaptive customisation, product personalisation, and self-production, with once passive consumers becoming product produsers. Not only is social media driving unprecedented consumer engagement and significant behavioural change, it is emerging as a major enabler of design entrepreneurship, creating new collaborative opportunities. Innovative processes in design practice are emerging, such as the provision of digital artifacts and customisable product frameworks, rather than standardised manufactured solutions. This paper examines the influence of social media-enabled product strategies on the methodology of the next generation of product designers, and discusses the need for an educational response

On relating functional modeling approaches: abstracting functional models from behavioral models

This paper presents a survey of functional modeling approaches and describes a strategy to establish functional knowledge exchange between them. This survey is focused on a comparison of function meanings and representations. It is argued that functions represented as input-output flow transformations correspond to behaviors in the approaches that characterize functions as intended behaviors. Based on this result a strategy is presented to relate the different meanings of function between the approaches, establishing functional knowledge exchange between them. It is shown that this strategy is able to preserve more functional information than the functional knowledge exchange methodology of Kitamura, Mizoguchi, and co-workers. The strategy proposed here consists of two steps. In step one, operation-on-flow functions are translated into behaviors. In step two, intended behavior functions are derived from behaviors. The two-step strategy and its benefits are demonstrated by relating functional models of a power screwdriver between methodologies