Production Engineering and Management

It is our pleasure to introduce the 8th edition of the International Conference on Production Engineering and anagement (PEM), an event that is the result of the joint effort of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and the University of Trieste. The conference has been established as an annual meeting under the Double Degree Master Program “Production Engineering and Management” by the two partner universities. This year the conference is hosted at the university campus in Lemgo, Germany. The main goal of the conference is to offer students, researchers and professionals in Germany, Italy and abroad, an opportunity to meet and exchange information, discuss experiences, specific practices and technical solutions for planning, design, and management of manufacturing and service systems and processes. As always, the conference is a platform aimed at presenting research projects, introducing young academics to the tradition of symposiums and promoting the exchange of ideas between the industry and the academy. This year’s special focus is on Supply Chain Design and Management in the context of Industry 4.0, which are currently major topics of discussion among experts and professionals. In fact, the features and problems of Industry 4.0 have been widely discussed in the last editions of the PEM conference, in which sustainability and efficiency also emerged as key factors. With the further study and development of Direct Digital Manufacturing technologies in connection with new Management Practices and Supply Chain Designs, the 8th edition of the PEM conference aims to offer new and interesting scientific contributions. The conference program includes 25 speeches organized in seven sessions. Two are specifically dedicated to “Direct Digital Manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0”. The other sessions are covering areas of great interest and importance to the participants of the conference, which are related to the main focus: “Supply Chai n Design and Management”, “Industrial Engineering and Lean Management”, “Wood Processing Technologies and Furniture Production”, and “Management Practices and Methodologies”. The proceedings of the conference include the articles submitted and accepted after a careful double-blind refereeing process

Assessing the Economic Feasibility of Synthetic Natural Gas Under Conditions of Uncertainty

The science of synthetic fuel production began in the seventeenth century. However, large-scale production of synthetic fuels started in the early 1900\u27s and, for several decades, gas manufactured from coal significantly contributed to the U.S. economy. The production of synthetic fuels declined due to increases in the price of coal and discoveries of predominantly methane natural gas. Today, an extensive network of pipelines is used to transmit and distribute natural gas for industrial and residential applications. The decline of natural gas reserves in the United States, in conjunction with the availability of very large coal reserves, has provided the incentive for development of coal gasification plants. Synthetic fuels are expected to contribute significantly to the supply of energy before the end of this century, and coal will be the primary source for production of these fuels. By many accounts, difficulties in raising the high amount of initial capital and future uncertainties with regard to fuel and operating costs have made development of synthetic fuels economically infeasible. However, as the prices of oil and natural gas increase, synthetic fuels production becomes a more attractive alternative. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the economics of synthetic natural gas with the current state of technology and to determine its future role as prices of oil and gas increase. In this report, a general methodology of production of synthetic natural gas is explained. For the economic analysis, the Lurgi Model was selected because it has been the most common model used for commercial production of high BTU gases. An extensive analytical model is described in which inflated capital, fuel, and operating and maintenance costs were accounted for and the equivalent annual cost of cash flows over the project life was calculated. The risk analysis was accomplished by applying Monte Carlo techniques through a simulation model which handles risks associated with various input parameters. SLAM, a FORTRAN-based language, was selected as the simulation language. Based on the results, all the cost elements were evaluated and the sensitivity of the total cost to each element was examined. This study was extended to the calculation of costs associated with he generation of electricity by burning synthetic natural gas. The results were then compared to the respective costs related to oil-burning power plants. The results show that high cost of synthetic high BTU gas makes it difficult to compete with natural gas at current prices. Coal feed stocks represent a major portion of the total cost of synthetic gases. The cost of capital, which is a critical factor at the developing stage, constitutes a relatively small portion of the total cost over the plant life. A similar observation was made for operating and maintenance costs. However, the future regulations regarding pollution control could have a strong impact on this portion of the cost. For power generations, oil was found to be far more economical than using synthetic natural gas. The computer simulation also revealed that the total cost of each alternative is very sensitive to this fuel cost. The conclusion of this study points to the fuel costs as the dominant factor in the choice of fuel alternatives in the future

Managing ubiquitous eco cities: the role of urban telecommunication infrastructure networks and convergence technologies

A successful urban management system for a Ubiquitous Eco City requires an integrated approach. This integration includes bringing together economic, socio-cultural and urban development with a well orchestrated, transparent and open decision making mechanism and necessary infrastructure and technologies. Rapidly developing information and telecommunication technologies and their platforms in the late 20th Century improves urban management and enhances the quality of life and place. Telecommunication technologies provide an important base for monitoring and managing activities over wired, wireless or fibre-optic networks. Particularly technology convergence creates new ways in which the information and telecommunication technologies are used. The 21st Century is an era where information has converged, in which people are able to access a variety of services, including internet and location based services, through multi-functional devices such as mobile phones and provides opportunities in the management of Ubiquitous Eco Cities. This paper discusses the recent developments in telecommunication networks and trends in convergence technologies and their implications on the management of Ubiquitous Eco Cities and how this technological shift is likely to be beneficial in improving the quality of life and place. The paper also introduces recent approaches on urban management systems, such as intelligent urban management systems, that are suitable for Ubiquitous Eco Cities

The Effect of Mobile Gamification on Brand Loyalty

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Assessing the Olympics: Preliminary Economic Analysis of a Boston 2024 Games Impacts, Opportunities and Risks

The possibility of hosting the Summer Games is sparking significant debate in our community about the potential benefits, costs, and risks associated with hosting the Olympics. With these debates in mind, the Boston Foundation (TBF) commissioned the Economic and Public Policy Research group (EPPR) at the UMass Donahue Institute (UMDI) to perform a detailed economic impact assessment of Boston's proposed 2024 Olympic bid. While the Boston 2024 proposal is a working document and should be thought of as a "proof of concept" rather than a concrete plan, there are still several components of the proposal that can be evaluated at this time. The following report contributes to the public discourse by providing a preliminary assessment of the quantitative short-term economic impacts of hosting the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Boston. In addition, this report highlights several of the potential opportunities, challenges, and risks associated with hosting the Olympic Games that are difficult to quantifiably measure at this time, but require further attention as the Olympic bid evolves over the next couple of years

Formulating project-level building information modeling evaluation framework from the perspectives of organizations: a review

This study identifies Building Information Modeling (BIM) benefits in the presentations of previous project participants and specialties. Based on recent data, a framework for evaluating the project-level BIM benefits from the perspectives of different stakeholders involved in the project is proposed. In order to maximize the benefits for each user or stakeholder, the functions and methods for implementing BIM on construction projects are explained. The results show that the advantages of implementing BIM in construction projects can be effectively evaluated by the proposed framework. Results presented herein provide documentation to improve the understanding of BIM benefits to all construction industry stakeholders

Applying Formal Methods to Networking: Theory, Techniques and Applications

Despite its great importance, modern network infrastructure is remarkable for the lack of rigor in its engineering. The Internet which began as a research experiment was never designed to handle the users and applications it hosts today. The lack of formalization of the Internet architecture meant limited abstractions and modularity, especially for the control and management planes, thus requiring for every new need a new protocol built from scratch. This led to an unwieldy ossified Internet architecture resistant to any attempts at formal verification, and an Internet culture where expediency and pragmatism are favored over formal correctness. Fortunately, recent work in the space of clean slate Internet design---especially, the software defined networking (SDN) paradigm---offers the Internet community another chance to develop the right kind of architecture and abstractions. This has also led to a great resurgence in interest of applying formal methods to specification, verification, and synthesis of networking protocols and applications. In this paper, we present a self-contained tutorial of the formidable amount of work that has been done in formal methods, and present a survey of its applications to networking.Comment: 30 pages, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Railway Research

This book focuses on selected research problems of contemporary railways. The first chapter is devoted to the prediction of railways development in the nearest future. The second chapter discusses safety and security problems in general, precisely from the system point of view. In the third chapter, both the general approach and a particular case study of a critical incident with regard to railway safety are presented. In the fourth chapter, the question of railway infrastructure studies is presented, which is devoted to track superstructure. In the fifth chapter, the modern system for the technical condition monitoring of railway tracks is discussed. The compact on-board sensing device is presented. The last chapter focuses on modeling railway vehicle dynamics using numerical simulation, where the dynamical models are exploited