Industrial waste management within manufacturing: a comparative study of tools, policies, visions and concepts

Industrial waste is a key factor when assessing the sustainability of a manufacturing process or company. A multitude of visions, concepts, tools, and policies are used both academically and industrially to improve the environmental effect of manufacturing; a majority of these approaches have a direct bearing on industrial waste. The identified approaches have in this paper been categorised according to application area, goals, organisational entity, life cycle phase, and waste hierarchy stage; the approaches have also been assessed according to academic prevalence, semantic aspects, and overlaps. In many cases the waste management approaches have similar goals and approaches, which cause confusion and disorientation for companies aiming to synthesise their management systems to fit their waste management strategy. Thus, a study was performed on how waste management approaches can be integrated to reach the vision of zero waste in manufacturing

Optimal seismic upgrade timing in seaports with increasing throughput demand via real options

A real options (RO) formulation is proposed for decision-making on the timing to upgrade the seismic performance of existing seaports with increasing throughput demand in earthquake prone areas. The pay-off of the seismic upgrade investment option is estimated based on projected net earnings, repair cost, and downtime for a damaging reference seismic event having a pre-specified annual probability of occurrence. These projections inform a discrete-time RO binomial tree, following the American option valuation framework, which propagates the probability of the reference seismic event assuming Poisson temporal distribution of earthquake occurrence. The net present value of the expected annual payoff of the considered investment is used as an index supporting risk-informed decision-making discounted by the weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Numerical examples pertaining to decision makers with different capital cost, namely port authorities and terminal operators, operating in different economic environments typical of developed and developing countries are furnished to illustrate the applicability of the proposed RO formulation. It is found that high WACC and/or low throughput growth bring the optimal seismic upgrade timing forward, while earthquake consequences and upgrade cost have almost no influence on this timing

Cyber physical systems implementation for asset management improvement: A framework for the transition

Libro en Open AccessThe transformation of the industry due to recent technologies introduction is an evolving process whose engines are competitiveness and sustainability, understood in its broadest sense (environmental, economic and social). This process is facing, due to the current state of scientific and technological development, a new challenge yet even more important: the transition from discrete technological solutions that respond to isolated problems, to a global conception where the assets, plant, processes and engineering systems are conceived, designed and operated as an integrated complex unit. This vision is evolving besides a set of concepts that are, in some way, to guide this development: Smart Factories, Cyber-Physical Systems, Factory of the Future or Industry 4.0, are examples. The full integration of the operation and maintenance (O&M) processes in the production systems is a key topic within this new paradigm. Not only that, this evolution necessarily results in the emergence of new processes and needs of O&M, i.e. also, the O&M will undergo a profound transformation. The transition from actual isolated production assets to such Industry 4.0 with CPS is far from easy. This document presents a proposal to develop such transition adapting one iteration of the Model of Maintenance Management (MMM) integrated into ISO 55000 to the complexity of incorporating “System of Systems” CPSs maintenance. It involves several stages: identification, prioritization, risk management, planning, scheduling, execution, control, and improvement supported by system engineering techniques and agile/concurrent project managemen

Crowded waters: naval competition in the Asia–Pacific

Overview: This report analyses the regional trend of key nations investing in more capable naval and air platforms. In Northeast Asia, countries include China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In Southeast Asia, the paper looks at Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. This analysis is used to determine potential implications for Australia’s strategic position in the region and for the ADF. Australia’s future force structure decisions have to account in particular for a changing military balance in Southeast Asia

The Baosteel Group – A national champion amongst national champions

In comparison to many of the Chinese and Indian state-owned enterprises examined in this volume, the institutional and competitive position of the Baosteel Group is somewhat unique. First, Baosteel stands out as one of the major success stories of recent Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform. Created as a national steel champion by the Chinese government in the early years of the reform period, and benefiting from the industrial policy support this status has brought during the intervening three decades, Baosteel has earned the status of one of China’s most internationally competitive SOEs. However, Baosteel is also unique in that it does not dominate the Chinese steel sector. Accounting for only a small share of Chinese steel production, Baosteel’s position is one of a technological leader within a competitive market structure populated by a large ‘national champions group’ of SOEs. Moreover, Baosteel has also faced special obligations to implement national industrial policies, by acting as a technological leader tasked with the role of acquiring and upgrading ailing steelmakers. Understanding Baosteel’s position within the Chinese steel sector as a ‘national champion amongst national champions’ is critical to explaining its operational characteristics, its special relationship with the Chinese government, and the benefits and costs this has carried for the firm

Practices for strategic capacity management in Malaysian manufacturing firms

While the notion of manufacturing capabilities is a long-standing notion in research on operations management, its actual implementation and management has been hardly researched. Five case studies in Malaysia offered the opportunity to examine the practice of manufacturing managers with regard to strategic capability management. The data collection and analysis was structured by using the notion of Strategic Capacity Management. Whereas traditionally literature has demonstrated the beneficial impact of an appropriate manufacturing strategy on the business strategy and performance, the study highlights the difficulty of managers to set the strategy, let alone implementing it. This is partly caused by the immense pressure of customers in these dominantly Make-To-Order environments for SMEs. Current concepts for manufacturing capabilities have insufficiently accounted this phenomenon and an outline of a research agenda is presented