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

Making sense of enterprise systems in institutions: a case study of the re-implementation of an accounting system

Whereas previous research provides a number of accounts of failure prone enterprise system (ES) implementations, empirical evidence of the re-implementation of an accounting system in a Scandinavian high-tech company shows how the system became highly integrated, accepted by its users, and well-aligned to the work processes. To learn from this case study, we investigate the interactive and dynamic relationships among the enterprise system, people and institutional properties. We investigate the institutional structures and the sensemaking processes at play to identify how the idea of an efficient accounting system travelled from a national to a local level, how the system moved from being highly customized to becoming a standard package and how the users’ enactment of the system reinforced existing institutional practices. Based on the findings, we frame our contributions into five lessons learned: (1) An ES implementation entails mutual adaptations between the organization, human actors and enterprise system; (2) “small is beautiful” is almost a truism but may turn out to be an appropriate starting point; (3) a certain level of resilience is essential to cope with future upgrades and enhancements; (4) the recognition of professional identity and roles is vital for ES adaptation; and (5) first customizing and then un-customizing the ES may be a valuable approach towards integrating the system. We relate these lessons to ES adaptations in general in discussing the study’s contributions and implications

Symposium on Disaster Resilience and Built Environment Education: Celebrating Project Successes: Book of Abstracts

Among many communities in the EU and beyond, disasters pose significant concerns and challenges. With growing population and infrastructures, the world’s exposure to disaster related hazards is increasing. In addition to loss of life, disasters greatly hamper the social-economic capacity of the member countries and also of the union as a whole. Swiss Re’s latest sigma report (2014) highlights the 308 disaster events in 2013, of which 150 were natural catastrophes and 158 man-made. Almost 26,000 people lost their lives or went missing in the disasters. Europe suffered the two most expensive natural disasters in insurance terms. The first was the massive flooding in Central and Eastern Europe in May and June, after four days of heavy rain that caused large-scale damage across Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. It led to $4.1 billion in paid claims on$16.5 billion in economic losses. The second was the hailstorm that hit Germany and France in late July, causing $3.8 billion in insurance payments on$4.8 billion in economic losses. Most of those claims came from heavily populated areas of Germany. Altogether, Europe had economic losses worth $33 billion for$15 billion in insurance payouts. For the first time in history the world has experienced three consecutive years where annual economic losses have exceeded $100 billio

A resiliency framework for an enterprise cloud

This paper presents a systematic approach to develop a resilient software system which can be developed as emerging services and analytics for resiliency. While using the resiliency as a good example for enterprise cloud security, all resilient characteristics should be blended together to produce greater impacts. A framework, Cloud Computing Adoption Framework (CCAF), is presented in details. CCAF has four major types of emerging services and each one has been explained in details with regard to the individual function and how each one can be integrated. CCAF is an architectural framework that blends software resilience, service components and guidelines together and provides real case studies to produce greater impacts to the organizations adopting Cloud Computing and security. CCAF provides business alignments and provides agility, efficiency and integration for business competitive edge. In order to validate user requirements and system designs, a large scale survey has been conducted with detailed analysis provided for each major question. We present our discussion and conclude that the use of CCAF framework can illustrate software resilience and security improvement for enterprise security. CCAF framework itself is validated as an emerging service for Enterprise Cloud Computing with analytics showing survey analysi

Global state, local decisions: Decentralized NFV for ISPs via enhanced SDN

The network functions virtualization paradigm is rapidly gaining interest among Internet service providers. However, the transition to this paradigm on ISP networks comes with a unique set of challenges: legacy equipment already in place, heterogeneous traffic from multiple clients, and very large scalability requirements. In this article we thoroughly analyze such challenges and discuss NFV design guidelines that address them efficiently. Particularly, we show that a decentralization of NFV control while maintaining global state improves scalability, offers better per-flow decisions and simplifies the implementation of virtual network functions. Building on top of such principles, we propose a partially decentralized NFV architecture enabled via an enhanced software-defined networking infrastructure. We also perform a qualitative analysis of the architecture to identify advantages and challenges. Finally, we determine the bottleneck component, based on the qualitative analysis, which we implement and benchmark in order to assess the feasibility of the architecture.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Adapting the community sector for climate extremes

Abstract People experiencing poverty and inequality will be affected first and worst by the impacts of climate change to infrastructure and human settlements, including those caused by increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events and natural disasters. They have the least capacity to cope, to adapt, to move and to recover. Community service organisations (CSOs) play a critical role in supporting individuals, families and communities experiencing poverty and inequality to build resilience and respond to adverse changes in circumstances. As such, the services they provide comprise a critical component of social infrastructure in human settlements. However, very little is understood about CSOs own vulnerability to – or their role in managing and mitigating risks to their clients and the community from – climate change impacts to physical infrastructure. The Extreme Weather, Climate Change and the Community Sector – Risks and Adaptations project examined the relationship between physical and social infrastructure (in the form of CSO service provision). Specifically, the ways in which the climate-driven failure of CSO service delivery worsens risks to the individuals and communities they serve and, on the other hand, how preparedness may reduce vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather impacts to human settlements and infrastructure.The research comprised a comprehensive and critical scoping, examination and review of existing research findings and an audit, examination and judgment-based evaluation of the current vulnerabilities and capacities of CSOs under projected climate change scenarios. It employed three key methods of consultation and data collection. A literature review examined research conducted to date in Australia and comparative countries internationally on the vulnerability and climate change adaptation needs of CSOs. A program of 10 Community Sector Professional Climate Workshops consulted over 150 CSO representatives to develop a qualitative record of extreme event and climate change risks and corresponding adaptation strategies specific to CSOs. A national survey of CSOs, which resulted in the participation of approximately 500 organisations, produced a quantitative data set about the nature of CSO vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather impacts to infrastructure, whether and how CSOs are approaching the adaptation task and key barriers to adaptation.While the methods employed and the absence of empirical data sets quantifying CSO vulnerability to climate change impacts create limitations to the evidence-base produced, findings from the research suggest that CSOs are highly vulnerable and not well prepared to respond to climate change and extreme weather impacts to physical infrastructure and that this underlying organisational vulnerability worsens the vulnerability of people experiencing poverty and inequality to climate change. However, the project results indicate that if well adapted, CSOs have the willingness, specialist skills, assets and capacity to make a major contribution to the resilience and adaptive capacity of their clients and the community more broadly (sections of which will be plunged into adversity by extreme events). Despite this willingness, the evidence presented shows that few CSOs have undertaken significant action to prepare for climate change and worsening extreme weather events. Key barriers to adaptation identified through the research are inadequate financial resources, lack of institutionalised knowledge and skills for adaptation and the belief that climate change adaptation is beyond the scope of CSOs core business. On the other hand, key indicators of organisational resilience to climate change and extreme weather impacts include: level of knowledge about extreme weather risks, past experience of an extreme weather event and organisational size.Given its size, scope and the critical role the Australian community sector plays in building client and community resilience and in assisting communities to respond to and recover from the devastating impacts of extreme weather events and natural disasters, the research identifies serious gaps in both the policy frameworks and the research base required to ensure the sector’s resilience and adaptive capacity – gaps which appear to have already had serious consequences. To address these gaps, a series of recommendations has been prepared to enable the development and implementation of a comprehensive, sector-specific adaptation and preparedness program, which includes mechanisms to institutionalise knowledge and skills, streamlined tools appropriate to the needs and capacity of a diverse range of organisations and a benchmarking system to allow progress towards resilience and preparedness to be monitored. Future research priorities for adaptation in this sector have also been identified

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure