Towards Pharma 4.0 in clinical trials: a future-orientated perspective

Pharma 4.0, a technology ecosystem in drug development analogous to Industry 4.0 in healthcare, is transforming the traditional approach to drug discovery and development, aligning product quality with less time to market, and creating intelligent stakeholder networks through effective collaborations. The wide range of potential Pharma 4.0 networks have produced several conceptualizations, which have led to a lack of clarity and definition. The main emphasis of this paper is on the clinical trial stage of drug development in the Pharma 4.0 era. It highlights the merged computerized technologies that are currently used in clinical research, and proposes a framework for integrating Pharma 4.0 technologies. The impact of and barriers to employing the proposed framework are discussed, highlighting its potential and some future research applications

Enterprise Competency Modelling in Practice-an Exploratory Case Study

AbstractCompetency modelling is a standardized way to found an enterprise area of experts. Identifying and managing competences acquired by an enterprise and further representing them in a structured manner provide important knowledge for ‘know-how’ approach. The purpose of this paper is developing a competency based knowledgebase for an enterprise using case study approach. The developed competency knowledgebase for the case study provides information important to decision-making, and can act as an indicator for an enterprise's willingness to engage in robust collaboration

Unraveling the relationship between microstructure and mechanical properties of friction stir-welded copper joints by fuzzy logic neural networks

In this study, fuzzy logic neural networks were employed to optimize the friction stir welding (FSW) process parameters in the joining of copper plates. The FSW parameters were considered as the input variables, for which micro-hardness, nano-hardness, and yield strength of the joints were the responses. The micro-hardness and nano-hardness were measured by Vickers hardness and nanoindentation tests, respectively. The microstructure and substructure of the joints were evaluated by optical, scanning electron, and orientation imaging microscopes. The optimum process parameters through which the maximum strength was achieved were the tool rotational rate of 560 rpm, tool traverse speed of 175 mm/min, and tool axial force of 2.27 kN. The low heat input joints, owing to the finer grain sizes, high density of dislocations, and larger Taylor factors, indicated greater strength relative to the high input joints. Microstructure characterization revealed that dominant strengthening mechanisms of the joints were dislocation density, texture effect, and grain boundary hardening

Intelligent E-commerce logistics platform using hybrid agent based approach

This paper proposes a hybrid agent-based approach for the scheduling and synchronization of e-commerce logistics parks (EcLP). This is accomplished by integrating intelligent distribution centers within the e-commerce environment. The proposed platform has been developed based on an agent technology, which not only serves for decentralization and synchronization purposes but also it has been optimized for the transportation and logistics of the overall system. Moreover, mobile agent-based communication mechanisms between the hardware agents and the software agents were developed, and the proposed hybrid agent-based platform was implemented and tested based on a case study. Following this, the results were compared to a conventional system based on four main indicators

Blockchain-based ubiquitous manufacturing: a secure and reliable cyber-physical system

With product customisation and emerging business opportunities, small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) must find ways to collaborate and share competency in a trustable manner to survive a turbulent market. Therefore, service industry turns to the manufacturing industry and SMEs migrate to cloud manufacturing (CM) and ubiquitous manufacturing. However, existing platforms use centralised networking, which suffers from security, scalability and big-data problems. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based platform as a trustable network to eradicate third-party problems, which can improve the scalability, security and big-data problems for SMEs. Our proposed platform is developed based on a consortium blockchain which provides a peer-to-peer communication network between the end user and the service provider. We improve existing consensus mechanism and communication protocol based on a cyber-physical system (CPS), via an autonomous agent. Firstly, we provide a review of cloud manufacturing, ubiquitous manufacturing and blockchain-based manufacturing approaches by highlighting the main problems. Then, the proposed platform, blockchain ubiquitous manufacturing (BCUM), is explained, based on its architecture, consensus algorithm and CPS, with the help of autonomous agent communication. The proposed platform has been developed for 3D printing companies which are geographically distributed and tested based on network performance and three practical scenarios