Technological Innovations and Brand Performance

The forces of competition and the ever changing needs of the customers are a big threat of performance of the firms. In Morocco for instance, some of the leading have been marred with poor performance. Against this background, the present study sought to establish the relationship between technological innovations and organizational performance of Moroccan brands. The specific objectives of the study were to: establish the technological innovation practices among Moroccan brands and their effect on organizational performance as well as analyze the risks presented by technological innovations among Moroccan brands and their effect on organizational performance. The study adopted descriptive survey research design that was quantitative in nature. This study targeted 53 high technology brands with operations in Rabat, Morocco. The selection of these firms was done purposively with some of the criteria being firms that had been operation for at least 15 years with well established, independent and functional IT departments. Thus, purposive sampling was adopted in this study to select these firms. Information was obtained in its primary form using the questionnaire and the analysis was through percentages, means correlation and regression analysis. It was observed that the highly adopted aspect of technological innovation in the studied firm was technological knowledge management (M=4.01) followed by information sharing (M=3.86), incremental technological innovation (M=3.84), information technology infrastructure (M=3.75) and radical technological innovation (M=3.72). Technological innovations presented a number of risks to Moroccan brands which data breach (M=3.89) followed by data privacy (M=3.79), reputational risk (M=3.78), operational risks (M=3.78) and lastly cyber security risk (M=3.73). The study recommends that risk managers working in Moroccan brands should review and enhance on the existing risk management frameworks so as to effectively manage the risks that are occasioned by technological innovations. The ICT managers working in Moroccan brands should constantly enhance and review the existing technologies to permit and allow innovation. The policy makers working in the government in Morocco should enact sound rules and regulation to guide the adoption of new technologies among the firms so as to permit innovation for superior organizational performance

Industrial process simulation for manufacturing performance assessment

Industrial process simulation for manufacturing process assessment As the industrial requirements change at an important pace due to the evolution of Technology and the digitalization of Manufacturing and Production operations, the necessity of investigating potential alternatives toward more efficient industrial line design arises more intensely than ever. The urge towards the digitalization of production in the context of the industry 4.0 framework has shaped the rise of simulation in the design and operation of manufacturing systems. Industrial system simulation is a power tool for designing and evaluating the performance of manufacturing systems, due to its low cost, low risk, and quick analysis and insight that it provides. This paper studies the usage of simulation models and ARENA simulation software in the analysis and simulation of an industrial manufacturing line located in lab TR2 at UPC, using Discrete Event System technique, which is based on queue theory. This paper proposed a methodic method and steps used for modelling the lined by using DES technique, which describes a system response in occurrence of an event possibly required to meet certain conditions. Finally, the paper addresses the improvement opportunity on the retainers of the line to better its production capacity.Incomin

A Case Study on The Mechanical and Durability Properties of a Concrete Using Recycled Aggregates

In Morocco, Recycled Aggregate Concrete (RAC) is not promoted unlike developed countries like France, Canada, US and many others. This article aims to present a Moroccan study related to the characterization of RAC and compare it with several studies all over the world. It focuses on compressive strength as the main mechanical characteristic and the porosity as the physical property that affects durability. The protocol is based on crushing concrete from demolished building and producing aggregates that are used in making experimental samples of RAC with different percentages of replacing Natural Aggregates (NA) by recycled ones. The first part of experimental study is to determine compressive strength of these samples after 7, 21, 28 and 90 days of confectioning it. Test results prove that above 25% of replacement level, the compression drops considerably and the Recycled Aggregates (RA) can’t replace the naturel ones. The second part of studies focuses on studying porosity as indicator of durability according to the performance approach. It concludes that the RAC may be used in a construction with a required life of 100 years specially building and roads. For high standards constructions or construction in a specific environment, more studies should be done. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091768 Full Text: PD

Tuning the properties of carbon fiber-reinforced poly (phenylene sulphide) laminates via incorporation of inorganic fullerene-like WS2 nanoparticles

Novel carbon fiber (CF)-reinforced poly(phenylene sulphide) (PPS) laminates incorporating inorganic fullerene-like tungsten disulfide (IF-WS2) nanoparticles were prepared via melt-blending and hot-press processing. The influence of the IF-WS2 on the morphology, thermal, mechanical and tribological properties of PPS/CF composites was investigated. Efficient nanoparticle dispersion within the matrix was attained without using surfactants. A progressive rise in thermal stability was found with increasing IF-WS2 loading, as revealed by thermogravimetric analysis. The addition of low nanoparticle contents retarded the crystallization of the matrix, whereas concentrations equal or higher than 1.0 wt% increased both the crystallization temperature and degree of crystallinity compared to those of PPS/CF. Mechanical tests indicated that with only 1.0 wt% IF-WS2 the flexural modulus and strength of PPS/CF improved by 17 and 14%, respectively, without loss in toughness, ascribed to a synergistic effect between the two fillers. A significant enhancement in the storage modulus and glass transition temperature was also observed. Moreover, the wear rate and coefficient of friction strongly decreased, attributed to the lubricant role of the IF-WS2 combined with their reinforcing effect. These inorganic nanoparticles show great potential to improve the mechanical and tribological properties of conventional thermoplastic/CF composites for structural applications

Mechanical and thermal behaviour of isotactic polypropylene reinforced with inorganic fullerene-like WS2 nanoparticles: Effect of filler loading and temperature

The thermal and mechanical behaviour of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) nanocomposites reinforced with different loadings of inorganic fullerene-like tungsten disulfide (IF-WS2) nanoparticles was investigated. The IF-WS2 noticeably enhanced the polymer stiffness and strength, ascribed to their uniform dispersion, the formation of a large nanoparticle?matrix interface combined with a nucleating effect on iPP crystallization. Their reinforcement effect was more pronounced at high temperatures. However, a drop in ductility and toughness was found at higher IF-WS2 concentrations. The tensile behaviour of the nanocomposites was extremely sensitive to the strain rate and temperature, and their yield strength was properly described by the Eyring s equation. The activation energy increased while the activation volume decreased with increasing nanoparticle loading, indicating a reduction in polymer chain motion. The nanoparticles improved the thermomechanical properties of iPP: raised the glass transition and heat deflection temperatures while decreased the coefficient of thermal expansion. The nanocomposites also displayed superior flame retardancy with longer ignition time and reduced peak heat release rate. Further, a gradual rise in thermal conductivity was found with increasing IF-WS2 loading both in the glassy and rubbery states. The results presented herein highlight the benefits and high potential of using IF-nanoparticles for enhancing the thermomechanical properties of thermoplastic polymers compared to other nanoscale fillers

Parkinson’s diagnosis hybrid system based on deep learning classification with imbalanced dataset

Brain degeneration involves several neurological troubles such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Since this neurodegenerative disorder has no known cure, early detection has a paramount role in improving the patient’s life. Research has shown that voice disorder is one of the first symptoms detected. The application of deep learning techniques to data extracted from voice allows the production of a diagnostic support system for the Parkinson’s disease detection. In this work, we adopted the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) technique to solve the imbalanced class problems. We performed feature selection, relying on the Chi-square feature technique to choose the most significant attributes. We opted for three deep learning classifiers, which are long-short term memory (LSTM), bidirectional LSTM (Bi-LSTM), and deep-LSTM (D-LSTM). After tuning the parameters by selecting different options, the experiment results show that the D-LSTM technique outperformed the LSTM and Bi-LSTM ones. It yielded the best score for both the imbalanced original dataset and for the balanced dataset with accuracy scores of 94.87% and 97.44%, respectively

Thermoplastic Polymer Nanocomposites Based on Inorganic Fullerene-like Nanoparticles and Inorganic Nanotubes

Using inorganic fullerene-like (IF) nanoparticles and inorganic nanotubes (INT) in organic-inorganic hybrid composite, materials provide the potential for improving thermal, mechanical, and tribological properties of conventional composites. The processing of such high-performance hybrid thermoplastic polymer nanocomposites is achieved via melt-blending without the aid of any modifier or compatibilizing agent. The incorporation of small quantities (0.1-4 wt.%) of IF/INTs (tungsten disulfide, IF-WS2 or molybdenum disulfide, MoS2) generates notable performance enhancements through reinforcement effects and excellent lubricating ability in comparison with promising carbon nanotubes or other inorganic nanoscale fillers. It was shown that these IF/INT nanocomposites can provide an effective balance between performance, cost effectiveness, and processability, which is of significant importance for extending the practical applications of diverse hierarchical thermoplastic-based composites

Development of novel melt-processable biopolymer nanocomposites based on poly(L-lactic acid) and WS2 inorganic nanotubes.

The use of tungsten disulphide inorganic nanotubes (INT-WS2) offers the opportunity to produce novel and advanced biopolymer-based nanocomposite materials with excellent nanoparticle dispersion without the need for modifiers or surfactants via conventional melt blending. The study of the non-isothermal melt-crystallization kinetics provides a clear picture of the transformation of poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) molecules from the non-ordered to the ordered state. The overall crystallization rate, final crystallinity and subsequent melting behaviour of PLLA were controlled by both the incorporation of INT-WS2 and the variation of the cooling rate. In particular, it was shown that INT-WS2 exhibits much more prominent nucleation activity on the crystallization of PLLA than other specific nucleating agents or nano-sized fillers. These features may be advantageous for the enhancement of mechanical properties and process-ability of PLLA-based materials. PLLA/INT-WS2 nanocomposites can be employed as low cost biodegradable materials for many eco-friendly and medical applications, and the exceptional crystallization behaviour observed opens new perspectives for scale-up and broader applications