Modeling the implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies in the Cypriot manufacturing industry

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.For the Cyprus Manufacturing Industry, previously committed to the production of medium quality standard products, the increased and changing nature of competitive pressures represents a fundamental challenge. The major problems the Cyprus manufacturing industry is facing appear to be labour shortages, together with low product competitiveness and poor production organization. It is widely believed that the introduction of Advanced Manufacturing technologies (AMTs) offers a means of resolving the above problems but their implementation is a risky venture. The main objective of the study was to examine the implementation of AMTs in the Cyprus Manufacturing Industry, identify the factors leading to successful application of these technologies and based on these factors develop an integrated process plan to facilitate their successful implementation. A survey was conducted on a sample of 40 companies using personal interviews based on a purpose designed comprehensive questionnaire. The questionnaire encompassed the international trends in the management and implementation of AMT. Successes and failures have been considered in terms of the Technical, Manufacturing and the Business aspects and influences of each technology. It has been found that the most important factors contributing to the successful implementation of AMT were the level of long term planning, the fitness level of AMT in the existing processes and the attention given to infrastructure preparation and human resource development. Based on the success factors identified an integrated planning model has been developed. The model incorporates all the planning procedures and implementation parameters to be followed in order to ensure successful AMT adoption and implementation. The model addresses the three main stages of AMT adoption and implementation: (a) the planning phase, (b) the selection, transfer and pre-implementation phase and (c) the post implementation phase. For each phase the steps to be followed are fully explored and analysed. Finally the usefulness of the model in facilitating the successful application of AMT is illustrated through two case studies

Factors affecting the innovation process in the Cypriot food and beverage industry

The Food and Beverage industry, a leading sector of the Cypriot manufacturing industry is under investigation in our study. The influence of innovation as a development vehicle is considered and factors affecting it have been investigated. In order to define and introduce these factors affecting innovation in the Cypriot manufacturing sector a nationwide survey is carried out. All five prefectures (Nicosia, Ammochostos, Limasol, Larnaca and Paphos) are covered and a sample of 5% of the whole Food and Beverage sector is surveyed. A closed questionnaire, made of five sections is used in order to collect information that will be used in a second stage in order to introduce the innovation factors affecting industrial development. The results illustrate the gradual adoption of a pro-innovation culture in the Cypriot Food and Beverage Industry. Among others it was shown, that companies that have proceeded with product innovation, process innovation and organizational innovation have experienced the impact of innovation on their organizational performance.peer-reviewe

Design of a chattering-free sliding mode control system for robust position control of a quadrotor

In this paper, the major components of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), including the flight control system, mechanical design, as well as the embedded electronic systems are reported. The ultimate aim is to use the developed platform in nuclear environments for decommissioning applications. Due to the hazards and uncertainties present in these nuclear environments, a more basic control system may be unable to reliably control the UAV. Therefore, the main focus of this study is on the development of a robust multi-channel control system, based on sliding mode control (SMC), for nested position and attitude control of a quadrotor UAV in 3D space. The robustness of the control systems is evaluated under parameter disturbance in the form of payload uncertainties. The final developed platform shall be capable of autonomous Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM), however, this will be the subject of a separate study

Exploring the sentiment of entrepreneurs on Twitter

Sentiment analysis is an evolving field of study that employs artificial intelligence techniques to identify the emotions and opinions expressed in a given text. Applying sentiment analysis to study the billions of messages that circulate in popular online social media platforms has raised numerous opportunities for exploring the emotional expressions of their users. In this paper we combine sentiment analysis with natural language processing and topic analysis techniques and conduct two different studies to examine whether engagement in entrepreneurship is associated with more positive emotions expressed on Twitter. In study 1, we investigate three samples with 6.717.308, 13.253.244, and 62.067.509 tweets respectively. We find that entrepreneurs express more positive emotions than non-entrepreneurs for most topics. We also find that social entrepreneurs express more positive emotions, and that serial entrepreneurs express less positive emotions than other entrepreneurs. In study 2, we use 21.491.962 tweets to explore 37.225 job-status changes by individuals who entered or quit entrepreneurship. We find that a job change to entrepreneurship is associated with a shift in the expression of emotions to more positive ones

Stability of large amplitude forced motion of a simply supported beam

The large amplitude steady state forced motion of a simply supported beam with ends restrained to remain a fixed distance apart is represented by a series of linear normal modes. The validity of the assumption of single mode response is examined by investigating the stability of the unforced modes when a single mode is forced. The equations include the effects of an initial axial load and numerical examples are presented for axial loads in both the pre- and post-buckling regions. It is concluded that the approximation of single mode response is not always valid because of the possible instability of higher modes.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32653/1/0000018.pd

Application of the theory of neural networks for structural health monitoring in aluminium curtain-wall systems

The scope of the present research effort was to evaluate whether artificial neural networks could be used in order to detect changes in aluminium curtain-wall systems. First of all the behavior of the aluminium curtain-wall systems was studied. Then by creating, for various cases, finite element models, the displacements and modal properties of the structure were calculated (pseudoexperiments) and a database was created. Using the created database, feed-forward neural networks were formed, tested, trained and evaluated. The obtained results showed that NNs can be an efficient method for the identification and localization of imperfections in curtain-wall systems.Στόχος της διατριβής είναι να διερευνήσει κατά πόσο είναι εφικτό μέσα από επιλύσεις προσομοιωμάτων πεπερασμένων στοιχείων και με την εφαρμογή σύγχρονων αντιλήψεων τεχνητής νοημοσύνης, να υλοποιηθούν προσεγγίσεις παρακολούθησης της δομικής συμπεριφοράς συστημάτων υαλοπετασμάτων και να εντοπιστούν τυχόν βλάβες σε αυτά. Εξετάζεται ο τρόπος στήριξης του υαλοπετάσματος στο φέρον κτίριο και με τη χρήση λογισμικού πραγματοποιείται παραμετρική προσομοίωση της κατασκευής, διερευνάται πιθανή ατέλεια στις στηρίξεις και μορφώνεται κατάλληλη βάση αποτελεσμάτων. Υλοποιούνται διάφορα νευρωνικά δίκτυα και μέσα από επαναληπτικές εφαρμογές εξετάζεται η καταλληλότητά τους. Η μεθοδολογία που προτείνεται στη διατριβή, αποδεικνύει ότι μέσα από αριθμητικά προσομοιώματα και με τη χρήση ΤΝΔ είναι δυνατόν να επιτευχθεί παρακολούθηση της δομικής συμπεριφοράς συστημάτων υαλοπετασμάτων και η πρόβλεψη με ικανοποιητική ακρίβεια, της θέσης βλάβης ή/και βλαβών σε τέτοιες κατασκευές

Γεω - χώροι δεδομένων: υπηρεσίες τοποθεσίας του χρήστη και εμπλουτισμός με δεδομένα παραγόμενα από το πλήθος

The technological advances during the past years have resulted in the change of how people use and interact with the internet. Novel Web technologies and resulting applications have lead to a participatory data ecosystem that when utilized properly will lead to more rewarding services. People have been using cell phones for social interaction, willingly producing vast amounts of information. This, in addition to the technological ability of cell phones to track locations have lead to the consideration of advanced location-based services that take into account not only the location but all of the user-generated data that is produced implicitly or explicitly. In this PhD thesis, we investigate the case of this kind of Location-based Services and specifically of how to improve the typical location-based queries with user-generated content taken from sources in the web in the form of texts. Towards this goal we have focused our research on three main directions: (a) Proposal of access methods that take advantage of the additional information taken from user-generated data, (b) proposal of new location-based queries on top of the proposed access methods that leverage the use of crowdsourced information, (c) efficiency of the execution of the queries leveraging the state of the art in geo-spatial algorithms, graph algorithms and research on set similarity. An extensive literature review has been made in for an in-depth research on the areas of interest towards this PhD thesis. New access methods and query processing algorithms have been proposed in order to support location-based services that are enriched with user-generated content that is extracted from web platforms. Experimental evaluation of the proposed algorithms and techniques prove their efficiency. A framework that works entirely within the database in order to support distance queries on large-scale graphs is proposed. Finally, we present a framework for the collection, analysis, querying and visualisation of social network data,that aims in the support for the proposed enhanced location-based services.Οι τεχνολογικές εξελίξεις κατά τη διάρκεια των τελευταίων χρόνων έχουν οδηγήσει στην αλλαγή στον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι άνθρωποι χρησιμοποιούν και να αλληλεπιδρούν με το διαδίκτυο. Οι νέες τεχνολογίες ιστού καθώς και οι εφαρμογές που έχουν προκύψει, οδηγούν σε ένα οικοσύστημα το οποίο όταν χρησιμοποιηθεί σωστά, θα οδηγεί σε χρήσιμες στον άνθρωπο υπηρεσίες. Η χρήση των κινητών τηλεφώνων για την κοινωνική αλληλεπίδραση, οδηγεί στην παραγωγή τεράστιων ποσοτήτων δεδομένων. Αυτό, σε συνδυασμό με την ικανότητα των κινητών τηλεφώνων να ανιχνεύουν τη γεωγραφική τους θέση, οδηγεί στην αναζήτηση πιο προηγμένων υπηρεσιών που λαμβάνουν υπόψη όχι μόνο τη γεωγραφική θέση αλλά και το σύνολο των δεδομένων που δημιουργούνται από τους χρήστες. Σε αυτή την διδακτορική διατριβή, μελετούμε την περίπτωση αυτού του είδους των Υπηρεσιών Θέσης και συγκεκριμένα το πώς μπορούν να βελτιωθούν τα τυπικά ερωτήματα υπηρεσιών θέσης με περιεχόμενο που προέρχεται από πηγές στο διαδίκτυο μέσω των χρηστών, με τη μορφή των κειμένων. Προς την κατεύθυνση αυτή έχουμε εστιάσει την έρευνά μας σε τρεις κύριες κατευθύνσεις: (α) Πρόταση μεθόδων ευρετηρίασης που επωφελούνται από τις πρόσθετες πληροφορίες μέσω του περιεχομένου, (β) πρόταση νέων ερωτημάτων και αλγορίθμων για βελτιωμένες υπηρεσίες θέσης, που εκμεταλλεύονται τις νέες μεθόδους ευρετηρίασης, και (γ) την αποτελεσματικότητα της εκτέλεσης των ερωτημάτων αξιοποιώντας την πιο πρόσφατη έρευνα σε αλγόριθμους εγγύτητας, αλγόριθμους για την εύρεση κοντινότερων μονοπατιών σε γράφους και την έρευνα σχετικά με ομοιότητα συνόλων. Μια εκτενής ανασκόπηση της βιβλιογραφίας έχει πραγματοποιηθεί για μια σε βάθος έρευνα σχετικά με τις περιοχές ενδιαφέροντος που αφορούν αυτή τη διδακτορική διατριβή. Νέες μέθοδοι πρόσβασης και αλγόριθμοι επεξεργασίας επερωτήσεων έχουν προταθεί για να υποστηρίξουν υπηρεσίες θέσης που είναι εμπλουτισμένες με περιεχόμενο που παράγεται από χρήστες και εξάγεται από διαδικτυακές πλατφόρμες. Η πειραματική αξιολόγηση των προτεινόμενων αλγορίθμων και τεχνικών αποδεικνύουν την αποτελεσματικότητά τους. Προτείνεται επίσης ένα σύστημα που λειτουργεί εξ' ολοκλήρου εντός της βάσης δεδομένων, προκειμένου να στηρίξει ερωτήματα απόστασης σε γράφους μεγάλης κλίμακας. Τέλος, παρουσιάζουμε ένα σύστημα για τη συλλογή, ανάλυση, υποβολή επερωτήσεων και την οπτικοποίηση των δεδομένων των κοινωνικών δικτύων, που στοχεύει στην υποστήριξη των προτεινόμενων από αυτή τη διατριβή υπηρεσιών θέσης

Extract Knowledge from Social Networks

The knowledge extraction using data retrieved from Online Social Networks is mainly done through a manual-programming procedure with the use of Application Programming Interfaces. However, the majority of social science researchers has usually low programming experience. Thus, the procedure from data retrieval to knowledge extraction is not a trivial task for them. With this research we aim in the development of a framework that provides the researcher who has low programming experience with the ability of extracting knowledge from information that is mainly available in Online Social Networking platforms. Additionally, we present a case study where we evaluate the existing framework by extracting knowledge for a private organization from a professional social network, contributing new insights to the study of social networks.Web Information SystemsComputer ScienceElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

Insurers are missing an opportunity to provide data-driven services : this will likely have consequences

Digitalization has been sweeping through the insurance landscape. As the changes continue and accelerate, are they likely to have any significant effects on the fundamentals of the insurance industry? Our study suggests that the answer is that they will, and that insurers are underestimating the threat

Lean Supply Chain Management and its Impact on Competitiveness

Due to the increased competition in the business environment and the constant changes in consumer demands and needs, companies should be characterized by adaptability, flexibility, as well as strategic and operational alignment between the different links in their supply chain. However, knowledge is inadequate about the way in which lean supply chain management should be implemented. Such knowledge is more limited even in some developed countries. The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between the implementation of lean supply chain management and business competitiveness. To achieve this, a survey was distributed to businesses of the Greek economy that currently goes under major changes. One important finding was that lean supply chain management leads to a strong competitive advantage, especially through cost and waste reduction. Further, it was found that lean supply chain management results in meeting customer requirements, increased profitability, reduction of inventory levels, the introduction of just-in-time systems and increased sustainability. However, organizational structure, employees’ resistance to change, organization’s rules, procedures and policies, as well as lack of robust and professional relationships with suppliers, are obstacles to be overcome when implementing lean supply chain management systems