The Use of Tactile Sensors in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: An Overview

Background: This overview aimed to characterize the type, development, and use of haptic technologies for maxillofacial surgical purposes. The work aim is to summarize and evaluate current advantages, drawbacks, and design choices of presented technologies for each field of application in order to address and promote future research as well as to provide a global view of the issue. Methods: Relevant manuscripts were searched electronically through Scopus, MEDLINE/PubMed, and Cochrane Library databases until 1 November 2022. Results: After analyzing the available literature, 31 articles regarding tactile sensors and interfaces, sensorized tools, haptic technologies, and integrated platforms in oral and maxillofacial surgery have been included. Moreover, a quality rating is provided for each article following appropriate evaluation metrics. Discussion: Many efforts have been made to overcome the technological limits of computed assistant diagnosis, surgery, and teaching. Nonetheless, a research gap is evident between dental/maxillofacial surgery and other specialties such as endovascular, laparoscopic, and microsurgery; especially for what concerns electrical and optical-based sensors for instrumented tools and sensorized tools for contact forces detection. The application of existing technologies is mainly focused on digital simulation purposes, and the integration into Computer Assisted Surgery (CAS) is far from being widely actuated. Virtual reality, increasingly adopted in various fields of surgery (e.g., sino-nasal, traumatology, implantology) showed interesting results and has the potential to revolutionize teaching and learning. A major concern regarding the actual state of the art is the absence of randomized control trials and the prevalence of case reports, retrospective cohorts, and experimental studies. Nonetheless, as the research is fast growing, we can expect to see many developments be incorporated into maxillofacial surgery practice, after adequate evaluation by the scientific community

Innovative Virtual Lab for Improving Safety and Port Operations

Computer simulation makes it possible to reproduce real systems and processes in a synthetic environment. In this way virtual analysis turn to be possible and it complex scenarios are suitable to be simulated. In the proposed paper is presented a port system where to study the behavior respect operations and accidents and to consider interaction among multiple players. The simulation is applied to create a Virtual Lab able to evaluate and investigate the development of new procedures, contingency plans during crises. The development of models to be used in simulations is clearly a critical aspect, since the consistency of the simulation depend on the quality of the models and their interaction; in this case the authors used their experience in the field to guarantee a successful Verification and Validation. In this case study, models are used for simulations of phenomena related to port accidents and crises with particular attention to dispersion system of liquid contaminant on sea surface and dispersion of toxic gases into atmosphere. These models have been tested in the Alacres2 simulator in order to create as an effective tool to observe and study the evolution and impact of dangerous situations, as well as a decision-making support to define response plans crises

Stochastic overall equipment effectiveness

International audienceThis paper focuses on the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), a key performance indicator typically adopted to support Lean Manufacturing and Total Productive Maintenance. Unfortunately, being a deterministic metric, the OEE only provides a static representation of a process, but fails to capture the real variability of manufacturing performances. To take into account the stochastic nature of the OEE, an approximated procedure based on the application of the Central Limit Theorem is presented: the OEE is considered as a stochastic random variable and its probability density function (pdf) is generated through the aggregation of the pdf of the basic causes of waste. Notwithstanding its approximated nature, the procedure can be applied in most practical cases, since the accuracy is assured provided that the average OEE is lower than 90% and the variability of the losses is high. The validity of the approach has been also confirmed by an industrial application included in the paper. Obtained results demonstrate that the Stochastic OEE can help in battling variation, for it allows to identify the hidden losses that account for most of the variability and to estimate the impacts of potential corrective actions in terms of both efficiency and efficacy

Stochastic overall equipment effectiveness

This article focuses on the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), a key performance indicator typically adopted to support Lean Manufacturing and Total Productive Maintenance. Unfortunately, being a deterministic metric, the OEE only provides a static representation of a process, but fails to capture the real variability of manufacturing performances. To take into account the stochastic nature of the OEE, an approximated procedure based on the application of the Central Limit Theorem is presented: the OEE is considered as a stochastic random variable and its probability density function (pdf) is generated through the aggregation of the pdf of the basic causes of waste. Notwithstanding its approximated nature, the procedure can be applied in most practical cases, since the accuracy is assured provided that the average OEE is lower than 90% and the variability of the losses is high. The validity of the approach has also been confirmed by an industrial application included in this article. The results obtained demonstrate that the stochastic OEE can help in battling variation, for it allows one to identify the hidden losses that account for most of the variability and to estimate the impacts of potential corrective actions in terms of both efficiency and efficacy

An integrated approach to implement Project Management Information Systems within the Extended Enterprise

Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) are software applications that help managers track projects from their conception to their execution. They provide them with pertinent information and collaborative tools. Currently, most businesses use disconnected instruments which are not designed for managing complex projects. Increases in complexity, both due to the extent of scope and the fact that the users who contribute to the decision making process are physically separated, have led to initiatives that deal with cooperation, teamwork and continuous improvement. This work presents an integrated approach to improve PMIS applicability within the Extended Enterprise. The study regards the definition and the building of a management framework where planning, scheduling, and communicating are made immediate and effective by the adoption of common standards, shared communication and appropriate software tools for the management of whole Supply Chains. The proposed approach has been successfully applied within the shipbuilding industry

Virtual Pooled Inventories for equipment-intensive industries. An implementation in a paper district

Inventory Pooling occurs when different actors share their inventories with the aim of reducing costs while improving performances. The paper-making industry requires large amounts of ready to install spares aimed at assuring high availability, but presents the drawback of excessive inventory costs. Pooling inventories, with the support of appropriate IT solutions, can be considered an effective strategy to improve availability while reducing the total costs. In the present work a real-life implementation within an important Italian paper-making district has been successfully carried out. Throughout the study the most recent theoretical models have been adapted after a methodical analysis that has been devoted to allow the identification and of the most significant issues and the building of a wide and solid agreement among the participants. Indeed, this required a thorough investigation, since the involved actors are generally competitors and only agree to pool inventories if this leads to increasing profits for themselves

A standard agreement for vendor managed inventory

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to define the standard structure of a vendor managed inventory (VMI) agreement, which can be used as a guideline for the early definition of the agreement. Design/methodology/approach – Starting from an industrial application of relevance, the information flow and the technical details, which are to be defined before the operation startup, are identified and discussed. These data are used as the key points for the definition of the basic frame of the agreement. A particular emphasis is given to the “Technical Specification” and the “Service Level Agreement” sections. Findings – It is shown that a VMI agreement should be arranged into parts dealing with the generic and legal sides of the agreement, whereas the technical aspects and the relation-specific topics should be addressed in the annexes. This increases the flexibility of the agreement in that, as the VMI relationship evolves over time, changes will affect only the annexes leaving the main body of the agreement unaltered. Practical implications – The proposed agreement has a flexible structure and can be easily adopted by the personnel involved to correctly define and implement VMI in several industrial fields. Originality/value – By approaching VMI from a practical point of view, this paper identifies the main issues that must be covered in the agreement to fit the needs of both parties and to assure benefits on both sides

A modified harmony search algorithm for the multi-objective flowshop scheduling problem with due dates

This paper presents a modified harmony search optimisation algorithm (MHSO), specifically designed to solve two-and three-objective permutation flowshop scheduling problems, with due dates. To assess its capability, five sets of scheduling problems have been used to compare the MHSO with a known and highly efficient genetic algorithm (GA) chosen as the benchmark. Obtained results show that the new procedure is successful in exploring large regions of the solution space and in finding a significant number of Pareto non-dominated solutions. For those cases where the exhaustive evaluation of sequences can be applied the algorithm is able to find the whole non-dominated Pareto border, along with a considerable number of solutions that share the same optimal values for the considered optimisation parameters. To validate the algorithm, five sets of scheduling problems are investigated in-depth in comparison with the GA. Results obtained by both methods (exhaustive solutions have been provided as well for small sized problems) are fully described and discussed

A fuzzy multi-criteria approach for critical path definition

This paper focuses on the identification of the critical path in complex projects networks. To extend the capabilities of the traditional project-scheduling approaches an innovative framework is presented, which integrates Fuzzy Logic and Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques. The aim is to determine the critical path taking into account not only the expected duration of the tasks, but also additional critical parameters such as: 'duration variability', 'costs', 'shared resources', 'risk of major design revisions' and 'external risks'. To this scope, all the previously mentioned parameters are evaluated following a mathematical approach based on Fuzzy Logic and are aggregated using the 'Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution' (TOPSIS) to de. ne the resulting critical path. An example concerning an engineering project is also presented to better explain the potentials and the capabilities of the proposed approach