197 research outputs found
The servitization of manufacturing:a review of literature and reflection on future challenges
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report the state-of-the-art of servitization by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on the topic. The paper aims to define the servitization concept, report on its origin, features and drivers and give examples of its adoption along with future research challenges. Design/methodology/approach – In determining the scope of this study, the focus is on articles that are central and relevant to servitization within a wider manufacturing context. The methodology consists of identifying relevant publication databases, searching these using a wide range of key words and phrases associated with servitization, and then fully reviewing each article in turn. The key findings and their implications for research are all described. Findings – Servitization is the innovation of an organisation's capabilities and processes to shift from selling products to selling integrated products and services that deliver value in use. There are a diverse range of servitization examples in the literature. These tend to emphasize the potential to maintain revenue streams and improve profitability. Practical implications – Servitization does not represent a panacea for manufactures. However, it is a concept of significant potential value, providing routes for companies to move up the value chain and exploit higher value business activities. There is little work to date that can be used to help practitioners. Originality/value – This paper provides a useful review of servitization and a platform on which to base more in-depth research into the broader topic of service-led competitive strategy by drawing on the work from other related research communities
On Thermodynamical Properties of Some Coset CFT Backgrounds
We investigate the thermodynamical features of two Lorentzian signature
backgrounds that arise in string theory as exact CFTs and possess more than two
disconnected asymptotic regions: the 2-d charged black hole and the
Nappi-Witten cosmological model. We find multiple smooth disconnected Euclidean
versions of the charged black hole background. They are characterized by
different temperatures and electro-chemical potentials. We show that there is
no straightforward analog of the Hartle-Hawking state that would express these
thermodynamical features. We also obtain multiple Euclidean versions of the
Nappi-Witten cosmological model and study their singularity structure. It
suggests to associate a non-isotropic temperature with this background.Comment: 1+39 pages, harvmac, 8 eps figure
Dynamical locality and covariance: What makes a physical theory the same in all spacetimes?
The question of what it means for a theory to describe the same physics on
all spacetimes (SPASs) is discussed. As there may be many answers to this
question, we isolate a necessary condition, the SPASs property, that should be
satisfied by any reasonable notion of SPASs. This requires that if two theories
conform to a common notion of SPASs, with one a subtheory of the other, and are
isomorphic in some particular spacetime, then they should be isomorphic in all
globally hyperbolic spacetimes (of given dimension). The SPASs property is
formulated in a functorial setting broad enough to describe general physical
theories describing processes in spacetime, subject to very minimal
assumptions. By explicit constructions, the full class of locally covariant
theories is shown not to satisfy the SPASs property, establishing that there is
no notion of SPASs encompassing all such theories. It is also shown that all
locally covariant theories obeying the time-slice property possess two local
substructures, one kinematical (obtained directly from the functorial
structure) and the other dynamical (obtained from a natural form of dynamics,
termed relative Cauchy evolution). The covariance properties of relative Cauchy
evolution and the kinematic and dynamical substructures are analyzed in detail.
Calling local covariant theories dynamically local if their kinematical and
dynamical local substructures coincide, it is shown that the class of
dynamically local theories fulfills the SPASs property. As an application in
quantum field theory, we give a model independent proof of the impossibility of
making a covariant choice of preferred state in all spacetimes, for theories
obeying dynamical locality together with typical assumptions.Comment: 60 pages, LaTeX. Version to appear in Annales Henri Poincar
Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events
The - oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of
23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II
asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B
mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the
flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference
distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives ps.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter
Charge Asymmetries for D, D_s and Lambda_c Production in Sigma- - Nucleus Interactions at 340 GeV/c
CERN experiment WA89 has studied charmed particles produced by a Sigma^- beam
at 340 GeV/c on nuclear targets. Production of particles which have light
quarks in common with the beam is compared to production of those which do not.
Considerable production asymmetries between D^- and D^p, D_s^ and D_s^+ and
Lambda_c and Antilambda_c are observed. The results are compared with pion beam
data and with theoretical calculations.Comment: LaTeX ; 16 pages including 4 ps figure
Microflares and the Statistics of X-ray Flares
This review surveys the statistics of solar X-ray flares, emphasising the new
views that RHESSI has given us of the weaker events (the microflares). The new
data reveal that these microflares strongly resemble more energetic events in
most respects; they occur solely within active regions and exhibit
high-temperature/nonthermal emissions in approximately the same proportion as
major events. We discuss the distributions of flare parameters (e.g., peak
flux) and how these parameters correlate, for instance via the Neupert effect.
We also highlight the systematic biases involved in intercomparing data
representing many decades of event magnitude. The intermittency of the
flare/microflare occurrence, both in space and in time, argues that these
discrete events do not explain general coronal heating, either in active
regions or in the quiet Sun.Comment: To be published in Space Science Reviews (2011
- …