Connected Autonomous Vehicles: Legal and regulatory considerations

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) are poised to revolutionise transportation making traveling safer, more comfortable, and more sustainable than current modes while reducing costs of traveling substantially. These vehicles will be partially or fully drive themselves, potentially and ultimately requiring no human driver participation at all, having the possibility to collect data on their usage and activities, as well as, communicate among themselves and with road-transport authorities. Therefore, there are a number of implications and areas for consideration within the legal and regulatory aspects of CAV and its associated technologies challenging the status quo of the roles of human drivers and vehicles. This report is of interest to the whole CAV ecosystem and believe it is in everybody’s interest to better understand the legal frameworks in which CAVs must operate and, going forward, to help influence what the future might look like. </p

A case-based cost-benefit consideration for upgrading to an intelligent traffic environment

Within the trend of transforming our daily lives into a smart form, traffic has become one of the development areas for innovators and hence researchers. While many technologies are devised or improved for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), potential impacts of ITS have also raised the interest of researchers. In line with this trend, this study conducted case-based research to identify the potential benefits of ITS implementation in the UK traffic network and to analyse its applicability from a costeffectiveness perspective. In our analysis, we have utilised four use cases in two different road environments -urban and motorway- and analysed their efficiency in three traffic density levels. Our findings demonstrate some specific benefits like the improvement in the safety of urban roads even from the lowest level of technology penetration and also fixed and incurring costs. However, having an immature and continuously developing nature, the field requires more interest and work from researchers in many aspects to obtain further inference about potential benefits and preventable costs.</p

Challenges and opportunities for UK sustainable steel supply chain

In the 1960s, the UK was ranked as the fifth world’s largest steel producer. However, the slow production in 2016 had dropped the UK to 21st in the world. Key challenges such as brutal international competition, high overhead costs, business rates, and energy prices have made many UK steel plants struggle to be cost-competitive. To make the UK steel supply chain to be more sustainable, this study examines key factors that drive sourcing and operational decisions at different echelons. In order to do this, a supply chain flow for steel plates was mapped for two end customers: shipbuilding and wind turbines. From the mapping, two firms were identified and interviewed. Findings from semi-structured interviews reveal that quality, lead time, and cost are the major factors that influence sourcing and operational decisions for both firms. The findings also highlight that traditional steel supply chain structure, poor integration, and unsustainable supply chain provide significant challenges but also opportunities for future UK steel to be a “vital” industry.</p

Delivering the digital dividend: Supply chain digital readiness: A survey of 179 European Manufacturers

The term Industry 4 originates from the high-tech strategy of the German government, which sought to re-define the role of manufacturing post the global economic crisis. It suggests that we are on the cusp of the 4th Industrial Revolution, a cyber physical age, which will be realised over the next 20 years. This report has been designed to enable you to complete a self-assessment of your company’s current Industry 4 readiness, whilst providing a benchmark of current Industry 4 readiness across a group of 53 companies.  </p

Challenges and opportunities for UK sustainable steel supply chain

In the 1960s, the UK was ranked as the fifth world’s largest steel producer. However, the slow production in 2016 had dropped the UK to 21st in the world. Key challenges such as brutal international competition, high overhead costs, business rates, and energy prices have made many UK steel plants struggle to be cost-competitive. To make the UK steel supply chain to be more sustainable, this study examines key factors that drive sourcing and operational decisions at different echelons. In order to do this, a supply chain flow for steel plates was mapped for two end customers: shipbuilding and wind turbines. From the mapping, two firms were identified and interviewed. Findings from semi-structured interviews reveal that quality, lead time, and cost are the major factors that influence sourcing and operational decisions for both firms. The findings also highlight that traditional steel supply chain structure, poor integration, and unsustainable supply chain provide significant challenges but also opportunities for future UK steel to be a “vital” industry.</p

Exploring the relationship between technology adoption orientation, capabilities, service offering and patient satisfaction in general practice in England

Across the world, Healthcare systems had to make radical changes to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic. These changes had a dramatic effect on primary care. Studies in this field provided a generic overview of how technology enabled GPs to offer different services supported by the evidence of existing case studies and surveys. However, there is a lack of understanding the impact of the blended services (face to face and virtual) on the patient satisfaction. This study adopted the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities concepts to explore the change of GPs services.</p

Supply Chain Productivity in construction: Transforming Construction Network Plus digest series

All too often, construction firms focus on improving their own productivity at the expense of the other firms they work with. This reflects their tendency to not engage with a collaborative approach in which all firms involved in a construction project are working together. This reduces overall productivity, so projects overrun on cost and time. This is further exacerbated by a low rate of technological innovation, poor communication and coordination, and the inefficient use of resources. This digest shows how productivity improvements based on supply chain management used in manufacturing could be applied to improve the performance of construction. It presents three considerations for improving productivity in construction: Building end-to-end supply chain integration Achieving ‘economies of repetition’ Adopting digital technologies to improve supply chain planning We know that one size doesn’t fit all, so this digest aims to help firms understand when to focus on supply chain flexibility and when to seek economies of repetition. In this way they will stand a better chance of radically improving productivity across projects and programmes.</p

Increasing competitive advantage and financial certainty throughout the supply chain

Supply Chain Finance (SCF) is emerging as a core initiative to unlock the trapped financial resources within supply chains and mitigate the concentration of financial risks. Effectively implemented, it provides competitive advantage and financial certainty to the involved supply chain members. The innovative financial instruments offered under the SCF umbrella manage and steer the financial flows while keeping them aligned with the material and information flows in the supply chain. These instruments result in a win-win situation for the involved members by improving their Net Working Capital (NWC) and liquidity, strengthening their relationships with the supply chain members and reducing the probability of their bankruptcy. The guide primarily explores the prospects for businesses to tap into the field of SCF. Due to the numerous variations in SCF instruments and related programmes, this guide intends to create a consistent taxonomy of the SCF archetypes that practitioners can use to adopt a particular type of SCF instrument. In order to facilitate the adoption of SCF by businesses, each categorised instrument in the archetype is analysed to provide a detailed view of the underlying mechanisms and characteristics. Practitioners can use the knowledge attained from this guide to adopt SCF either by getting on-board on an SCF programme offered by members of the supply chain, or by offering SCF instruments to other supply chain members. The practitioners will be able to draw a parallel between SCF offerings and their individual financial benefits and requirements, leading to informed decisions related to the offering and acceptance of SCF. Lastly, based on the provided analysis, practitioners can further  explore and analyse SCF instruments based on their individual strengths, requirements and skill set. This guide starts with the context and background of SCF, followed by defining the SCF archetypes. The SCF archetypes section is followed by a detailed analysis of SCF instruments in a particular archetype. Finally, SCF instruments are analysed by presenting their deployment mechanism and characteristics.</p

Exploring the relationship between technology adoption orientation, capabilities, service offering and patient satisfaction in general practice in England

Across the world, Healthcare systems had to make radical changes to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic. These changes had a dramatic effect on primary care. Studies in this field provided a generic overview of how technology enabled GPs to offer different services supported by the evidence of existing case studies and surveys. However, there is a lack of understanding the impact of the blended services (face to face and virtual) on the patient satisfaction. This study adopted the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities concepts to explore the change of GPs services.</p

Logistics service providers’ foray into supply chain finance: Developing necessary capabilities

Logistics service providers (LSPs) struggle to offer supply chain finance (SCF) but little is known about how such firms can effectively extend their provision to such services. To address this shortcoming, we first develop a conceptual framework using dynamic capabilities and SCF literature and then elaborate this framework through a case study with four embedded units of analysis. We explicate generic and SCF instrument-specific operational capabilities and identify nuanced enablers of these capabilities in the process. Overall, our work provides a new terminology and structure explaining the provision of SCF by LSPs.</p