Facility layout problem: Bibliometric and benchmarking analysis

Facility layout problem is related to the location of departments in a facility area, with the aim of determining the most effective configuration. Researches based on different approaches have been published in the last six decades and, to prove the effectiveness of the results obtained, several instances have been developed. This paper presents a general overview on the extant literature on facility layout problems in order to identify the main research trends and propose future research questions. Firstly, in order to give the reader an overview of the literature, a bibliometric analysis is presented. Then, a clusterization of the papers referred to the main instances reported in literature was carried out in order to create a database that can be a useful tool in the benchmarking procedure for researchers that would approach this kind of problems

Project management information systems (Pmiss): A statistical-based analysis for the evaluation of software packages features

Project Managers (PMs) working in competitive markets are finding Project Management Information Systems (PMISs) useful for planning, organizing and controlling projects of varying complexity. A wide variety of PMIS software is available, suitable for projects differing in scope and user needs. This paper identifies the most useful features found in PMISs. An extensive literature review and analysis of commercial software is made to identify the main features of PMISs. After-wards, the list is reduced by a panel of project management experts, and a statistical analysis is performed on data acquired by means of two different surveys. The relative importance of listed features is properly computed, and the interactions between the respondent’s profiles and PMIS features are also investigated by cluster and respondents’ analyses. The paper provides information for researchers and practitioners interested in PMISs packages and their applications. Furthermore, the analyses may help practitioners when choosing a PMIS, and also for developers of PMISs software in understanding user needs

Occupational health and safety issues in human-robot collaboration: State of the art and open challenges

Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) refers to the interaction of workers and robots in a shared workspace. Owing to the integration of the industrial automation strengths with the inimitable cognitive capabilities of humans, HRC is paramount to move towards advanced and sustainable production systems. Although the overall safety of collaborative robotics has increased over time, further research efforts are needed to allow humans to operate alongside robots, with awareness and trust. Numerous safety concerns are open, and either new or enhanced technical, procedural and organizational measures have to be investigated to design and implement inherently safe and ergonomic automation solutions, aligning the systems performance and the human safety. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis and a literature review are carried out in the present paper to provide a comprehensive overview of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) issues in HRC. As a result, the most researched topics and application areas, and the possible future lines of research are identified. Reviewed articles stress the central role played by humans during collaboration, underlining the need to integrate the human factor in the hazard analysis and risk assessment. Human-centered design and cognitive engineering principles also require further investigations to increase the worker acceptance and trust during collaboration. Deepened studies are compulsory in the healthcare sector, to investigate the social and ethical implications of HRC. Whatever the application context is, the implementation of more and more advanced technologies is fundamental to overcome the current HRC safety concerns, designing low-risk HRC systems while ensuring the system productivity

Economic and Environmental Assessment of Biomass Power Plants in Southern Italy

In 2019, Europe adopted the New Green Deal as a strategic plan to become a competitive, resource-efficient, and driven economy by reducing its gas emissions and carbon footprint. Due the COVID-19 pandemic, this strategic plan was recently updated to expedite the green transition of European industries. Therefore, the present paper deals with the problem of deciding an appropriate size for a biomass plant that directly produces electric energy by means of two different conversion processes: combustion and gasification. After an initial estimation of the energy potential in western Sicily, GIS data of biomass growth were used to identify the appropriate size for the power plants under investigation. The economic feasibility of biomass utilization was evaluated over a capacity range of 10 to 30 MW, considering total capital investments, revenues from energy sales, and total operating costs. Moreover, the effect of variations on incentive prices was analyzed by means of a sensitivity analysis. Comparing the different plant solutions considered, the environmental sustainability was also analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The results showed that the combustion solution had a higher profitability and a lower environmental impact for each plant size. The obtained results also demonstrated that providing power from residual biomass in small agricultural communities would significantly reduce their environmental impacts while improving the economic feasibility of their waste management practices

Life cycle analysis of innovative building materials based on circular coffee ground supply chain

The construction sector is widely recognized as one of the most polluting mainly due to its intensive exploitation of natural resources and large energy consumption to produce traditional building materials. In the last years, alternative building materials have been developed with the aim to reduce the environmental burden of this sector. In particular, the use of geopolymer mortars as alternative cementitious materials is gaining increasing acceptance among scientists. Numerous laboratory studies demonstrate their suitability for construction applications, highlighting the potential environmental benefits that can be obtained from their large-scale production. This study aims to perform a preliminary evaluation of the environmental performance of a geopolymer mortar, whose production includes the reuse of a food waste: Spent Coffee Ground (SCG). By using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, an environmental comparison with a traditional production of cement mortar was carried out on the basis of the Global Warming Potential (GWP) indicator

A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SUSTAINABLE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT IN SMALL POWER PLANTS

The importance of environmentally-friendly electricity production is recognized as one of the most important challenges of our future, covering a broad context of research topics and promoting future scenarios based on renewable energies and new technologies. In the short term, however, energy generation will still be largely relying on power plants fired with fossil fuels whose emissions of pollutants are regulated by the industrial emissions directive in the EU legislation. Such directive does not apply to small and medium combustion plants, which until now, have only been subject to national regulations. As part of its air quality package from December 2013, the EU Commission has proposed a new directive which forces such plants to provide periodic measurements of pollutants, keep records of their environmental impact and provide information to the competent authorities. This situation has renewed the attention towards the systems for continuous emission monitoring in SMC. Such systems are in fact very expensive, therefore they require an optimized design in order be affordable for a SMC. This research, in particular, refers to the context of micro-grids and isolated power generation plants based on a set of diesel engine generators (GenSet) and addresses the topic of the development decision support systems (DSS) for environmentally-friendly power genset management. The system is based on a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) reactor coupled with continuous emission monitoring system (CEMS) to reduce the environmental impact and generate information to support the management processes. The paper also reports the preliminary experimental results obtained in the power plant located in the small island of Favignana in the Mediterranean sea. These results demonstrate how the system developed and the approach proposed reduces the emission of pollutants with a substantial benefit for the local community, in a context where more environmentally efficient production technologies can hardly be employed

Development of a Vessel Scheduling Optimization Model to improve Maritime Transport sustainability

The social and economic development of the islands is generally dependent on the interconnection level with the mainland obtained through maritime transport services. When connecting many islands, the route planning is essential and typically a variety of constraints must be considered. Various optimization methods have been established to improve cost-efficiency but today environmental concerns, like the reduction of CO2 emissions, have become mandatory. This paper proposes a vessel scheduling optimization model able to simultaneously consider compulsory and optional tasks and vehicle-dependent profits. The algorithm was applied to seven islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea located in front of Sicily, named “Aeolian Islands”. Considering the regional requirements in terms of minimum number of routes and maximum fare prices for each season, this research compared the optimal vessels option obtained maximizing the profit with the one obtained minimizing the emissions. In particular, we have conducted three different analyses, in the first one we have considered only the mandatory routes while the second one was carried out identifying a series of potentially attractive additional activities based on historical demand data provided by the company that currently manages the service. Finally, the third analysis addresses a scenario where older fuel-powered vessels were replaced with hybrid electric ones

Real time assessment of hand-arm vibration system based on capacitive MEMS accelerometers

Vibrations are a well known potential cause of health diseases and therefore constitute a main concern for the safety of workers in a large number of activities. In order to prevent health hazards, national and international institutions have issued laws and directives which establish recommended limits to the workers’ exposure to vibrations during operations. Consequently, if the amount of adsorbed vibration exceeds the allowable daily limits the worker has to stop his job. Recent wireless sensing and communicating technologies can effectively be employed for such purpose, allowing to develop monitoring customized devices at affordable cost which could be easily employed during the workers’ activity. In such context, the present research proposes an innovative system aimed at estimating the hand–arm exposure to vibration according to the Standard EN ISO 5349-1:2004. In particular the proposed system is based on Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and involves the design of a compact wearable unit to be attached to the waist of the operator and a fixed station for data storage and analysis. The paper reports the design of such a system and an experimental test performed on hand held shakers commonly employed for olive harvesting. The results highlight the opportunities offered by these emerging technologies in developing intelligent devices to be included in the worker’s equipment which might significantly modify the current approach to safety management in the next future

Automatic detection and agronomic characterization of olive groves using high-resolution imagery and LIDAR data

The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union grants subsidies for olive production. Areas of intensified olive farming will be of major importance for the increasing demand for oil production of the next decades, and countries with a high ratio of intensively and super-intensively managed olive groves will be more competitive than others, since they are able to reduce production costs. It can be estimated that about 25-40% of the Sicilian oliviculture must be defined as “marginal”. Modern olive cultivation systems, which permit the mechanization of pruning and harvest operations, are limited. Agronomists, landscape planners, policy decision-makers and other professionals have a growing need for accurate and cost-effective information on land use in general and agronomic parameters in the particular. The availability of high spatial resolution imagery has enabled researchers to propose analysis tools on agricultural parcel and tree level. In our study, we test the performance of WorldView-2 imagery relative to the detection of olive groves and the delineation of olive tree crowns, using an object-oriented approach of image classification in combined use with LIDAR data. We selected two sites, which differ in their environmental conditions and in their agronomic parameters of olive grove cultivation. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is the low necessary quantity of data input and its automatibility. However, it should be applied in other study areas to test if the good results of accuracy assessment can be confirmed. Data extracted by the proposed methodology can be used as input data for decision-making support systems for olive grove management