Delivering better outcomes through customer-led project management: the case of the major project BT 21st Century Network in the UK

Traditional approaches of major project management take the strategy of selecting a supplier-led prime/systems integrator. Although this strategy pushes a significant amount of risk to the supplier, project performance may suffer due to lower engagement of the customer in the anticipation of potential issues involving a major project. Thus, this research investigates the implications of the customer, as opposed to a selected external supplier, assuming the role of systems/prime integrator, as a Problem Structuring Method (PSM) to better deal with the soft side and uncertainties of the project. A case study approach is conducted on the major project BT 21st Century Network (BT21CN) to demonstrate that customer-led systems integration projects may provide more balance in the relationship and distribution of risks between supplier and customer, having a positive impact on project performance, accelerating the development of BT’s organisational capabilities, and producing better project outcomes in the long term

Cost Efficiency Optimization for Industrial Automation

This chapter aims at shedding light on low power technologies as the key enablers for industrial automation. It discusses the different types of costs involved in harsh industrial environments, with a focus on the damage penalty and battery replenishment costs for the sensor motes deployed across the production line. It analyses the reciprocal relationship and trade-off analysis for these costs to suggest some optimization strategies for ultimate production efficiency. The chapter presents an overview of the aforementioned low energy networking protocols and highlights the key technologies and the results of long range wide area networks evaluation. Energy harvested from renewable energy sources, available in the industrial environment, can dramatically play its role to improve both performance and production efficiency in industry 4.0. Harvesting sources available in the industry are considered to demonstrate the huge cost savings and the great impact of the availability of this surplus energy on the industrial cost optimization process

Leveraging semantics for actionable intrusion detection in building automation systems

\u3cp\u3eIn smart buildings, physical components (e.g., controllers, sensors, and actuators) are interconnected and communicate with each other using network protocols such as BACnet. Many smart building networks are now connected to the Internet, enabling attackers to exploit vulnerabilities in critical buildings. Network monitoring is crucial to detect such attacks and allow building operators to react accordingly. In this paper, we propose an intrusion detection system for building automation networks that detects known and unknown attacks, as well as anomalous behavior. It does so by leveraging protocol knowledge and specific BACnet semantics: by using this information, the alerts raised by our system are meaningful and actionable. To validate our approach, we use a real-world dataset coming from the building network of a Dutch university, as well as a simulated dataset generated in our lab facilities.\u3c/p\u3

The Influence of Microchemistry and Processing Conditions on the Softening Behavior of Cold-Rolled Al-Mn-Fe-Si Alloys

Motivated by an increased focus on recycling of aluminium alloys, for which elements like Mn, Fe and Si tend to increase, a comprehensive investigation of the softening behavior during annealing after cold rolling of Al-Mn-Fe-Si alloys has been carried out. It is clearly demonstrated that the kinetics and final microstructure are the result of a delicate balance between processing conditions and microchemistry. In general, at the same processing condition, more and finer dispersoids, whether pre-existing or formed during annealing (concurrent precipitation) strongly affect the kinetics and either mainly suppress recrystallization or give coarse non-equiaxed recrystallized grains. Faster softening kinetics is observed at large deformations and conditions less affected by dispersoids, together with equiaxed fine grains. The precipitation behavior before the completion of recrystallization is accelerated by high solid solution levels of Mn, large deformations and high temperature. However, even with a strong supersaturation of Mn in solid solution, annealing at high temperature accelerates recrystallization so that it is mainly completed before substantial concurrent precipitation take place, giving a fine equiaxed grain structure. Moreover, annealing treatments at low heating rates produce more inhomogeneous microstructures than isothermal annealing