Negotiating and Sharing Capacities of Large Additive Manufacturing Networks

This paper focuses on dynamics of productive and demanding nodes for Scattered Manufacturing Networks within 3D Printings contexts. The various nodes issue orders or sell production slots in order to achieve their own aims. An orchestrator coordinates the dynamics along the network according to principles of sustainability, equated shared resources and transparency by managing communication activities among nodes. In particular, suitable tradeoffs occur by a unique framework that, with the aim of optimizing the overall costs, suggests either logistics paths along the network or negotiation policies among nodes in order to reallocate resources. Numerical examples present the proposed approach. Keywords: Industry 4.0, Additive Manufacturing, Sharing Capacities, Operation Models, Optimization of networks JEL Codes:  C02; O21 and P4

integrating capacity and logistics of large additive manufacturing networks

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Improvements of Decision Support Systems for Public Administrations via a Mechanism of Co-creation of Value

This paper focuses on a possible improvement of knowledge-based decision support systems for human resource management within Public Administrations, using a co-creation of value's mechanism, according to the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) paradigm. In particular, it applies ontology-driven data entry procedures to trigger the cooperation between the Public Administration itself and its employees. Advantages in such sense are evident: constraining the data entry process by means of the term definition ontology improves the quality of gathered data, thus reducing potential mismatching problems and allowing a suitable skill gap analysis among real and ideal workers competence profiles. The procedure foresees the following steps: analyzing organograms and job descriptions; modelling Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (KSA) for job descriptions; transforming KSAs of job descriptions into a standard-based model with integrations of other characteristics; extracting information from Curricula Vitae according to the selected model; comparing profiles and roles played by the employees. The 'a priori' ontology-driven approach adequately supports the operations that involve both the Public Administration and employees, as for the data storage of job descriptions and curricula vitae. The comparison step is useful to understand if employees perform roles that are coherent with their own professional profiles. The proposed approach has been experimented on a small test case and the results show that its objective evaluation represents an improvement for a decision support system for the re-organization of Italian Public Administrations where, unfortunately often, people are engaged in activities that are not so close to their competences

Growth Effects on the Network Dynamics with Applications to the Cardiovascular System

We consider a 1D model for the simulation of the cardiovascular system. We solve it numerically using the discontinuous Galerkin scheme, and we perform an optimization scenario to find the best value for the heart rate in order to obtain a desired outflow. We study the effects of a growing network (in size, length and radii) on the heart rate, assuming that this needs to adapt for delivering a desired outflow. As inflow condition we we prescribe the flow and as outflow condition we use the terminal reflection coefficient

Management of supply chains for the wine production

This paper focuses on a supply network, that deals with wine production, that is typical of Southern Italy. Such a phenomenon is analyzed by differential equations, that model goods on arcs and queues for the exceeding parts. Various numerical schemes are proposed for simulations. A strategy of Situation Awareness allows understanding a suitable choice of the input flows to the supply network in consideration. The obtained results indicate that a Situation Awareness approach permits to find compromises for the modulation of production queues and the optimization of the overall system characteristics

A Knowledge Management strategy to identify an expert in Enterprise

The aim of this paper is to define a strategy to identify, manage and take advantage of competences in the enterprise via figures of opportune experts, with consequent advantages for workers and users in terms of problem solving. In such a context, industrial aspects, such as resources localization, research time and accessibility to the organizational hierarchy and the work load, are also considered. This allows to distinguish three different phases in finding the experts: Initialization, in which a score is assigned to workers on the base of competence levels; Propagation, where the search accuracy is improved using trust and closeness measures; Localization, where updates of scores are made in terms of social and geographical positions of users/enterprises and experts. The three phases allows to identify inside an enterprise the expert, who has the best competence and is close to the resource, that is in the shortest delay possible

A fuzzy consensus approach for group decision making with variable importance of experts

Events that deal with Group Decision Making are continuously studied in order to provide a suitable representation of different opinions, with the aim of reaching the consensus of all experts involved in decision processes. In this paper, the authors, focusing on employees' evaluations inside Italian companies, propose an extension of a fuzzy consensus model dealing with a feedback process to guide the decisions. Precisely, a fuzzy logic approach is used to compute the importance degree of the experts considering, besides their experiences and roles, the profile of the resource to evaluate, i.e. a factor that indicates the working trend of the employee. This allows more fair evaluations of resources, as the importance of each expert also considers the behavior of employees during their whole working period. A case study, that focus on the evaluations inside a real Italian company, is useful to analyze the proposed approach

E-Cultural Value Co-Creation. A Proposed Model for the Heritage Management

Purpose Starting from an overview of current trends, the paper recognizes the concrete threat on misleading information contents that, instead of enriching, inhibit and weaken processes of e-cultural value co-creation. Thus, the paper proposes a model that allows validating the circle of information coming from different web sources. Methodology The paper starts with a theoretical-conceptual analysis about the potentialities that are offered by new technologies but, at the same time, it highlights concrete threats that they may cause in terms of value creation. Within a fuzzy logic context, a competence model is proposed for dealing with complexity in service systems management. Findings Findings highligth the possibility of: improving e-cultural value processes using UGCs; outlining a model for the information contents’ reliability; providing contributions to generate processes for e-cultural value co-creation. Practical implications The paper offers interesting suggestions to help heritage managers and policy makers to consider opportunities, risks, technical issues and consequent strategies that generate correct processes for e-cultural value co-creation

A hysteresis type strategy for server reservation in a multi-server queueing system with priority and retrials

This work deals with a possible model of a cell of cognitive radio architectures via a multi-server queueing system with two different types of requests and preemptive priority of one type of requests on the other. Service demands arrive according to Markovian Arrival Processes in order to capture traffic correlation. Cognitive engine tries to find a solution or optimize a performance goal based on the received inputs that define the radio’s current internal state and operating environment. Hence, beside priority mechanisms, a possible deactivation of information to transmit is considered via a hysteresis type strategy for the access to the service, with the aim of smoothing the effects of service interruptions for low priority requests. Fixed values for the thresholds of the strategy are assumed. The system is statistically described by a level-dependent multi-dimensional Markov chain, which allows the computation of stationary probabilities and robust performance indices. Numerical results are presented to compare the system performances in the case of uncorrelated flows and flows with different correlation levels

Differential quadrature-based numerical solutions of a fluid dynamic model for supply chains

In this paper, we discuss a numerical approach for the simulation of a model for supply chains based on both ordinary and partial differential equations. Such a methodology foresees differential quadrature rules and a Picard-like recursion. In its former version, it was proposed for the solution of ordinary differential equations and is here extended to the case of partial differential equations. The outcome is a final non-recursive scheme, which uses matrices and vectors, with consequent advantages for the determination of the local error. A test case shows that traditional methods give worse approximations with respect to the proposed formulation