Maturity Models in Industrial Internet: a Review

The introduction of assembly lines in industrial plants marked the beginning of the third industrial revolution. The support of information technology has enabled continuous progresses, up to the digitalisation of the processes. In this context, the further innovation characterised by the introduction of Cyber-Physical Systems and other enabling technologies has allowed the fourth industrial revolution. Proposed by the German government, Industry 4.0 appealed to both researchers and practitioners. Since the appearance of the term Industry 4.0, the linked-term Industrial Internet has been introduced to indicate the technology stack and knowledge management required by Industry 4.0. Industrial Internet makes a factory smart by applying advanced information and communication systems and future-oriented technologies, as well as new principles of knowledge management. Undeniably, such a system introduces greater complexity in terms of technologies, knowledge and socio-cultural aspects. Companies are often unprepared to deal with innovation issues, because they lack knowledge and competences and they are not culturally prepared for the relative novelties, but especially because they lack the necessary technological pre-requisites to develop the appropriate technology stack. From this perspective, different models of maturity have been developed, both in academic and technical environments, to support companies in understanding their position within the paradigm of the Industrial Internet. Starting from a quantitative review of the maturity models designed in the general literature, this article develops a qualitative review of the models applied in Industry 4.0, characterising all relevant models and proposing future perspectives to improve existing models and develop new ones

A new perspective on Workload Control by measuring operating performances through an economic valorization

Workload Control (WLC) is a production planning and control system conceived to reduce queuing times of job-shop systems, and to offer a solution to the lead time syndrome; a critical issue that often bewilders make-to-order manufacturers. Nowadays, advantages of WLC are unanimously acknowledged, but real successful stories are still limited. This paper starts from the lack of a consistent way to assess performance of WLC, an important burden for its acceptance in the industry. As researchers often put more focus on the performance measures that better confirm their hypotheses, many measures, related to different WLC features, have emerged over years. However, this excess of measures may even mislead practitioners, in the evaluation of alternative production planning and control systems. To close this gap, we propose quantifying the main benefit of WLC in economic terms, as this is the easiest, and probably only way, to compare different and even conflicting performance measures. Costs and incomes are identified and used to develop an overall economic measure that can be used to evaluate, or even to fine tune, the operating features of WLC. The quality of our approach is finally demonstrated via simulation, considering the 6-machines job-shop scenario typically adopted as benchmark in technical literature

Hybrid production planning and control systems: towards an application of lean manufacturing to the MTO sector

Negli ultimi decenni, il concetto di lean production ha assunto sempre più, dapprima nel mondo anglosassone ed ultimamente anche in Italia, un ruolo di primaria importanza. La lean si propone come il paradigma manifatturiero di riferimento, resistendo alla competizione di altre filosofie produttive contemporanee (World Class Manufacturing, 6σ, etc.). Obiettivo del presente lavoro di tesi è indagare circa le origini e la definizione di lean, individuandone vantaggi e svantaggi e proponendo alcune soluzioni che si prefiggono di ovviare ai limiti individuati: dopo aver evidenziato come la VSM, strumento principe della lean, proponga solamente il passaggio a due sistemi di pianificazione e controllo della produzione (i.e. kanban e CONWIP), si è cercato di ampliare lo strumento VSM per consentire l’implementazione di sistemi PPC ibridi. Inoltre, questa tesi propone alcune implementazioni pratiche della lean in contesti caratterizzati da strategie produttive diverse rispetto a quelle impiegate in Toyota. La prima direzione è stata percorsa principalmente dal punto di vista della ricerca scientifica, la seconda, invece, è stata percorsa tramite 3 collaborazioni e progetti di ricerca industriale che si propongono di relazionare i passi compiuti e le difficoltà incontrate nell’implementazione della lean in differenti aziende.In the last decades, an ever-growing attention has been paid to the concept of lean production, both in the US and in Europe: lean has become the standard manufacturing paradigm, despite the competition of other production philosophies, such as World Class Manufacturing or 6σ. Goal of this thesis is to investigate the origins and the current definition of lean, by identifying advantages and disadvantages of the concept and proposing some solutions that aim to overcome these limits. Firstly, VSM is recognized as the main tool for implementing lean manufacturing. Unfortunately, this technique always leads to the implementation of two Production Planning and Control (PPC) systems (i.e. kanban and CONWIP). This thesis presents some enhancements of the standard VSM tool that support the implementation of hybrid PPC systems. Furthermore, some practical implementations of lean are proposed and carried out in particular production environments, by reporting steps and complexities of 3 research projects developed with different firms

Design and simulation of CONWIP in the complex flexible job shop of a Make-To-Order manufacturing firm

This paper presents a methodology for the design and integration of CONWIP in a make-to-order firm. The approach proposed was applied directly to the flexible job shop of a real manufacturing firm in order to assess the validity of the methodology. After the description of the whole plant layout, attention was focused on a section of the shop floor (21 workstations). The CONWIP system deals with multiple-product families and is characterized by path-type cards and a pull-from-the-bottleneck scheme. The cards release strategy and a customized dispatching rule were created to meet the firm's specific needs. After the simulation model of the present state was built and validated, the future state to be implemented was created and simulated (i.e. the CONWIP system). The comparison between the two systems achieved excellent results, and showed that CONWIP is a very interesting tool for planning and controlling a complex flexible job shop

The impact of RFID technologies on inventory accuracy in the apparel retailing: Evidence from the field

In this paper, we assess the level of inventory accuracy that can be reached by adopting radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for inventory count operations in the fashion retailing. Thanks to an in-field implementation, we carried out two series of RFID inventory counts and compared the resulting accuracy level with that obtained exploiting the traditional barcode (BC) technology, so as to highlight the main pros and cons of the RFID adoption. As a general conclusion, the findings from the experimental campaigns and the analyses carried out suggest that RFID inventory counts are more reliable thanBCones. Moreover, under several circumstances, RFID allows detecting out-of-stock situations that are not evident when using either the BC technology or the inventory data stored in the company\u2019 information system. From those findings, a trend of the inventory accuracy as a function of the time required for RFID inventory counts is empirically derived. Such a trend can be exploited in practical cases to estimate the accuracy level achievable with inventory counts depending on the time dedicated to those activities

Fatty liver is associated with an increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease-Evidence from three different disease models: NAFLD, HCV and HIV

Fatty liver, which frequently coexists with necroinflammatory and fibrotic changes, may occur in the setting of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and chronic infections due to either hepatitis C virus (HCV) or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). These three pathologic conditions are associated with an increased prevalence and incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). In this multidisciplinary clinical review, we aim to discuss the ever-expanding wealth of clinical and epidemiological evidence supporting a key role of fatty liver in the development of T2D and CVD in patients with NAFLD and in those with HCV or HIV infections. For each of these three common diseases, the epidemiological features, pathophysiologic mechanisms and clinical implications of the presence of fatty liver in predicting the risk of incident T2D and CVD are examined in depth. Collectively, the data discussed in this updated review, which follows an innovative comparative approach, further reinforce the conclusion that the presence of fatty/inflamed/fibrotic liver might be a shared important determinant for the development of T2D and CVD in patients with NAFLD, HCV or HIV. This review may also open new avenues in the clinical and research arenas and paves the way for the planning of future, well-designed prospective and intervention studies

The Impact of Digital Technologies and Sustainable Practices on Circular Supply Chain Management

Background: This study investigates how firms can enhance the functionality of their circular supply chains (CSCs) by adopting a portfolio of sustainable practices as well as digital technologies to increase performance. It analyzes the benefits that firms can obtain when investing in specific technologies to boost the impact of technologies and sustainable practices on CSCs, and further increase performance. Methods: We test several hypotheses by using structural equation modeling as well as multi-group analysis to verify whether CSCs can be achieved through sustainable practices and technologies and improve the firms' performance. Results: The empirical results partially support the research hypotheses. While the main research hypotheses are fully supported, the analysis of single digital technologies reveals that only a few solutions can contribute to both the management and the improvement of the CSC. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that the identification of green suppliers and ad hoc environmental regulations, combined with attention to the origin and provenance of raw materials, can promote a CSC. Moreover, transportation management systems (TMS) and the internet of things (IoT) are efficient technologies for managing transportation and product flow in the CSC. Furthermore, machine learning (ML) is effective in making positive green decisions, and 3D printing can extend product life

Toward a bioethical issue: induced multiple pregnancies and neonatal outcomes

Assisted reproductive technology has made great progress during the last three decades. After the initial enthusiasm, many ethical, legal and social issues related to the application of these procedures began to evolve. Multifetal pregnancy and fetal reduction, embryo cryopreservation, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, risks of birth defects and other adverse outcome associated with assisted reproductive technology are issues that have to be addressed building future collaborative studies and continuing the debate on related ethical issues

RFID technology for blood tracking: An experimental approach for benchmarking different devices

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the paper is to design a testing protocol to measure performances of RFID devices applied to blood supply chain, and to implement an experimental campaign in order to collect performance data. The protocol matches operational conditions in blood supply chain and is particularly tailored to some critical processes, which can benefit from RFID adoption. The paper thus strives at benchmarking performances of inlays, fixed and handheld RFID readers, when deployed in the blood supply chain processes. DESIGN, METHODOLOGY, APPROACH: The adopted testing protocol enables the assessment of performances of RFID devices in processes of the blood supply chain, since it has been developed peculiarly to emulate critical logistics processes. The testing protocol has been designed jointly with hospital personnel involved in every day operations on blood bags and tubes in order to improve processes, in terms of safety and reliability. The testing protocol has been applied to 3 inlays, 2 fixed readers, 1 mobile handheld in 3 logistics processes, all operating according to UHF EPC class 1 gen 2 protocols and ETSI regulations. We measured and compared read rates, accuracies and read times. FINDINGS: The results of the test give a direct insight of performances to be expected from different RFID devices when deployed in a real-world environment. Therefore, it is possible to give answers to how a specific piece of hardware - such as an inlay or a reader - performs, and how it can be effectively used to improve security of patients in healthcare. At the same time, researchers focusing on the business process reengineering of blood supply chain can assess the technical feasibility of the RFID-reengineered logistics processes in order to improve the safety of end users