State-of-Art Product-Service Systems in Japan – The Latest Japanese Product-service Systems Developments

AbstractThroughout the history of Japan, manufacturing companies have supported the national economy. However, most of them have lost the competitive advantage in the global market today. To contribute to the resurgence of the Japanese manufacturing industry, the authors have conducted studies of design methodology for Product-Service Systems (PSSs) and carried out several collaborative projects with industrial and academic partners. In this paper, the latest developments of PSSs in Japan are presented by introducing the collaborative projects

Framework for Analyzing Customer Involvement in Product-service Systems

Abstract In manufacturing, product-service systems (PSS) that create value by coupling a physical product and a service have been attracting attention. In PSS, it is important for providers to enhance the value-in-use that is perceived by customers in utilizing a product and/or service. Customers play a key role in realizing such value and therefore, are regarded as co-producers in the value-creation process. Although customer involvement plays an essential role in realizing value, previous research has revealed its risks. Therefore, PSS providers are required to adopt a suitable strategy for involving customers. However, current studies do not necessarily offer much guidance on determining such strategies. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a framework that analyzes the benefits and risks of customer involvement in PSS development. This framework aims to identify factors that influence benefits and risks from the viewpoints of characteristics of a PSS and its customer involvement. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated through a case study

A modification of P-diagram for the robust design of product service system

For product-service system (PSS), it is critically important whether PSS could fulfil the requirement of customers. However, in the real business environment, multiple perturbations or noises might happen to weaken the experience of customer. The robustness has become a serious issue for the success of PSS. More seriously, to date, there is no existing robust design method for researchers to prevent the above conditions. Therefore, it is essential to provide a conceptual diagram model to enable researchers and designers to identify key factors for robust PSS design. This paper demonstrates a modification of the Pdiagram, which is the most famous diagram of robust design. The modification is aimed at supporting the robust design of PSS in a conceptual level based on the fulfilment of customers’ requirements during perturbations. To verify the effectiveness, a case study is used to show the feasibility of this diagram.DMG Mor

High-resolution multislice X-ray ptychography of extended thick objects

We report the first demonstration of hard x-ray ptychography using a multislice approach, which can solve the problem of the limited spatial resolution under the projection approximation. We measured ptychographic diffraction patterns of a two-layered object with a 105 μm gap using 7 keV focused coherent x rays. We successfully reconstructed the phase map of each layer at ∼50 nm resolution using a multislice approach, while the resolution was worse than ∼192 nm under the projection approximation. The present method has the potential to enable the three-dimensional high-resolution observation of extended thick specimens in materials science and biology.Akihiro Suzuki, Shin Furutaku, Kei Shimomura, Kazuto Yamauchi, Yoshiki Kohmura, Tetsuya Ishikawa, and Yukio Takahashi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 053903, 2014

Qualitative Simulation for Early-Stage Service Design

Currently, the importance of services is widely accepted in various industries. Given this background, fundamental research on service engineering is carried out quite actively. Service engineering seeks to provide design methodology for services from an engineering perspective. In product and service design, designers are generally forced to spend a lot of redesign works if design changes occur at a late stage of the design process. Thus, it is important for designers to validate design solutions in the early stage(s) of the design process by using simulation methods. However, simulation models in the existing methods are built with quantitative information. In the early stages of the service design process, most of the information about a design solution is still not defined; therefore, it is difficult to obtain sufficient quantitative information. For obtaining such quantitative information, service providers need to offer a designed service to their customers as a trial, which impose much effort for building quantitative simulation models. In order to reduce such risks, this research applies a qualitative simulation method, which can be used to analyze the behavior of systems with fuzzy qualitative information. In this paper, we propose a method to build a qualitative simulation model with the design information available at the early stage(s) of the service design process. This method would enable designers to evaluate a design solution in the early stage of a service design process and would increases quality of the service design.サービス学会主催 The 3rd International Conference on Serviceology (ICServ 2015) July 7-9, 2015 in San Jose, CA, USA

Organoids with cancer stem cell-like properties secrete exosomes and HSP90 in a 3D nanoenvironment

Ability to form cellular aggregations such as tumorspheres and spheroids have been used as a morphological marker of malignant cancer cells and in particular cancer stem cells (CSC). However, the common definition of the types of cellular aggregation formed by cancer cells has not been available. We examined morphologies of 67 cell lines cultured on three dimensional morphology enhancing NanoCulture Plates (NCP) and classified the types of cellular aggregates that form. Among the 67 cell lines, 49 cell lines formed spheres or spheroids, 8 cell lines formed grape-like aggregation (GLA), 8 cell lines formed other types of aggregation, and 3 cell lines formed monolayer sheets. Seven GLA-forming cell lines were derived from adenocarcinoma among the 8 lines. A neuroendocrine adenocarcinoma cell line PC-3 formed asymmetric GLA with ductal structures on the NCPs and rapidly growing asymmetric tumors that metastasized to lymph nodes in immunocompromised mice. In contrast, another adenocarcinoma cell line DU-145 formed spheroids in vitro and spheroid-like tumors in vivo that did not metastasize to lymph nodes until day 50 after transplantation. Culture in the 3D nanoenvironment and in a defined stem cell medium enabled the neuroendocrine adenocarcinoma cells to form slowly growing large organoids that expressed multiple stem cell markers, neuroendocrine markers, intercellular adhesion molecules, and oncogenes in vitro. In contrast, the more commonly used 2D serum-contained environment reduced intercellular adhesion and induced mesenchymal transition and promoted rapid growth of the cells. In addition, the 3D stemness nanoenvironment promoted secretion of HSP90 and EpCAM-exosomes, a marker of CSC phenotype, from the neuroendocrine organoids. These findings indicate that the NCP-based 3D environment enables cells to form stem cell tumoroids with multipotency and model more accurately the in vivo tumor status at the levels of morphology and gene expression

ポップアップアーカイバルタグおよび超音波発信器で調べたエチゼンクラゲの遊泳深度

The swimming depths of 12 individual Nemopilema nomurai with bell diameters of 0.8-1.6 m were investigated using pop-up archival transmitting tags and ultrasonic pingers, and the validity of the research method was evaluated. The N. nomurai studied frequently showed vertical movement, with the swimming depth ranging from 0 to 176 m, The mean swimming depths of most individuals were less than 40 m. The swimming depths of N. nomurai in the northern Japan Sea in the winter were mostly deeper than those of this species in the southern Japan Sea in the autumn. This result suggests that the range of the depths almost depends on the vertical structure of the ocean. Swimming depths during the nighttime were significantly deeper than those during the daytime. More specifically, during the daytime, the swimming depths in the afternoon tended to be shallower than those in the morning, while during the nighttime, the swimming depths after midnight were deeper than those before midnight.エチゼンクラゲ計12個体の遊泳深度をポップアップタグや超音波発信器により調べるとともに，調査手法の妥当性を確認した。エチゼンクラゲは活発な鉛直移動を繰り返していた。遊泳深度は0～176m の範囲で，ほとんどの個体の平均遊泳深度は40m より浅かった。遊泳深度は秋の日本海南部よりも冬の日本海北部の方が深くなる傾向があり，基本的に滞在深度範囲は海洋の鉛直構造に依存していると推測された。遊泳深度は日中よりも夜間の方が深かった。日中には午前より午後の方が浅く，夜間には前半夜よりも後半夜の方が深くなる日周性が確認された