Three Fundamental Trade-offs in Expanding Sustainable Distributions of Manufacturing

The background of the research is the trend towards more inclusive manufacturing. This includes all levels of technologies to enable more diverse geographic and demographic distributions of manufacturing, which can improve ecological and social sustainability. Expanding distributions of manufacturing is of interest to governments, companies, communities and individuals. Interest among government and companies relates to manufacturing being re-shored and redistributed. Interest among communities and individuals is in people having more involvement in the production of what they consume: i.e. prosumption. Expansion of geographic distributions has potential to increase ecological sustainability, for example, by reducing long-distance transportation. Expansion of demographic distributions has potential to increase social sustainability, for example, by increasing the diversity of people involved in manufacturing. The dissertation addresses three research gaps concerned with sustainable distributed manufacturing. In particular, the fundamental challenges of three manufacturing trade-offs are addressed as follows: product originality, product complexity, and product unsustainability versus sustainable distributed manufacturing. There are three main findings from the research. First, technological advances enable expansion of sustainable distributed manufacturing of original products, if the products are small simple original products rather than large complicated original products. Second, technological advances enable sustainable distributed manufacturing of products that are more complex than could otherwise be made far from manufacturing infrastructures, but which nonetheless are not the most complex products. Third, technological advances enable more sustainable distributed production of products with unsustainable features, if technological advances are applied also to some existing distributions of manufacturing. Consideration of these three main findings and three further findings, suggests two complementary strategies for expanding sustainable manufacturing distributions: trade-off reduction and trade-off avoidance. Overall, the research is novel through its inclusion of diverse technologies and distributions of manufacturing in order to determine their relative potential to improve the production of physical goods at more diverse locations by more diverse people

Contextual impacts on industrial processes brought by the digital transformation of manufacturing: a systematic review

The digital transformation of manufacturing (a phenomenon also known as "Industry 4.0" or "Smart Manufacturing") is finding a growing interest both at practitioner and academic levels, but is still in its infancy and needs deeper investigation. Even though current and potential advantages of digital manufacturing are remarkable, in terms of improved efficiency, sustainability, customization, and flexibility, only a limited number of companies has already developed ad hoc strategies necessary to achieve a superior performance. Through a systematic review, this study aims at assessing the current state of the art of the academic literature regarding the paradigm shift occurring in the manufacturing settings, in order to provide definitions as well as point out recurring patterns and gaps to be addressed by future research. For the literature search, the most representative keywords, strict criteria, and classification schemes based on authoritative reference studies were used. The final sample of 156 primary publications was analyzed through a systematic coding process to identify theoretical and methodological approaches, together with other significant elements. This analysis allowed a mapping of the literature based on clusters of critical themes to synthesize the developments of different research streams and provide the most representative picture of its current state. Research areas, insights, and gaps resulting from this analysis contributed to create a schematic research agenda, which clearly indicates the space for future evolutions of the state of knowledge in this field

Gross Job Flows in Ukraine: Size, Ownership and Trade Effects

This paper documents and analyses gross job flows and their determinants in Ukraine using a data set of more than 2200 Ukrainian firms operating in manufacturing and non-manufacturing for the years 1998-2000. Job destruction dominates job creation in both 1999 and 2000. Another clear-cut result of our analysis is the strong positive effect of new private firms on net employment growth. We also find an inverse relationship between job reallocation and size for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing, while only in the latter sector is employment growth inversely related with size. The main focus of the paper is the effect of trade flows on employment adjustment in manufacturing. Our results show that both employment growth and job reallocation at the firm and two-digit sector level are affected by strong exposure to import competition and product market competition in export markets. These effects are more pronounced when we consider trade flows to the world at large and to the EU than when the analysis is based on trade flows to the CIS.Job Creation, Job Destruction, Ukraine, Private firms, Trade

Developing a Suitable Methodology for Integrated Supply Chain Analysis in the Australian Beef Industries: a Research Proposal

The Australian Beef Supply Chain is the chain or sequence of all activities from the breeding property to the domestic or overseas consumers. The objective of this research is to describe beef supply chains in Australia and to explore and measure the performance of such chains (i.e. efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity). In addition to this it is to suggest alternative configurations for these supply chains that enhance performance of the businesses concerned and to develop a new design methodology for integrated supply chains based on process modeling, performance analysis and optimization of production and inventory distribution networks

Opportunities for redistributed manufacturing and digital intelligence as enablers of a circular economy

The linear production of consumer goods is characterised by mass manufacture by multinational enterprises and globally dispersed supply chains. The current centralised model has created a distance between the manufacturer and end user, limiting the opportunity for intelligent circular approaches for production and consumption. Through a mixed method approach, opportunities of circularity are explored for the consumer goods sector. The study presents four lenses to analyse three enterprises through a multi-case study approach to explore the potential of digital intelligence and redistributed manufacturing (RDM) as enablers of circular business models. In addition, the study examines whether Discrete Event Simulation can be used to evaluate the circular scenarios identified through quantifying flows of material that determine traditional economic value (cost/tonne). The mixed method approach demonstrates that, a qualitative systemic analysis can reveal opportunities for circularity, gained through implementing ‘digital intelligence’ and distributed models of production and consumption. Furthermore, simulations can provide a quantified evaluation on the effects of introducing circular activities across a supply chain

The Development of RFID in Healthcare in Taiwan

Healthcare industry has unique characteristic about human’s life. Any mistake or medical error will cause the irretrievable regret. Patient safety is the most important issue in recent years. Because the uncertainly of disease occur, the demand of healthcare need, location and types are changed frequently. By the presure of “Self Management Plan”, how to make limited healthcare more effectiveness and effecency is critical for survival. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can be able to provide to identify, tracking and tracing for patient or medical objects directly and continuously. RFID is made object wisdom and process automation. It debase the cost of collect data from first-line in tradition MIS. RFID in Taiwan is more famous. There are four kinds of applications in healthcare industry. Some of them will be the killer application when government’s policy trigger and industry full-scale implement in the future. There are six hospitals deploy RFID in pilot plans by government support. And there are still some necks of bottle in deployment. The research assisted by foreign research and extracts by the experience in expert interview. We point out the critical deployment factors by five dimensions, including: system technology (system readable rate, frequency limitation, instrument interference & Human healthy, and transmission distance), system cost, common standard, health industry infrastructure and system integrate, and the issues in privacy and security by patient. The future research tries to find out the total solution to deploy RFID in healthcare industry to build up the” patient safety healthcare environment”

Scenarios for applying RFID technology in construction project management

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been widely applied in various areas such as retail, electronic transaction, logistic and supply chain management, scientific research, security, etc. It has brought about great benefits in these areas through improving real-time information visibility and traceability. However, a widespread application of RFID in the construction industry has not taken place. One possible reason is that construction practitioners may have not been fully informed of its potentials. This paper aims to investigate various scenarios that can illustrate the uses of RFID technology in construction project management. The research starts from a brief summary of recent developments of RFID technology in different industrial sectors including construction. 16 researchers were split into 3 groups to investigate how RFID can be used in the management of materials, men, and machinery (M 3) for construction projects. Perspectives for future studies are proposed in order to fully realise the potentials. The research encourages a wider adoption of RFID technology in improving current PM practices. It also provides academia with a platform for further exploring the innovative uses of RFID technology in construction. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.postprin

Practical Development Of An Open Architecture Personal Computer-Based Numerical Control (Oapc-Nc) System [TJ1189. P535 2005 f rb].

In this research, an open architecture personal computer-based numerical control (OAPC-NC) system that can generate G-code was developed. Dalam pengajian ini, satu sistem kawalan berarkitektur terbuka berdasarkan komputer perseorangan (OAPC-NC) yang dapat menjalankan kod kawalan berangka telah dicipta