The impact of Industry 4.0 and its opportunities are expected to be significant for manufacturers. A lack of empirical studies creates the need for academic contributions on the critical success ...factors of Industry 4.0 implementations and their resultant improvements for manufacturing businesses. This research uses case studies of eight implementations of Industry 4.0 technologies in Italy to supplement existent literature. An original data set was constructed using a purposely defined research protocol using plant visits and structured interviews. Continuous improvement/lean management emerged as a critical success factor for implementation, together with quality and flexibility-based competition, top management leadership, establishment of inter-functional teams, conducting of preparatory activities, project planning and training activities. Incremental/evolutionary and radical/revolutionary improvements in business model elements are possible outcomes of implementations, while addressing customers' needs emerges as an antecedent to radical/revolutionary improvements. Managers will benefit from understanding how to achieve successful implementations and business improvements.
The cover feature image illustrates the chemical diversity of the detergentome (entirety of all detergents). Detergents – no matter what color or shape – enable many applications in the world today. ...The description of the detergentome provided by Virginia Wycisk and co‐workers will facilitate project planning and the synthesis of detergents for challenging future applications. Cover design by Leonhard H. Urner. More information can be found in the Review by Wycisk, Wagner, and Urner.
AbstractModularization is a well-established method that can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the construction industry. However, the industry continues to struggle with its ...implementation, and not all executed modular projects have resulted in successful project performance. This study investigates the combinatorial effects of modularization critical success factors (CSF) on the cost and schedule performances of industrial modular projects and derives a conceptual model of cost and schedule successes using information from actual cases by applying crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis. The findings confirm that CSFs interactively and collectively affect modular industrial project performance. The most commonly involved CSFs for cost and schedule successes are timely design freeze, owner-furnished/long-lead equipment specification, vendor involvement, and management of execution risks. This work contributes to researchers and practitioners in the industrial sector to improve understanding of the recipes (i.e., CSFs or combinations thereof) for successful modular project planning and execution, which will lead to improved modular project performance in the construction industry.
With the balanced requirement of environmental, economic and social objectives in projects intensifying, the need for integrating sustainability with project management has drawn attention in both ...academia and practice. Especially for large complex construction engineering projects, how to achieve sustainability-related objectives in project practices has been endowed with an irreplaceable significance. This study explores the use of project planning practices for integrating sustainability into project management practices of construction engineering projects. Sustainable project planning, as the main instrument of sustainable project management, was put forward and measured to help project managers and practitioners understand what it is and how to carry it out in construction engineering projects. Qualitative methods based on content analysis of interview data of project managers from construction engineering projects, as well as quantitative method on account of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of statistical data, were used to define and assess the construct of sustainable project planning (SPP). Results indicate that SPP as a project planning practice combine the principles of sustainability should consist of three dimensions—managerial control, risk response, and work consensus—to guarantee sustainable construction and predict project success of construction engineering projects. This study shed light on academics and practices concerning the sustainable management of project planning activities and the achievement of sustainable-related objectives in construction engineering projects.
During their lifecycles, buildings are changed and adapted to the requirements of generations of users, residents and proprietaries over several decades. At the end of their life time, buildings ...undergo either retrofit or deconstruction (and replacement) processes. And, modifications and deviations of the original building structure, equipment and fittings as well as the deterioration and contamination of buildings are often not well documented or only available in an outdated and unstructured way. Thus, in many existing buildings, incomplete, obsolete or fragmented building information is predominating and hampering retrofit and deconstruction project planning.
To plan change or deconstruction measures in existing buildings, buildings are audited manually or with stationary laser scans which requires great effort of skilled staff and expensive equipment. Furthermore, current building information models or deconstruction planning systems are often not able to deal with incomplete building information as it occurs in existing buildings.
We develop a combined system named ResourceApp of a hardware sensor with software modules for building information acquisition, 3D reconstruction, object detection, building inventory generation and optimized project planning. The mobile and wearable system enables planner, experts or decision makers to inspect a building and at the same time record, analyze, reconstruct and store the building digitally. For this purpose, a Kinect sensor acquires point clouds and developed algorithms analyze them in real-time to detect construction elements. From this information, a 3D building model and building inventory is automatically derived. Then, the generated building reconstruction information is used for optimized project planning with a solution algorithm of the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP) at hand.
In contrast to existing approaches, the system allows mobile building recording during building walkthrough, real-time reconstruction and object detection. And, based on the automatically captured and processed building conditions by sensor data, the system performs an integrated project planning of the building deconstruction with available resources and the required decontamination and deconstruction activities. Furthermore, it optimizes time and cost considering secondary raw material recovery, usage of renewable resources, staff qualification, onsite logistics, material storage and recycling options.
Results from field tests on acquisition, reconstruction and deconstruction planning are presented and discussed in an extensive non-residential case study. The case study shows that the building inventory masses are quite well approximated and project planning works well based on the chosen methods. Nevertheless, future testing and parameter adjustment for the automated data processing is needed and will further improve the systems' quality, effectiveness and accuracy. Future research and application areas are seen in the quantification and analysis of the effects of missing data, the integration of material classification and sampling sensors into the system, the system connection to Building Information Modelling (BIM) software via a respective interface and the transfer and extension to retrofit project planning.
•Deconstruction project and risk management is scarcely implemented in existing buildings and main obstacles are data gaps, an unclear level of information and building condition•Remote sensing is a way to capture building information in existing buildings and to allow for documentation enhancement, information processing and project/risk management•An innovative low-cost and mobile hand-held sensor and software system is presented that enables users to acquire a buildings' interior rooms, to reconstruct the building, inventory the building elements and materials and derives a project plan for building deconstruction•Results are presented in a non-residential case study and fit well to experience values of demolition association and literature•Future research opportunities arise from adaptation efforts and practical verification in system parametrization as well as from further functional development with respect to retrofit planning and automated BIM generation
Water electrolysis powered by solar photovoltaics (PV) is one of several promising green hydrogen production technologies. It is critical that the life cycle environmental impacts and net energy ...balance are assessed to ensure that solar-electrolysis can contribute to the deep decarbonisation of global energy. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and net energy analysis (NEA) are tools for environmental and net energy assessment of such technologies. LCA/NEA studies of renewable hydrogen typically include simplifying assumptions, such as steady state operation under average conditions. Whilst simplifications may be necessary for preliminary analysis, marked differences arising from context specific variances and operating constraints may be overlooked. To address this gap, we conduct an LCA/NEA of a hypothetical large-scale solar-electrolysis plant, with a focus on operational sensitivities. We find the most significant component is the solar modules due to the materials and processes used in their manufacture. We find the most significant sensitivity stems from the electrolyser turndown and the commensurate need to buffer solar electricity with storage or grid electricity. Under baseline conditions, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are around one-quarter that of the currently dominant process for hydrogen production, steam methane reforming (SMR). However, sensitivity analysis shows that GHG emissions may be comparable to SMR under reasonably anticipated conditions. Net energy results are less than for fossil fuels and sufficiently uncertain to warrant further attention. We recommend that LCA and NEA are integrated with project planning to ensure that hydrogen meets the goals of green production.
The special machine engineering sector is characterized by a high degree of specific customer requirements and consequently a high degree of individualization as well as small batch sizes. The ...preliminary project planning is highly demanding. External and internal factors, such as competitor- or customer-related influencing variables require the submission of an accurate offer price within only short time frames. This paper presents a suitable approach including a technology framework that provides system-based support in early phases of project planning. The focus is on standardized costing-based project description and machine learning-based approaches for project planner and -manager support.
Senior executives continue to be concerned about factors influencing the business effect of information technology (IT). Prior research has argued that business-IT strategic alignment facilitates ...business effect of IT and that contextual factors affect business-IT alignment. However, the role of knowledge considerations in the relationship between contextual factors and alignment, and the role of IT projects in the relationship between alignment and business effects of IT, have not been explicitly examined. Therefore, this paper pursues the following two research questions: (1) Based on knowledge considerations, how do planning behaviors (specifically, IT managers' participation in business planning and business managers' participation in IT planning) and top management knowledge of IT mediate the effects of two contextual factors-organizational emphasis on knowledge management and centralization of IT decisions-on business-IT strategic alignment? (2) How do aspects of IT projects (specifically, quality of IT project planning and implementation problems in IT projects) mediate the relationship between business-IT strategic alignment and business effects of IT?
Results from a survey of 274 senior information officers indicate that organizational emphasis on knowledge management and centralization of IT decisions affect top managers' knowledge of IT, which facilitates business managers' participation in strategic IT planning and IT managers' participation in business planning, and both of these planning behaviors affect business-IT strategic alignment. Moreover, the results indicate that quality of IT project planning and implementation problems in IT projects mediate the relationship between business-IT strategic alignment and business effect of IT. These findings highlight the importance of considering the planning and implementation of IT projects when examining the effects of business-IT strategic alignment, and highlight the importance of considering shared domain knowledge (i.e., top managers' knowledge of IT) and planning behaviors when examining the effects of contextual factors on business-IT strategic alignment. Managers can use these results to develop more comprehensive action plans for achieving greater business-IT strategic alignment, and for translating alignment into enhanced IT effects on business performance.
Zusammenfassung: Hintergrund: Die Einführung digitaler Patientendokumentationssysteme im Krankenhaus und auf den Intensivstationen nimmt in Deutschland zu. Die Auswirkungen dieser Systeme auf den ...Workflow der Pflegefachpersonen sind kaum untersucht. Ziel: Analysiert wird, wie hoch der Arbeitsaufwand mit einem digitalen Dokumentationssystem im Vergleich zur papiergestützten Dokumentation ist, wie sich der Workflow ändert und wie die digitale Dokumentation im Vergleich zur papiergestützten hinsichtlich Nutzbarkeit, zeitlichem Aufwand und Dokumentationsqualität bewerten wird. Methoden: Vor (t o ) und nach Einführung des digitalen Patientendokumentationssytems (t 1 ) wurde die Zeit für die Dokumentation und die Dokumentationshäufigkeit in einer prospektiven Prä-Post-Beobachtungsstudie mit Hilfe einer eigens dafür konfigurierten App gemessen und beide Erhebungszeiträume statistisch verglichen (Mann-Whitney-U-Test). Des Weiteren wurde eine Befragung der Pflegefachpersonen zur digitalen Patientendokumentation durchgeführt. Ergebnisse: Die Arbeitszeit für die Dokumentation bleibt nach der Digitalisierung gleich. Allerdings geben 80% der Befragten an, die Dokumentationszeit hätte sich verringert. Außerdem sinkt die Anzahl der Dokumentationsvorgänge signifikant (p = 0,03). Zusätzlich wird mehrheitlich (55 %) eine Erhöhung der Dokumentationsqualität angegeben. Schlussfolgerungen: Eine digitale Patientendokumentation spart nicht zwingend Arbeitszeit, defragmentieren aber den Ablauf der Dokumentationsarbeit und hat das Potential, den Dokumentationsworkflow positiv zu beeinflussen.
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