Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is a form of direct interaction between humans and robots. The objective of this type of interaction is to perform a task by combining the skills of both humans and ...robots. HRC is characterized by several aspects, related both to robots and humans. Many works have focused on the study of specific aspects related to HRC, e.g., safety, task organization. However, a major issue is to find a general framework to evaluate the collaboration between humans and robots considering all the aspects of the interaction. The goals of this paper are the following: (i) highlighting the different latent dimensions that characterize the HRC problem and (ii) constructing a conceptual framework to evaluate and compare different HRC configuration profiles. The description of the methodology is supported by some practical examples.
•The paper provides a quantitative analysis of bibliometric-database errors in the databases Scopus and Web of Science.•A large corpus of errors in the two databases are collected using an automated ...procedure.•Errors are divided in the two macro-categories: (A) pre-existing errors and (B) database mapping errors.•The analysis reveals lack of correlation between databases, regarding the error classification.•The description is supported by practical examples concerning a variety of errors in the two databases.
In the last decade, a growing number of studies focused on the qualitative/quantitative analysis of bibliometric-database errors. Most of these studies relied on the identification and (manual) examination of relatively limited samples of errors.
Using an automated procedure, we collected a large corpus of more than 10,000 errors in the two multidisciplinary databases Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), mainly including articles in the Engineering-Manufacturing field. Based on the manual examination of a portion (of about 10%) of these errors, this paper provides a preliminary analysis and classification, identifying similarities and differences between Scopus and WoS.
The analysis reveals interesting results, such as: (i) although Scopus seems more accurate than WoS, it tends to forget to index more papers, causing the loss of the relevant citations given/obtained, (ii) both databases have relatively serious problems in managing the so-called Online-First articles, and (iii) lack of correlation between databases, regarding the distribution of the errors in several error categories.
The description is supported by practical examples concerning a variety of errors in the Scopus and WoS databases.
A worldwide survey on manufacturing servitization Mastrogiacomo, Luca; Barravecchia, Federico; Franceschini, Fiorenzo
International journal of advanced manufacturing technology,
08/2019, Volume:
103, Issue:
9-12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Manufacturing servitization is defined as the process of innovating companies’ capabilities and procedures to support the shift from providing products to providing product-service systems. Many ...studies have focused on this process, with particular regard to the potential benefits. Despite this general interest, a major void still concerns the quantification of its extent, e.g. in terms of involved companies and geographical diffusion. This study is based on the analysis of secondary data of a large sample of manufacturing companies from almost all over the world.
Quality inspections are performed in almost every production system to prevent nonconforming products from reaching final customers or end users. Quality inspections are typically performed referring ...to specific inspection procedures, depending on the production process. Two general inspection paradigms may be identified: online inspection and offline inspection. These are differentiated by the way in which inspections are made. The paper presents a recent survey on new studies on inspection procedures for both paradigms. The main novelty of the study is the identification of new research perspectives in such a highly explored field. New schemes of analysis allow highlighting the research areas which are not adequately covered by the literature. A brief examination of some bibliometric aspects is also proposed.
Research
and
teaching
are the two most characteristic activities of the professional life of academics. Since the second half of the last century, a plurality of studies focused on the link between ...these activities, with often contrasting conclusions. While some studies are in line with the von-Humboldtian view of research and teaching as synergistic activities, other studies theorize their uncorrelation or even negative tension. This divergence of views probably stems from the fact that investigations are often based on heterogeneous, limited and difficult-to-generalise data, using mainly qualitative metrics. This paper deepens the study of the research-teaching link, through a survey of 251 academics from Politecnico di Torino, i.e., one of the major Italian technical universities. From a methodological point of view, research and teaching are both analysed from the dual perspective of
workload
and
quality of results
obtained, on the basis of data of various kinds, including bibliometric indicators, teaching satisfaction indexes, number of credits awarded to students, etc. Next, a correlation analysis investigates possible links between teaching and research, showing that they tend to be weak and/or statistically insignificant. For instance, the investigation excludes both (i) the existence of a negative link in terms of workload—contradicting considerations such as “
Those who do more teaching have less time to do research and
vice versa”—and (ii) the existence of a positive link in terms of the quality of the results obtained—contradicting considerations such as “
Those who obtain high quality results in research are likely to do the same in teaching and
vice versa”. The results of this study are limited to the Italian context and do not necessarily have general validity. Nevertheless, they enhance previous findings in the scientific literature and may be useful for university administrators and those involved in the formulation of incentive strategies for academics.
Aggregating the preferences of a group of experts is a recurring problem in several fields, including engineering design; in a nutshell, each expert formulates an ordinal ranking of a set of ...alternatives and the resulting rankings should be aggregated into a collective one. Many aggregation models have been proposed in the literature, showing strengths and weaknesses, in line with the implications of Arrow's impossibility theorem. Furthermore, the coherence of the collective ranking with respect to the expert rankings may change depending on: (i) the expert rankings themselves and (ii) the aggregation model adopted. This paper assesses this coherence for a variety of aggregation models, through a recent test based on the Kendall's coefficient of concordance (
W
), and studies the characteristics of those models that are most likely to achieve higher coherence. Interestingly, the so-called Borda count model often provides best coherence, with some exceptions in the case of collective rankings with ties. The description is supported by practical examples.
Typically, monitoring quality characteristics of very personalized products is a difficult task due to the lack of experimental data. This is the typical case of processes where the production volume ...continues to shrink due to the growing complexity and customization of products, thus requiring low-volume productions. This paper presents a novel approach to statistically monitor defects-per-unit (DPU) of assembled products based on the use of defect prediction models. The innovative aspect of such DPU-chart is that, unlike conventional SPC charts requiring preliminary experimental data to estimate the control limits (phase I), it is constructed using a predictive model based on a priori knowledge of DPU. This defect prediction model is based on the structural complexity of the assembled product. By avoiding phase I, the novel approach may be of interest to researchers and practitioners to speed up the chart’s construction phase, especially in low-volume productions. The description of the method is supported by a real industrial case study in the electromechanical field.
User-Generated Contents (UGCs) are gaining increasing popularity as a source of valuable information for companies to manage the quality of their products, services and Product-Service Systems (PSS). ...This paper aims at proposing a novel approach to identify and categorize quality determinants through the analysis of an extensive database of UGCs. In detail, this paper applies a topic modeling algorithm (Structural Topic Model) to identify quality determinants and introduces the Mean Rating Proportion measurement for their classification into three categories: negative, positive and neutral quality determinants. The application of the proposed methodology is exemplified through the analysis of a PSS case study (car-sharing).
Quality-inspection strategies play a pivotal role in providing consumers with high-quality and defect-free products. In order to withstand the competition, organizations have an increasing interest ...in designing quality controls that are effective in detecting defects and economically viable. Recent studies have proposed a preliminary method to evaluate inspection effectiveness and cost in low-volume assembly processes, characterized by the production of single units or small-sized lots, even spread in long periods. Based on this method, the present paper aims to define a procedure to evaluate the robustness of defect and cost predictions in quality inspections of low-volume productions. The research questions which are specifically addressed concern how the uncertainty of models for defectiveness prediction can be assessed, and how this uncertainty may affect the selection of the most effective and affordable inspection strategy. The proposed approach allows to accurately analyze and compare different inspection strategies in terms of effectiveness and cost. First, the uncertainties of the statistical variables of the model for defectiveness prediction are evaluated by applying the law of combination of variances. Then, by combining the contributions of several inspection design parameters, the uncertainty is propagated to two indicators which quantify the overall effectiveness and cost of inspection strategies. In order to test the proposed methodology, a practical application concerning the assembly of mechanical components in an industrial manufacturing context is presented and discussed.
The authors recently presented a technique (denominated “
ZM
”) to fuse multiple (
subjective
) preference rankings of some objects of interest—in manufacturing applications—into a common ...unidimensional
ratio
scale Franceschini and Maisano J Intell Manuf, 2019. Although this technique can be applied to a variety of decision-making problems in the manufacturing field, it is limited by a response mode requiring the formulation of
complete
preference rankings, i.e., rankings that include all objects. Unfortunately, this model is unsuitable for some practical contexts—such as decision-making problems characterized by a relatively large number of objects and field surveys—where respondents can barely identify the more/less preferred objects, without realistically being able to construct complete preference rankings. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new technique (denominated “
ZM
II
”) which also “tolerates”
incomplete
preference rankings, e.g., rankings with the more/less preferred objects only. This technique borrows the underlying postulates from the Thurstone’s
Law of Comparative Judgment
and uses the
Generalized Least Squares
method to obtain a ratio scaling of the objects of interest, with a relevant uncertainty estimation. Preliminary results show the effectiveness of the new technique even for relatively incomplete preference rankings. Description is supported by an application example concerning the design of a coach-bus seat.
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