The increased level of competitiveness in all industrial sectors, exacerbated in the last years by the globalisation of the economies and by the sharp fall of the final demands, are pushing ...enterprises to strive for a further optimisation of their organisational processes, and in particular to pursue new forms of collaboration and partnership with their direct logistics counterparts. As a result, at a company level there is a progressive shift towards an external perspective with the design and implementation of new management strategies, which are generally named with the term of supply chain management (SCM).
However, despite the flourish of several IT solutions in this context, there are still evident hurdles to overcome, mainly due to the major complexity of the problems to be tackled in a logistics network and to the conflicts resulting from local objectives versus network strategies.
Among the techniques supporting a multi-decisional context, as a supply chain (SC) is, simulation can undoubtedly play an important role, above all for its main property to provide what-if analysis and to evaluate quantitatively benefits and issues deriving from operating in a co-operative environment rather than playing a pure transaction role with the upstream/downstream tiers.
The paper provides a comprehensive review made on more than 80 articles, with the main purpose of ascertaining which general objectives simulation is generally called to solve, which paradigms and simulation tools are more suitable, and deriving useful prescriptions both for practitioners and researchers on its applicability in decision-making processes within the supply chain context.
Knowledge extraction and reuse are critical topics for manufacturing companies willing to strengthen their Product-Service Systems (PSS) offerings. In manufacturing's maintenance processes, ...effectiveness and efficiency depend on the ability to learn from past field interventions. Dealing with unstructured descriptions of maintenance activities has prevented manufacturing companies from analyzing them, causing the loss of useful information. Natural Language Processing (NLP) demonstrated high potential, allowing simplified text knowledge extraction and summarization. Besides, the literature presents only a few applications of topic modeling for maintenance improvement in the manufacturing domain. Using a case study, the paper demonstrates the potentialities of NLP adoption to improve not only the maintenance management and execution but also the asset design and management, impacting the whole PSS. In other words, implications will have effects on the operational (e.g. maintenance execution), managerial (e.g. maintenance management), and business levels (e.g. PSS offering definition) of manufacturing firms.
Recent economic transformations have forced companies to redefine their value propositions, increasing traditional product offerings with supplementary services—the so-called Product-Service System ...(PSS). Among them, the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is very common. However, the directions that companies are undertaking to offer new value to their customers in the Industry 4.0 have not yet been investigated in detail. Based on a focus group, this paper contributes to this understanding by identifying the main trajectories that would shape a future scenario in which PSS and Industry 4.0 would merge. In addition, future research directions addressing (a) the transformation of the PSS value chain into a PSS ecosystem, (b) the transformation inside a single company towards becoming a PSS provider, and (c) the digital transformation of the traditional PSS business model are identified.
Data availability is changing the way companies make decisions at various levels (e.g., strategical and operational). Researchers and practitioners are exploring how product–service system (PSS) ...providers can benefit from data availability and usage, especially when it comes to making decisions related to service delivery. One of the services that are expected to benefit most from data availability is maintenance. Through the analysis of the asset health status, service providers can make informed and timely decisions to prevent failures. Despite this, the offering of data-based maintenance service is not trivial, and requires providers to structure themselves to collect, analyze and use historical and real-time data properly (e.g., introducing suitable information flows, methods and competencies). The paper aims to investigate how a manufacturing company can re-engineer its maintenance service delivery process in a data-driven fashion. Thus, the paper presents a case study where, based on the Dual-perspective, Data-based, Decision-making process for Maintenance service delivery (D3M), an Italian manufacturing company reengineered its maintenance service delivery process in a data-driven fashion. The case study highlights the benefits and barriers coming with this transformation and aims at helping manufacturing companies in understanding how to address it.
The design and development of a Product–Service System (PSS) raises new issues since the service component introduces further requirements than traditional product engineering. Compared to physical ...products, services are generally under-designed and inefficiently developed. For this reason, approaches such as New Service Development, Service Design and Service Engineering have emerged during the years to support the design and development of service either as a system itself or as a constituting element of a Product–Service System. However, only Service Engineering investigates service design and development with a systematic perspective and with a seamless integration of product and service contents. The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic conceptualisation and an up-to-date review of the literature on Service Engineering with a specific focus on its adoption in the PSS context. A critical analysis is also performed with the aim to define a research agenda and the most prominent key actions that could give directions for future research.
Simulation models have always been an aid in epidemiology for understanding the spread of epidemics and evaluating their containment policies. This paper illustrates how hybrid simulation can support ...companies in assessing COVID-19 containment measures in indoor environments. In particular, a Hybrid Simulation (HS) is presented. The HS model consists of an Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) to simulate the virus contagion model and a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model to simulate the interactions between flows of people in an indoor environment. Compared with previous works in the field of simulation and COVID-19, this study provides the possibility to model the specific behaviors of individuals moving in time and space and the proposed HS model could be adapted to several epidemiological conditions (just setting different parameters in the agent-based model) and different kinds of facilities. The HS approach has been developed and then successfully tested with a real case study related to a university campus in northern Italy. The case study highlights the potentials of hybrid simulation in assessing the effectiveness of the containment measures adopted during the period under examination in the pandemic context. From a managerial perspective, this study, exploiting the complementarity of the ABM and DES approaches in a HS model, provides a complete and usable tool to support decision-makers in evaluating different contagion containment measures.
Abstract
Digital servitization is a business model transformation process enabled by the use of digital technologies to create or improve industrial services and product‐service offerings by creating ...value and competitive advantage increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as company revenue streams. 5G networks can enable digital servitization of manufacturing by providing faster, more secure, and more reliable communications between machines, devices, and humans. This paper explores the impact of adopting 5G technologies on servitization and identifies the services that can benefit most from 5G networks. The research consists of two parts: a literature review of the technologies currently used in the design and provision of industrial services that could benefit from 5G networks and an exploratory survey involving manufacturing companies that have started the digital servitization journey. The main results emerging from the research suggest that 5G can profoundly impact services supported by Augmented Reality, Cloud computing, and Cyber‐physical systems, mainly concerning maintenance, workforce training, machine diagnosis and monitoring.
•Industry 4.0 technologies are classified according to the physical/cognitive support to humans.•Different roles of humans in the smart factory are enabled by technology.•The evolution of the ...human-machine interaction for manufacturing control is discussed.•A Social Human-in-the-loop Cyber-Physical Production System architecture is provided.
In recent years, the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies in the manufacturing landscape promoted the development of smart factories characterised by relevant socio-technical interactions between humans and machines. In this context, understanding and modelling the role of humans turns out to be crucial to develop efficient manufacturing systems of the future. Grounding on previous researches in the field of Human-in-the-Loop and Human Cyber-Physical Systems, the paper aims at contributing to a deep reflection about human-machine interaction in the wider perspective of Social Human-in-the-Loop Cyber-Physical Production Systems, in which more agents collaborate and are socially connected. After presenting an evolution of manufacturing control organisations, an architecture to depict social interactions in smart factories is proposed. The proposed architecture contributes to the representation of different human roles in the smart factory and the exploration of both hierarchical and heterarchical data-driven decision-making processes in manufacturing.
The usefulness of Virtual dissection tables (VDTs) as diagnostic tools is still poorly assessed.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate their ability to improve the diagnostic accuracy of ...maxillofacial CT scans of patients presenting with Le Fort fractures.
We retrospectively enrolled 10 trauma patients who had previously undergone maxillofacial CT scan. Five of these patients had been diagnosed with type I, II or III Le Fort fractures, while the other five had not revealed any evident maxillary bone fractures (control group). Four different reader groups were identified: staff radiologists, senior residents, junior residents, and students. Each group consisted of two readers who carried out a blinded double reading session. Readers evaluated CT scans on the radiological workstation first, and after they reviewed the VDT-generated 3D models (Anatomage Table, Anatomage Europe, Italy). We assessed: 1) Le Fort fracture grade, 2) confidence in diagnosis, 3) anatomic resolution, 4) 3D-model handling. Intra-reader agreement on Le Fort fracture grade was assessed using Cohen's. Qualitative parameters were determined using Likert scale.
Intra-reader agreement for Le Fort fracture grade according to Cohen's was above 90% in all readers. showed almost perfect agreement in 7 out of 8 readers and substantial agreement in 1 out of 8. Qualitative parameters indicated a substantial preference of the VDT over the radiological workstation in all readers.
VDT represents a valuable tool for diagnosis and classification of complex maxillofacial injuries, regardless of whether the user is a student, a junior or senior resident, or a staff radiologist.
•The usefulness of Virtual dissection tables (VDTs) as diagnostic tools is still poorly assessed.•The purpose of this study was to evaluate their ability to improve the diagnostic accuracy of maxillofacial CT scans in Le Fort fractures.•Readers evaluated CT scans on the radiological workstation first, and after they reviewed the VDT-generated 3D models.•Intra-reader agreement for Le Fort grade was above 90% . Qualitative parameters indicated substantial preference of the VDT over the radiological workstation .
In the competitive world of industrial goods, where products are getting commoditised and profit margins are cut down, the search for new business opportunities also encompasses the provision of a ...portfolio of service activities. The observed trend is that companies need to package their core products with additional services in order to make them more attractive to final customers. In this context, after-sales (AS) service has become increasingly important as a source of differentiation and market share for manufacturers and resellers, as well as a strategic driver for customer retention. This leads to a detailed revision of the logistical and organisational configuration of the whole service chain entailing the design of appropriate processes and a general and shared definition of their structure. The aim of this article is to propose a framework which provides a common representation of the AS processes and activities according to a configuration model that links different typologies of assistance with product characteristics for service operations. Three case studies have been considered in order to ascertain the validity of the framework in the industrial context.
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