SMEs, as prominent actors in industry, must meet more and more complex customer expectations. Recently, the concept of Industry 4.0 has emerged. This new approach enables the control of production ...processes by providing real-time synchronisation of flows and by enabling the production of unitary and customised products. Our research goal is to identify Industry 4.0 risks, opportunities and critical success factors with regards to the industrial performance of SMEs. The recent emergence of Industry 4.0 and the inherent difficulty of identifying detailed examples has not yet enabled a satisfactory statistical study to be conducted on Industry 4.0 cases in SMEs. To reach our research goal, we selected 12 experts to conduct a Delphi study supplemented by Régnier's abacuses. Our study demonstrates that the major risks facing the adoption of Industry 4.0 in SMEs include a lack of expertise and a short-term strategy mindset. Our research also indicates that training is the most important factor for success, that managers have a prominent role in the success and/or failure of an Industry 4.0 project, and that SMEs should be supported by external experts. Lastly, Industry 4.0 offers a unique opportunity to redesign SME production processes and to adopt new business models.
Design and redesign are some of the fields of study in ergonomics. The purpose ofthe design and redesign is to achieve comfort and increase productivity. Ergonomics is a science that integrates ...workers with the environment around them at work. So it is hoped that integration can be applied to all organizations. CV Abadi Jaya Presisi is a company engaged in the production of plastic, where workers carry out finishing stages without fulfilling ergonomic aspects. Namely, the use of a worker's chair made of plastic is not following the dimensions of the worker. The method used in this study is quantitative with anthropometric data as primary data. First, the anthropometric data of finished workers were used in this study. Then the data is tested for normality, uniformity test, and data adequacy test. After testing the data, the next step is to calculate the percentile value used to determine the size of the ergonomic chair to be designed. According to the findings of this study, the width of the chair is 42.1 cm, the height of the chair is 30.3 cm, the length of the chair is 43.2 cm, the length of the back of the chair is 49.9 cm, and the height of the seat elbow is21.6 cm.
The buck converter is frequently introduced in the industry to maintain the stability of the voltage output when having the interference suddenly. In order to promote the robustness of the buck ...converter, a novel hybrid H 2 model following control (HHMFC) is developed based on digital redesign sliding mode control in this article. First, we design H 2 model following SMC in the continue-time domain. Then, by using the digital redesign approach, the continuous SMC is redesigned to a corresponding discrete-time SMC and the proposed HHMFC is achieved. Finally, we apply the developed HHMFC to realize a robust buck converter. With both the simulation and experiment results, we can conclude that the proposed HHMFC can easily and successfully apply to the practical realization for the buck converter with better robustness performance.
In two quasi-experimental studies – Study 1 among medical specialists (N=119) and Study 2 among nurses (N=58) – we tested the impact of a general and a specific job crafting intervention on health ...care professionals' well-being and (objective and subjective) job performance. Both groups of participants received training and then set personal job crafting goals for a period of three weeks. The results of a series of repeated measures analyses showed that both interventions were successful. Participation in the job crafting intervention groups were associated with increases in job crafting behaviors, well-being (i.e., work engagement, health, and reduced exhaustion), and job performance (i.e., adaptive, task, and contextual performance) for the medical specialists and nurses relative to the control groups. Though we did not find a significant intervention effect for objective performance, we conclude that job crafting is a promising job redesign intervention strategy that individual employees can use to improve their well-being and job performance.
•Organizations can train employees in job crafting to increase work meaning and significance.•Job crafting is a cost-effective way to improve employees' functioning at work.•Job crafting is a valuable alternative to traditional top-down job redesign strategies.•Two job crafting interventions among health care professionals are evaluated.•We show that these interventions positively enhance employee well-being and performance.
Design of compact wideband circularly polarized (CP) antennas is challenging due to the necessity of simultaneous handling of several characteristics reflection, axial ratio (AR), and gain while ...maintaining a small size of the structure. Antenna redesign for various operating bands is clearly more difficult yet practically important because intentional reduction of the bandwidth (e.g., by moving the lower edge of the operating band up in frequency) may lead to a considerable size reduction, which can be beneficial for specific application areas. This article proposes a rigorous approach to rapid redesign of miniaturized CP antennas involving inverse surrogate models and fast electromagnetic (EM)-based parameter tuning. Our methodology allows for a precise control of the lower operating frequency of the CP antenna (both in terms of the impedance and AR bandwidth) and accomplishing the geometry parameter scaling at an extremely low cost of a few EM analyses of the structure at hand. Our methodology is demonstrated by redesigning a compact wide slot CP antenna in the range of 3.2-5.8 GHz. The proposed approach can be used for fast rendering of the bandwidth/size tradeoffs (the footprints obtained for the verification structure range from 783 to 482 mm 2 ), thus determining the most suitable designs for particular applications. The numerical findings are experimentally validated.
Mobile communications have been undergoing a generational change every ten years or so. However, the time difference between the so-called "G's" is also decreasing. While fifth-generation (5G) ...systems are becoming a commercial reality, there is already significant interest in systems beyond 5G, which we refer to as the sixth generation (6G) of wireless systems. In contrast to the already published papers on the topic, we take a top-down approach to 6G. More precisely, we present a holistic discussion of 6G systems beginning with lifestyle and societal changes driving the need for next-generation networks. This is followed by a discussion into the technical requirements needed to enable 6G applications, based on which we dissect key challenges and possibilities for practically realizable system solutions across all layers of the Open Systems Interconnection stack (i.e., from applications to the physical layer). Since many of the 6G applications will need access to an order-of-magnitude more spectrum, utilization of frequencies between 100 GHz and 1 THz becomes of paramount importance. As such, the 6G ecosystem will feature a diverse range of frequency bands, ranging from below 6 GHz up to 1 THz. We comprehensively characterize the limitations that must be overcome to realize working systems in these bands and provide a unique perspective on the physical and higher layer challenges relating to the design of next-generation core networks, new modulation and coding methods, novel multiple-access techniques, antenna arrays, wave propagation, radio frequency transceiver design, and real-time signal processing. We rigorously discuss the fundamental changes required in the core networks of the future, such as the redesign or significant reduction of the transport architecture that serves as a major source of latency for time-sensitive applications. This is in sharp contrast to the present hierarchical network architectures that are not suitable to realize many of the anticipated 6G services. While evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of key candidate 6G technologies, we differentiate what may be practically achievable over the next decade, relative to what is possible in theory. Keeping this in mind, we present concrete research challenges for each of the discussed system aspects, providing inspiration for what follows.
In this paper, we address a multi-period supply chain network redesign problem in which customer zones have price-dependent stochastic demand for multiple products. A novel multi-stage stochastic ...program is proposed to simultaneously make tactical decisions including products’ prices and strategic redesign decisions. Existing uncertainty in potential demands of customer zones is modeled through a finite set of scenarios, described in the form of a scenario tree. The scenarios are generated using a Latin Hypercube Sampling method and then a forward scenario construction technique is employed to create a suitable scenario tree. The multi-stage stochastic problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model and then Benders decomposition algorithm is applied for solving it. Numerical results demonstrate the significance of the stochastic model as well as the good performance of Benders algorithm. The scenario tree construction method is also evaluated in terms of out-of-sample and in-sample stability. Finally, several key managerial and practical insights in terms of pricing issues are highlighted.
PurposeProcess redesign refers to the intentional change of business processes. While process redesign methods provide structure to redesign projects, they provide limited support during the actual ...creation of to-be processes. More specifically, existing approaches hardly develop an ontological perspective on what can be changed from a process design point of view, and they provide limited procedural guidance on how to derive possible process design alternatives. This paper aims to provide structured guidance during the to-be process creation.Design/methodology/approachUsing design space exploration as a theoretical lens, the authors develop a conceptual model of the design space for business processes, which facilitates the systematic exploration of design alternatives along different dimensions. The authors utilized an established method for taxonomy development for constructing the conceptual model. First, the authors derived design dimensions for business processes and underlying characteristics through a literature review. Second, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with professional process experts. Third, the authors evaluated their artifact through three real-world applications.FindingsThe authors identified 19 business process design dimensions that are grouped into different layers and specified by underlying characteristics. Guiding questions and illustrative real-world examples help to deploy these design dimensions in practice. Taken together, the design dimensions form the “Business Process Design Space” (BPD-Space).Research limitations/implicationsPractitioners can use the BPD-Space to explore, question and rethink business processes in various respects.Originality/valueThe BPD-Space complements existing approaches by explicating process design dimensions. It abstracts from specific process flows and representations of processes and supports an unconstrained exploration of various alternative process designs.
A perverse social experiment would be to allow the virus to continue ripping through low-income and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), where people tend to live in close proximity and infection ...prevention strategies are difficult to implement because much of the populations rely on hand-to-mouth income (India being a case-in-point), while seeing how quickly HICs can redesign vaccines to counter yet another variant that has emerged from LMICs. Beyond the moral argument, this approach would make no economic sense: if many final goods in HICs rely on raw materials and intermediate goods from LMICs, and if LMICs cannot provide these materials because their populations are dying from COVID-19 or are prevented from working because of lockdowns, how long do HICs think that they can keep their own economies running? Preliminary evidence from the Com-COV trial shows that heterologous vaccination is safe and induces robust immune responses, a viable option for countries that cannot rely on a steady stream of vaccines.
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