Search results for: manufacturing systems

Authors: Anand Kishore Kola, G. Uday Bhaskar Babu, Kotturi Ajay Kumar

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The modern dynamic systems used in industries are complex in nature and hence the fractional order controllers have been contemplated as a fresh approach to control system design that takes the complexity into account. Traditional integer order controllers use integer derivatives and integrals to control systems, whereas fractional order controllers use fractional derivatives and integrals to regulate memory and non-local behavior. This study provides a method based on the maximumsensitivity (Ms) methodology to discover all resilient fractional filter Internal Model Control - proportional integral derivative (IMC-PID) controllers that stabilize the closed-loop system and deliver the highest performance for a time delay system with a Smith predictor configuration. Additionally, it helps to enhance the range of PID controllers that are used to stabilize the system. This study also evaluates the effectiveness of the suggested controller approach for minimum phase system in comparison to those currently in use which are based on Integral of Absolute Error (IAE) and Total Variation (TV).

Keywords: modern dynamic systems, fractional order controllers, maximum-sensitivity, IMC-PID controllers, Smith predictor, IAE and TV

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Authors: Boris M. Popović, Tatjana Jurić, Bojana Blagojević, Denis Uka, Ružica Ždero Pavlović

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Green solvents are environmentally friendly and greatly improve the sustainability of chemical processes. There is a growing interest in the green extraction of polyphenols from fruits. In this study, we consider three Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents (NADES) systems based on choline chloride as a hydrogen bond acceptor and malic acid, urea, and fructose as hydrogen bond donors. NADES systems were prepared by heating and stirring, ultrasound, and microwave (MW) methods. Sour cherry pomace was used as a natural source of polyphenols. Polyphenol extraction from cherry pomace was performed by ultrasound-assisted extraction and microwave-assisted extraction and compared with conventional heat and stirring method extraction. It was found that MW-assisted preparation of NADES was the fastest, requiring less than 30 s. Also, MW extraction of polyphenols was the most rapid, with less than 5 min necessary for the extract preparation. All three NADES systems were highly efficient for anthocyanin extraction, but the most efficient was the system with malic acid as a hydrogen bond donor (yield of anthocyanin content was enhanced by 62.33% after MW extraction with NADES compared with the conventional solvent).

Keywords: anthocyanins, green extraction, NADES, polyphenols

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Authors: H. Chassaigne, S. Gioria, J. Lobo Vicente, D. Carpi, P. Barboro, G. Tomasi, A. Kinsner-Ovaskainen, F. Rossi

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Emerging approaches in the area of exposure to nanomaterials and assessment of human health effects combine the use of in vitro systems and analytical techniques to study the perturbation of the proteome and/or the metabolome. We investigated the modification in the cytoplasmic compartment of the Balb/3T3 cell line exposed to gold nanoparticles. On one hand, the proteomic approach is quite standardized even if it requires precautions when dealing with in vitro systems. On the other hand, metabolomic analysis is challenging due to the chemical diversity of cellular metabolites that complicate data elaboration and interpretation. Differentially expressed proteins were found to cover a range of functions including stress response, cell metabolism, cell growth and cytoskeleton organization. In addition, de-regulated metabolites were annotated using the HMDB database. The "omics" fields hold huge promises in the interaction of nanoparticles with biological systems. The combination of proteomics and metabolomics data is possible however challenging.

Keywords: data processing, gold nanoparticles, in vitro systems, metabolomics, proteomics

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Authors: Chandan Deep Singh

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In present days, companies are facing the rapid competition in terms of customer requirements to be satisfied, new technologies to be integrated into future products, new safety regulations to be followed, new computer-based tools to be introduced into design activities that becomes more scientific. In today’s highly competitive market, survival focuses on various factors such as quality, innovation, adherence to standards, and rapid response as the basis for competitive advantage. For competitive advantage, companies have to produce various competencies: for improving the capability of suppliers and for strengthening the process of integrating technology. For more competitiveness, organizations should operate in a strategy driven way and have a strategic architecture for developing core competencies. Traditional ways to take such experience and develop competencies tend to take a lot of time and they are expensive. A new learning environment, which is built around a gaming engine, supports the development of competences in specific subject areas. Technology competencies have a significant role in firm innovation and competitiveness; they interact with the competitive environment. Technological competencies vary according to the type of competitive environment, thus enhancing firm innovativeness. Technological competency is gained through extensive experimentation and learning in its research, development and employment in manufacturing. This is a review paper based on competency and strategic success of automobile industry. The aim here is to study strategy formulation and competency tools in the industry. This work is a review of literature related to competency and strategy in automobile industry. This study involves review of 34 papers related to competency and strategy.

Keywords: manufacturing competency, strategic success, competitiveness, strategy formulation

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Authors: Egemen Sert, Leila Hedayatifar, Rachel A. Rigg, Amir Akhavan, Olha Buchel, Dominic Elias Saadi, Aabir Abubaker Kar, Alfredo J. Morales, Yaneer Bar-Yam

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The complexity of providing timely and cost-effective distribution of finished goods from industrial facilities to customers makes effective operational coordination difficult, yet effectiveness is crucial for maintaining customer service levels and sustaining a business. Logistics planning becomes increasingly complex with growing numbers of customers, varied geographical locations, the uncertainty of future orders, and sometimes extreme competitive pressure to reduce inventory costs. Linear optimization methods become cumbersome or intractable due to a large number of variables and nonlinear dependencies involved. Here we develop a complex systems approach to optimizing logistics networks based upon dimensional reduction methods and apply our approach to a case study of a manufacturing company. In order to characterize the complexity in customer behavior, we define a “customer space” in which individual customer behavior is described by only the two most relevant dimensions: the distance to production facilities over current transportation routes and the customer's demand frequency. These dimensions provide essential insight into the domain of effective strategies for customers; direct and indirect strategies. In the direct strategy, goods are sent to the customer directly from a production facility using box or bulk trucks. In the indirect strategy, in advance of an order by the customer, goods are shipped to an external warehouse near a customer using trains and then "last-mile" shipped by trucks when orders are placed. Each strategy applies to an area of the customer space with an indeterminate boundary between them. Specific company policies determine the location of the boundary generally. We then identify the optimal delivery strategy for each customer by constructing a detailed model of costs of transportation and temporary storage in a set of specified external warehouses. Customer spaces help give an aggregate view of customer behaviors and characteristics. They allow policymakers to compare customers and develop strategies based on the aggregate behavior of the system as a whole. In addition to optimization over existing facilities, using customer logistics and the k-means algorithm, we propose additional warehouse locations. We apply these methods to a medium-sized American manufacturing company with a particular logistics network, consisting of multiple production facilities, external warehouses, and customers along with three types of shipment methods (box truck, bulk truck and train). For the case study, our method forecasts 10.5% savings on yearly transportation costs and an additional 4.6% savings with three new warehouses.

Keywords: logistics network optimization, direct and indirect strategies, K-means algorithm, dimensional reduction

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Authors: Vinod B. Suryawanshi, Ajit D. Kelkar

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Glass fiber reinforced composites materials, due their unique properties such as high mechanical strength to weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and impact resistance have huge potential as structural materials in automotive, construction and transportation applications. However, these properties often come at higher cost owing to complex design methods, difficult manufacturing processes and raw material cost. In this paper, a cost effective design and manufacturing approach for a composite cantilever beam structure is presented. A constant stress (variable cross section) beam concept has been used to design and optimize the shape of composite cantilever beam and thus obtain the reduction in material used. The variable cross section beam was fabricated from the glass epoxy prepregs using cost effective out of autoclave process. The drop ply technique has been successfully used to obtain the variation in the cross section along the span of the beam. In order to test the beam and validate the design, the beam was subjected to different end loads. Strain gauges were mounted along the length of the beam to obtain strains in the beam at different sections and loads. The strain values were used to calculate the flexural strength and bending stresses in the beam. The stresses obtained through strain measurements from the experiment were found to be uniform along the span of the beam, and thus validates the design. Finally, the finite element model for the constant stress beam was developed using commercial finite element simulation software. It was observed that the simulation results agreed very well with the experimental results.

Keywords: beams, composites, constant cross-section, structures

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Authors: Ahmad Odeh

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Researchers are currently more concerned about the calculations of energy at the operational stage, mainly due to its larger environmental impact, but the fact remains, embodied energies represent a substantial contributor unaccounted for in the overall energy computation method. The calculation of materials’ embodied energy during the construction stage is complicated. This is due to the various factors involved. The equipment used, fuel needed, and electricity required for each type of materials varies with location and thus the embodied energy will differ for each project. Moreover, the method used in manufacturing, transporting and putting in place will have significant influence on the materials’ embodied energy. This anomaly has made it difficult to calculate or even bench mark the usage of such energies. This paper presents a model aimed at calculating embodied energies based on such variabilities. It presents a systematic approach that uses an efficient method of calculation to provide a new insight for the selection of construction materials. The model is developed in a BIM environment. The quantification of materials’ energy is determined over the three main stages of their lifecycle: manufacturing, transporting and placing. The model uses three major databases each of which contains set of the construction materials that are most commonly used in building projects. The first dataset holds information about the energy required to manufacture any type of materials, the second includes information about the energy required for transporting the materials while the third stores information about the energy required by machinery to place the materials in their intended locations. Through geospatial data analysis, the model automatically calculates the distances between the suppliers and construction sites and then uses dataset information for energy computations. The computational sum of all the energies is automatically calculated and then the model provides designers with a list of usable equipment along with the associated embodied energies.

Keywords: BIM, lifecycle energy assessment, building automation, energy conservation

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Authors: Mikhail V. Khachaturyan, Inga A. Koryagina, Maria Nikishova

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The study investigates the impact of the ongoing financial crisis, started in the 2^nd half of 2014, on marketing budgets spent by Fast-moving consumer goods companies. In these conditions, special importance is given to efficient possessory risk management systems. The main objective for establishing and developing possessory risk management systems for FMCG companies in a crisis is to analyze the data relating to the external environment and consumer behavior in a crisis. Another important objective for possessory risk management systems of FMCG companies is to develop measures and mechanisms to maintain and stimulate sales. In this regard, analysis of risks and threats which consumers define as the main reasons affecting their level of consumption become important. It is obvious that in crisis conditions the effective risk management systems responsible for development and implementation of strategies for consumer demand stimulation, as well as the identification, analysis, assessment and management of other types of risks of economic security will be the key to sustainability of a company. In terms of financial and economic crisis, the problem of forming and developing possessory risk management systems becomes critical not only in the context of management models of FMCG companies, but for all the companies operating in other sectors of the Russian economy. This study attempts to analyze the specifics of formation and development of company possessory risk management systems. In the modern economy, special importance among all the types of owner’s risks has the risk of reduction in consumer activity. This type of risk is common not only for the consumer goods trade. Study of consumer activity decline is especially important for Russia due to domestic market of consumer goods being still in the development stage, despite its significant growth. In this regard, it is especially important to form and develop possessory risk management systems for FMCG companies. The authors offer their own interpretation of the process of forming and developing possessory risk management systems within owner’s management models of FMCG companies as well as in Russian economy in general. Proposed methods and mechanisms of problem analysis of formation and development of possessory risk management systems in FMCG companies and the results received can be helpful for researchers interested in problems of consumer goods market development in Russia and overseas.

Keywords: FMCG companies, marketing budget, risk management, owner, Russian economy, organization, formation, development, system

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Authors: Qiuying Li

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It is a shared opinion that sustainable development requires a system discontinuity, meaning that radical changes in the way we produce and consume are needed. Within this framework there is an emerging understanding that an important contribution to this change can be directly linked to decisions taken in the design phase of products, services and systems. Design schools have therefore to be able to provide design students with a broad knowledge and effective Design for Sustainability tools, in order to enable a new generation of designers in playing an active role in reorienting our consumption and production patterns.

Keywords: design for sustainability, services, systems, materials, ecomaterials

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Authors: Sandeep Singh

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In this article, two classes of iterative schemes are proposed for approximating solutions of nonlinear systems of equations whose orders of convergence are six and eight respectively. Sixth order scheme requires the evaluation of two vector-functions, two first Fr'echet derivatives and three matrices inversion per iteration. This three-step sixth-order method is further extended to eighth-order method which requires one more step and the evaluation of one extra vector-function. Moreover, computational efficiency is compared with some other recently published methods in which we found, our methods are more efficient than existing numerical methods for higher and medium size nonlinear system of equations. Numerical tests are performed to validate the proposed schemes.

Keywords: Nonlinear systems, Computational complexity, order of convergence, Jarratt-type scheme

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Authors: Anastasiia Maklakova

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The perovskite type oxides formed in the Ln-Me-Me/-O systems (where Ln – rare-earth, Me – alkaline earth metal, Me/ - 3-d metal) have potential applications as gas sensors, catalysts or cathode materials for IT-SOFCs due to the high values of mixed electronic -ionic conductivity and high oxygen diffusivity. Complex oxides in the Sr-(Pr,Gd)-Co-O systems were prepared via the glycerol-nitrate technique The phase composition was determined using a Shimadzu XRD-7000 diffractometer at room temperature in air. Phase identification was performed using the ICDD database. The structure was refined by the full-profile Rietveld method using Fullprof 2008 software. Gradual substitution of strontium by Pr or Gd leads to the decrease of unit cell parameters and unit cell volume that can be explained by the size factor. An introduction of Pr or Gd into the strontium cobaltite increases the oxygen content in samples.

Keywords: phase equilibria, crystal structure, oxygen nonstoichiometry, solid oxide fuel cell

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Authors: Mohit Kumar, Mayur Betharia

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Healthcare domain, with the emergence of Electronic Medical Record (EMR), collects a lot of data which have been attracting Data Mining expert’s interest. In the past, doctors have relied on their intuition while making critical clinical decisions. This paper presents the means to analyze the Medical workflows to get business insights out of huge dumped medical databases. Market Basket Analysis (MBA) which is a special data mining technique, has been widely used in marketing and e-commerce field to discover the association between products bought together by customers. It helps businesses in increasing their sales by analyzing the purchasing behavior of customers and pitching the right customer with the right product. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate Market Basket Analysis applications in healthcare. In particular, it discusses the Market Basket Analysis Algorithm ‘Apriori’ applications within healthcare in major areas such as analyzing the workflow of diagnostic procedures, Up-selling and Cross-selling of Healthcare Systems, designing healthcare systems more user-friendly. In the paper, we have demonstrated the MBA applications using Angiography Systems, but can be extrapolated to other modalities as well.

Keywords: data mining, market basket analysis, healthcare applications, knowledge discovery in healthcare databases, customer relationship management, healthcare systems

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Authors: B. Hekner, J. Myalski, P. Wrzesniowski

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This study presents aluminum matrix composites reinforced by glassy carbon (GC) and titanium (Ti). In the first step, the heterophase (GC+Ti), spatial form (similar to skeleton) of reinforcement was obtained via own method. The polyurethane foam (with spatial, open-cells structure) covered by suspension of Ti particles in phenolic resin was pyrolyzed. In the second step, the prepared heterogeneous foams were infiltrated by aluminium alloy. The manufactured composites are designated to industrial application, especially as a material used in tribological field. From this point of view, the glassy carbon was applied to stabilise a coefficient of friction on the required value 0.6 and reduce wear. Furthermore, the wear can be limited due to titanium phase application, which reveals high mechanical properties. Moreover, fabrication of thin titanium layer on the carbon skeleton leads to reduce contact between aluminium alloy and carbon and thus aluminium carbide phase creation. However, the main modification involves the manufacturing of reinforcement in the form of 3D, skeleton foam. This kind on reinforcement reveals a few important advantages compared to classical form of reinforcement-particles: possibility to control homogeneity of reinforcement phase in composite material; low-advanced technique of composite manufacturing- infiltration; possibility to application the reinforcement only in required places of material; strict control of phase composition; High quality of bonding between components of material. This research is founded by NCN in the UMO-2016/23/N/ST8/00994.

Keywords: metal matrix composites, MMC, glassy carbon, heterophase composites, tribological application

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Authors: G. Baranski, A. Majczak, M. Wendeker

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Currently, the most commonly used solution to provide fuel to the diesel engines is the Common Rail system. Compared to previous designs, as a due to relatively simple construction and electronic control systems, these systems allow achieving favourable engine operation parameters with particular emphasis on low emission of toxic compounds into the atmosphere. In this system, the amount of injected fuel dose is strictly dependent on the course of parameters of the electrical impulse sent by the power amplifier power supply system injector from the engine controller. The article presents the construction of a laboratory test bench to examine the course of the injection process and the expense in storage injection systems. The test bench enables testing of injection systems with electromagnetically controlled injectors with the use of scientific engineering tools. The developed system is based on LabView software and CompactRIO family controller using FPGA systems and a real time microcontroller. The results of experimental research on electromagnetic injectors of common rail system, controlled by a dedicated National Instruments card, confirm the effectiveness of the presented approach. The results of the research described in the article present the influence of basic parameters of the electric impulse opening the electromagnetic injector on the value of the injected fuel dose. Acknowledgement: This work has been realized in the cooperation with The Construction Office of WSK ‘PZL-KALISZ’ S.A.’ and is part of Grant Agreement No. POIR.01.02.00-00-0002/15 financed by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development.

Keywords: fuel injector, combustion engine, fuel pressure, compression ignition engine, power supply system, controller, LabVIEW

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Authors: Ilya Simanovskii

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Nonlinear convective flows developed under the joint action of buoyant and thermo-capillary effects in a two-layer system with periodic boundary conditions on the lateral walls have been investigated. The influence of an interfacial heat release on oscillatory regimes has been studied. The computational regions with different lengths have been considered. It is shown that the development of oscillatory instability can lead to the appearance of different no steady flows.

Keywords: interface, instabilities, two-layer systems, bioinformatics, biomedicine

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Authors: Nizamuddin Zainuddin, Adam Mohd Saifudin, Ahmad Yusni Bahaudin, Mohd Hanizan Zalazilah, Roslan Jamaluddin

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Students’ enhanced experience through simulation is a crucial factor that brings reality to the classroom. The enhanced experience is all about developing, enriching and applications of a generic process flow in the field of logistics and transportations. As educational technology has improved, the effective use of simulations has greatly increased to the point where simulations should be considered a valuable, mainstream pedagogical tool. Additionally, in this era of ongoing (some say never-ending) assessment, simulations offer a rich resource for objective measurement and comparisons. Simulation is not just another in the long line of passing fads (or short-term opportunities) in educational technology. It is rather a real key to helping our students understand the world. It is a way for students to acquire experience about how things and systems in the world behave and react, without actually touching them. In short, it is about interactive pretending. Simulation is all about representing the real world which includes grasping the complex issues and solving intricate problems. Therefore, it is crucial before stimulate the real process of inbound and outbound logistics and transportation a generic process flow shall be developed. The paper will be focusing on the validization of the process flow by looking at the inputs gains from the sample. The sampling of the study focuses on multi-national and local manufacturing companies, third party companies (3PL) and government agency, which are selected in Peninsular Malaysia. A simulation flow chart was proposed in the study that will be the generic flow in logistics and transportation. A qualitative approach was mainly conducted to gather data in the study. It was found out from the study that the systems used in the process of outbound and inbound are System Application Products (SAP) and Material Requirement Planning (MRP). Furthermore there were some companies using Enterprises Resources Planning (ERP) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) as part of the Suppliers Own Inventories (SOI) networking as a result of globalized business between one countries to another. Computerized documentations and transactions were all mandatory requirement by the Royal Custom and Excise Department. The generic process flow will be the basis of developing a simulation program that shall be used in the classroom with the objective of further enhanced the students’ learning experience. Thus it will contributes to the body of knowledge on the enrichment of the student’s employability and also shall be one of the way to train new workers in the logistics and transportation filed.

Keywords: enhancement, simulation, process flow, logistics, transportation

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Authors: Patrick Nurse, Professor Neil Sebire, Polly Livermore

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The use of digital systems in healthcare is now highly prevalent. With further advancement of technology, these systems will become increasingly utilised within the healthcare sector. Therefore understanding how clinicians (for example, doctors, nurses) interact with technology and digital systems is critical to making care safer. Seven members from the Parent/Carers’ Research Advisory Group and the Young-Persons’ Research Group at a healthcare Trust in London and three staff members contributed to an engagement workshop to assess the impact of digital systems on the practice of nurses. The group also advised on the viability of a research study to investigate this further. A wide range of issues within digital system implementation in healthcare were raised, such as ‘workarounds’, system’s training, and upkeep and regulation of usage, which all emerged as early themes during the discussion. Further discussion focused on the subject of escalation of issues, ‘workarounds’, and problem solving. While challenging to implement, digital systems are hugely beneficial to healthcare providers. The workshop indicated that there is scope for investigation of the prevalence, nature, and escalation of ‘workarounds’, this was of key interest to the advisory group. An interesting concern of the group was their worry from a patient and parental perspective regarding how nurses might feel when needing to complete a ‘workaround’ during a busy shift. This is especially relevant if the reasons to complete the ‘workaround’ were outside the nurse’s control, driven by clinical need and urgency of care. This showed the level of insight that those using healthcare services have into the reality of workflows of those providing care. Additionally, it reflects the desire for patients and families to understand more about the administration and methodology of their care. Future study should be dedicated to understanding why nurses deploy ‘workarounds’, as well as their perspective and experience of them and subsequent escalation through leadership hierarchies

Keywords: patient engagement/involvement, workarounds, medication-administration, digital systems

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Authors: J. K. Visser, H. T. Malan

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A need exists to identify the sources of risks associated with the process automation systems within petrochemical companies or similar energy related industries. These companies use many different process automation technologies in its value chain. A crucial part of the process automation system is the information technology component featuring in the supervisory control layer. The ever-changing technology within the process automation layers and the rate at which it advances pose a risk to safe and predictable automation system performance. The age of the automation equipment also provides challenges to the operations and maintenance managers of the plant due to obsolescence and unavailability of spare parts. The main objective of this research was to determine the risk sources associated with the equipment that is part of the process automation systems. A secondary objective was to establish whether technology managers and technicians were aware of the risks and share the same viewpoint on the importance of the risks associated with automation systems. A conceptual model for risk sources of automation systems was formulated from models and frameworks in literature. This model comprised six categories of risk which forms the basis for identifying specific risks. This model was used to develop a questionnaire that was sent to 172 instrument technicians and technology managers in the company to obtain primary data. 75 completed and useful responses were received. These responses were analyzed statistically to determine the highest risk sources and to determine whether there was difference in opinion between technology managers and technicians. The most important risks that were revealed in this study are: 1) the lack of skilled technicians, 2) integration capability of third-party system software, 3) reliability of the process automation hardware, 4) excessive costs pertaining to performing maintenance and migrations on process automation systems, and 5) requirements of having third-party communication interfacing compatibility as well as real-time communication networks.

Keywords: distributed control system, identification of risks, information technology, process automation system

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Authors: Katejarinporn Chaiya, Jarumon Nookong, Nutthapat Kaewrattanapat

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The purposes of this research were to develop and find users’ satisfaction after using the Decision Support System for Examination Selection. This research presents the design of information systems. In order to find the necessary examination of the statistics. Based on the examination of the candidate and then taking the easy difficulty setting statistics applied to the test. In addition, research has also made performance appraisals from experts and user satisfaction. By results of analysis showed that the performance appraisals from experts on the system as a whole and at a good level. mean was 3.44 and S.D. was 0.55 and user satisfaction per system as a whole and the good level mean was 3.37 and S.D. was 0.42 can conclude that effective systems are in a good level. Work has been completed in accordance with the scope of work. The website used developing this project is PHP, MySQL.5.0.45 for database.

Keywords: secision support system, examination, PHP, information systems

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Authors: Laura Masilionyte, Danute Jablonskyte-Rasce, Kestutis Venslauskas, Zita Kriauciuniene

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Alternative farming systems are used to cultivate high-quality food products and sustain the viability and fertility of the soil. Plant nutrition in all ecosystems depends not only on fertilization intensity or soil richness in organic matter but also on soil physical parameters –bulk density, structure, pores with the optimum moisture and air ratio available to plants. The field experiments of alternative (sustainable and organic) farming systems were conducted at Joniskelis Experimental Station of the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry in 2006–2016. The soil of the experimental site was Endocalcari-Endohypogleyic Cambisol (CMg-n-w-can). In alternative farming systems, farmyard manure, straw and catch crops for green manure were used for fertilization both in the soil with low and moderate humus contents. It had a more significant effect in the 0–20 cm depth layer on soil moisture than on other physical soil properties. In the agricultural systems, where catch crops were grown, soil physical characteristics did not differ significantly before their biomass incorporation, except for the moisture content, which was lower in rainy periods and higher in drier periods than in the soil of farming systems without catch crops. Soil bulk density and porosity in the topsoil layer were more dependent on soil humus content than on agricultural measures used: in the soil with moderate humus content, compared with the soil with low humus content, bulk density was by 1.4% lower, and porosity by 1.8% higher. The research findings allow to make improvements in alternative farming systems by choosing appropriate combinations of organic fertilizers and catch crops that have a sustainable effect on soil and maintain the sustainability of soil productivity parameters. Rational fertilization systems, securing the stability of soil productivity parameters and crop rotation productivity will promote the development of organic agriculture.

Keywords: agro-measures, soil physical parameters, organic farming, sustainable farming

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Authors: Harris Niavis, Dimitra Politaki

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The manufacturing industry was collecting vast amounts of data for monitoring product quality thanks to the advances in the ICT sector and dedicated IoT infrastructure is deployed to track and trace the production line. However, industries have not yet managed to unleash the full potential of these data due to defective data collection methods and untrusted data storage and sharing. Blockchain is gaining increasing ground as a key technology enabler for Industry 4.0 and the smart manufacturing domain, as it enables the secure storage and exchange of data between stakeholders. On the other hand, AI techniques are more and more used to detect anomalies in batch and time-series data that enable the identification of unusual behaviors. The proposed scheme is based on smart contracts to enable automation and transparency in the data exchange, coupled with anomaly detection algorithms to enable reliable data ingestion in the system. Before sensor measurements are fed to the blockchain component and the smart contracts, the anomaly detection mechanism uniquely combines artificial intelligence models to effectively detect unusual values such as outliers and extreme deviations in data coming from them. Specifically, Autoregressive integrated moving average, Long short-term memory (LSTM) and Dense-based autoencoders, as well as Generative adversarial networks (GAN) models, are used to detect both point and collective anomalies. Towards the goal of preserving the privacy of industries' information, the smart contracts employ techniques to ensure that only anonymized pointers to the actual data are stored on the ledger while sensitive information remains off-chain. In the same spirit, blockchain technology guarantees the security of the data storage through strong cryptography as well as the integrity of the data through the decentralization of the network and the execution of the smart contracts by the majority of the blockchain network actors. The blockchain component of the Data Traceability Software is based on the Hyperledger Fabric framework, which lays the ground for the deployment of smart contracts and APIs to expose the functionality to the end-users. The results of this work demonstrate that such a system can increase the quality of the end-products and the trustworthiness of the monitoring process in the smart manufacturing domain. The proposed AI-enabled data traceability software can be employed by industries to accurately trace and verify records about quality through the entire production chain and take advantage of the multitude of monitoring records in their databases.

Keywords: blockchain, data quality, industry4.0, product quality

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Authors: Özlem Turan, Şule Turhan

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About 1 billion people in the world are suffering from hunger. Approximately 1.3 billion tons of produced food is wasted each year as well. While the waste of industrialized countries is 670 million tons per year, the waste per year in developing countries is estimated as 630 million tons. When evaluated in this respect, the importance of sustainability and food security can be seen clearly. Food safety is defined as taking the necessary measures and eliminating all risk arising from food. The goal of sustainable food security is, protection of consumer health, development of safe food and beverages trade nationally and internationally and to ensure reliable fair trade schemes. In this study, this study will focus on sustainable food systems and food security, by examining the food wastage and losses from environmental and economic point of views and the precautions that need to be taken will be discussed.

Keywords: food, food safety, food systems, sustainability

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Authors: Kajal Zarei

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Supply chain management is becoming an increasingly important issue in many businesses today. In such circumstances, a number of reasons such as management deficiency in different segments of the supply chain, lack of streamlined processes, resistance to change the current systems and technologies, and lack of advanced information system have paved the ground to ask for innovative research studies. To this end, information technology (IT) is becoming a major driver to overcome the supply chain limitations and deficiencies. The emergence of IT has provided an excellent opportunity for redefining the supply chain to be more effective and competitive. This paper has investigated the IT impact on two-digit industry codes in the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) that are operating in four groups of the supply chains. Firstly, the primary fields of the supply chain were investigated, and then paired comparisons of different industry parts were accomplished. Using experts' ideas and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), the status of industrial activities in Kurdistan Province in Iran was determined. The results revealed that manufacturing and inventory fields have been more important compared to other fields of the supply chain. In addition, IT has had greater impact on food and beverage industry, chemical industry, wood industry, wood products, and production of basic metals. The results indicated the need to IT awareness in supply chain management; in other words, IT applications needed to be developed for the identified industries.

Keywords: supply chain, information technology, analytical hierarchy process, two-digit codes, international standard industrial classification

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Authors: Yong Li

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Major cities in China has experienced a shift from production based on manufacturing industry to tertiary industry. How to make a better use of existing obsolete industrial land within urban cores has become a difficult problem for many policymakers. City governments regard old manufacturing industrial land as an important source of land to facilitate the development of the cities. Despite the announcement of policies in promoting that, a large portion of industrial land is still not properly redeveloped and most of them became obsolete. The study uses the project of Xinyi International Club as a case to examine the process of adaptive reuse of obsolete industrial space in Guangzhou, China. It attempts to elucidate the underlying mechanisms by identifying the key forces from both the government and the private sectors in influencing the process. The study found that market forces in transforming industrial space are exerting a strong impact on the existing land use planning system in Chinese cities. Pragmatic relaxation of the formal land use the regulatory framework and government supportive land-use intervention have also been crucial towards achieving successful implementation of the restructuring project and making it a showcase. This study questions whether these extraordinary measures, in particular, the use of temporary land use permit, are sustainable in facilitating the transformation of derelict industrial land, and in informing future industrial land-use restructuring policies. It concludes that, while the land use regulatory system in China is becoming increasingly dynamic and flexible, it remains ill-equipped in responding positively to the market, which is characterized by an increasing bargaining power of the private sector. A comprehensive appraisal of the overall impacts of these adaptive re-uses on society is wanting.

Keywords: China, land alteration, obsolete industrial properties, urban planning

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Authors: Julius Denafas, Irina Kliopova, Gintaras Denafas

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Three opportunities for implementation of industrial ecology principles in the real industrial production of c-Si solar cells and modules are presented in this study. It includes: material flow dematerialisation, product modification and industrial symbiosis. Firstly, it is shown how the collaboration between R&D institutes and industry helps to achieve significant reduction of material consumption by a) refuse from phosphor silicate glass cleaning process and b) shortening of SiNx coating production step. This work was performed in the frame of Eco-Solar project, where Soli Tek R&D is collaborating together with the partners from ISC-Konstanz institute. Secondly, it was shown how the modification of solar module design can reduce the CO2 footprint for this product and enhance waste prevention. It was achieved by implementing a frameless glass/glass solar module design instead of glass/backsheet with aluminium frame. Such a design change is possible without purchasing new equipment and without loss of main product properties like efficiency, rigidity and longevity. Thirdly, industrial symbiosis in the solar cell production is possible in such case when manufacturing waste (silicon wafer and solar cell breakage) are collected, sorted and supplied as raw-materials to other companies involved in the production chain of c-Si solar cells. The obtained results showed that solar cells produced from recycled silicon can have a comparable electrical parameters like produced from standard, commercial silicon wafers. The above mentioned work was performed at solar cell producer Soli Tek R&D in the frame of H2020 projects CABRISS and Eco-Solar.

Keywords: solar cells and solar modules, manufacturing, waste prevention, recycling

Procedia PDF Downloads 205

Authors: Mario M. Figueroa de la Cruz, Claudia I. Solorzano, Raul Acosta, Ignacio Funes

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This technological development project seeks to create a tool that allows companies, in need of implementing a Data Center, intelligently determining factors for allocating resources support cooling and power supply (UPS) in its conception. The results should show clearly the speed, robustness and reliability of a system designed for deployment in environments where they must manage and protect large volumes of data.

Keywords: telecommunications, data center, fuzzy logic, expert systems

Procedia PDF Downloads 335

Authors: Abbas Sheikhtaheri, Nasim Hashemi

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Health information systems have great benefits for clinical and managerial processes of health care organizations. However, identifying and removing constraints and barriers of implementing and using health information systems before any implementation is essential. Physicians are one of the main users of health information systems, therefore, identifying the causes of their resistance and concerns about the barriers of the implementation of these systems is very important. So the purpose of this study was to determine the barriers of the development and implementation of health information systems in terms of the Iranian physicians’ perspectives. In this study conducted in 8 selected hospitals affiliated to Tehran and Iran Universities of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran in 2014, physicians (GPs, residents, interns, specialists) in these hospitals were surveyed. In order to collect data, a research made questionnaire was used (Cronbach’s α = 0.95). The instrument included 25 about organizational (9), personal (4), moral and legal (3) and technical barriers (9). Participants were asked to answer the questions using 5 point scale Likert (completely disagree=1 to completely agree=5). By using a simple random sampling method, 200 physicians (from 600) were invited to study that eventually 163 questionnaires were returned. We used mean score and t-test and ANOVA to analyze the data using SPSS software version 17. 52.1% of respondents were female. The mean age was 30.18 ± 7.29. The work experience years for most of them were between 1 to 5 years (80.4 percent). The most important barriers were organizational ones (3.4 ± 0.89), followed by ethical (3.18 ± 0.98), technical (3.06 ± 0.8) and personal (3.04 ± 1.2). Lack of easy access to a fast Internet (3.67±1.91) and the lack of exchanging information (3.61±1.2) were the most important technical barriers. Among organizational barriers, the lack of efficient planning for the development and implementation systems (3.56±1.32) and was the most important ones. Lack of awareness and knowledge of health care providers about the health information systems features (3.33±1.28) and the lack of physician participation in planning phase (3.27±1.2) as well as concerns regarding the security and confidentiality of health information (3.15 ± 1.31) were the most important personal and ethical barriers, respectively. Women (P = 0.02) and those with less experience (P = 0.002) were more concerned about personal barriers. GPs also were more concerned about technical barriers (P = 0.02). According to the study, technical and ethics barriers were considered as the most important barriers however, lack of awareness in target population is also considered as one of the main barriers. Ignoring issues such as personal and ethical barriers, even if the necessary infrastructure and technical requirements were provided, may result in failure. Therefore, along with the creating infrastructure and resolving organizational barriers, special attention to education and awareness of physicians and providing solution for ethics concerns are necessary.

Keywords: barriers, development health information systems, implementation, physicians

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Authors: Tatyana Gavrilova, Vadim Onufriev

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Knowledge-based systems’ design requires the developer’s owning the advanced analytical skills. The efficient development of that skills within university courses needs a deep understanding of main pitfalls and drawbacks, which students usually make during their analytical work in form of visual modeling. Thus, it was necessary to hold an analysis of 5-th year students’ learning exercises within courses of 'Intelligent systems' and 'Knowledge engineering' in Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University. The analysis shows that both lack of system thinking skills and methodological mistakes in course design cause the errors that are discussed in the paper. The conclusion contains an exploration of the issues and topics necessary and sufficient for the implementation of the improved practices in educational design for future curricula of teaching programs.

Keywords: knowledge based systems, knowledge engineering, students’ errors, visual modeling

Procedia PDF Downloads 302

Authors: H. Pegram, R. Stevens, L. De Girolamo

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Aligned electrospun nanofibres act as effective neuronal and glial cell scaffolds that can be layered to contain multiple sheets harboring different cell populations. This allows personalised biofunctional prostheses to be manufactured with both acellular and cellularised layers for the treatment of spinal cord injury. Additionally, the manufacturing route may be configured to produce in-vitro 3D cell based model of spinal cord injury to aid drug development and enhance prosthesis performance. The goal of this investigation was to optimise the multi-layer scaffold design parameters for prosthesis manufacture, to enable the development of multi-layer patient specific implant therapies. The work has also focused on the fabricating aligned nanofibre scaffolds that promote in-vitro neuronal and glial cell population growth, cell-to-cell interaction and long-term survival following trauma to mimic an in-vivo spinal cord lesion. The approach has established reproducible lesions and has identified markers of trauma and regeneration marked by effective neuronal migration across the lesion with glial support. The investigation has advanced the development of an in-vitro model of traumatic spinal cord injury and has identified a route to manufacture prostheses which target the repair spinal cord injury. Evidence collated to investigate the multi-layer concept suggests that physical cues provided by nanofibres provide both a natural extra-cellular matrix (ECM) like environment and controls cell proliferation and migration. Specifically, aligned nanofibre layers act as a guidance system for migrating and elongating neurons. On a larger scale, material type in multi-layer systems also has an influence in inter-layer migration as cell types favour different material types. Results have shown that layering nanofibre membranes create a multi-level scaffold system which can enhance or prohibit cell migration between layers. It is hypothesised that modifying nanofibre layer material permits control over neuronal/glial cell migration. Using this concept, layering of neuronal and glial cells has become possible, in the context of tissue engineering and also modelling in-vitro induced lesions.

Keywords: electrospinning, layering, lesion, modeling, nanofibre

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Authors: A.Chayaporn Kaoropthai, B. Onjaree Natakuatoong, C. Nagul Cooharojananone

Abstract:

The first year is usually the most critical year for university students. Generally, a considerable number of first-year students worldwide drop out of university every year. One of the major reasons for dropping out is failing. Although they are supposed to have mastered sufficient English proficiency upon completing their high school education, most first-year students are still novices in academic reading. Due to their lack of experience in academic reading, first-year students need significant support from teachers to help develop their academic reading skills. Reading strategies training is thus a necessity and plays a crucial role in classroom instruction. However, individual differences in both students, as well as teachers, are the main factors contributing to the failure in not responding to each individual student’s needs. For this reason, reading strategies training inevitably needs a diagnosis of students’ academic reading skills levels before, during, and after learning, in order to respond to their different needs. To further support reading strategies training, scaffolding is proposed to facilitate students in understanding and practicing using reading strategies under the teachers’ guidance. The use of the Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) as a tool for diagnosing students’ reading problems will be very beneficial to both students and their teachers. The ITSs consist of four major modules: the Expert module, the Student module, the Diagnostic module, and the User Interface module. The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables the systems to perform diagnosis consistently and appropriately for each individual student. Thus, it is essential to develop the Intelligent Scaffolding Diagnostic Reading Strategies Tutoring Systems to enhance first-year students’ academic reading skills. The systems proposed will contribute to resolving classroom reading strategies training problems, developing students’ academic reading skills, and facilitating teachers.

Keywords: academic reading, intelligent tutoring systems, scaffolding, university students

Procedia PDF Downloads 378