The resource-efficient allocation advantages of asset-light operations have garnered considerable attention from technology-driven startups in China. Clarifying the construction pathways of asset-light operations is crucial for guiding the development of such enterprises. This study examines two asset-light, technology-driven startups in China to identify key elements of the asset-light operation process and comparatively analyze their heterogeneous construction pathways using imprinting theory. The findings reveal that the alignment of open demand and connectivity conditions forms the foundation for establishing asset-light operation partnerships, while shared logic facilitates collaborations. Establishing symbiotic relationships is identified as a key factor in the sustainable development of asset-light operations. Regarding resource integration pathways, relationship-based entrepreneurial teams typically form asset-light resource networks in a 0 → n diffusion pattern by engaging in acquisitive resource integration behavior, exhibiting the characteristic of expansive resource capability. Conversely, technology-based entrepreneurial teams form 0 → 1 → n bridging resource networks through accumulative resource integration, demonstrating exploratory resource capability. These findings contribute to the study of asset-light operations in independent entrepreneurship and offer differentiated asset-light construction pathway references for technology-driven startups.
This article examines the significant impact of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) on management control in modern organizations, based on the Marroy case study. Exploring the deep integration between ERP and critical management control functions, this essay offers an in-depth analysis of key benefits such as task automation, business process optimization, and improved decision-making. The study highlights the challenges associated with ERP implementation, and proposes effective solutions for maximizing the benefits of this technology in the context of today's digital transformation. By offering an essential perspective on the evolution of management control practices thanks to the technological innovations of ERP, this article contributes to the understanding of modern strategic and operational strategies in organizations.
Business, Production management. Operations management
Claudia Angélica Rivera-Romero, Elvia Ruth Palacios-Hernández, Osbaldo Vite-Chávez
et al.
Constant monitoring is necessary for powdery mildew prevention in field crops because, as a fungal disease, it modifies the green pigments of the leaves and is responsible for production losses. Therefore, there is a need for solutions that assure early disease detection to realize proactive control and management of the disease. The methodology currently used for the identification of powdery mildew disease uses RGB leaf images to detect damage levels. In the early stage of the disease, no symptoms are visible, but this is a point at which the disease can be controlled before the symptoms appear. This study proposes the implementation of a support vector machine to identify powdery mildew on cucurbit plants using RGB images and color transformations. First, we use an image dataset that provides photos covering five growing seasons in different locations and under natural light conditions. Twenty-two texture descriptors using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix result are calculated as the main features. The proposed damage levels are ’healthy leaves’, ’leaves in the fungal germination phase’, ’leaves with first symptoms’, and ’diseased leaves’. The implementation reveals that the accuracy in the L * a * b color space is higher than that when using the combined components, with an accuracy value of 94% and kappa Cohen of 0.7638.
Engineering machinery, tools, and implements, Technological innovations. Automation
The iron–chromium redox flow battery (ICRFB) has a wide range of applications in the field of new energy storage due to its low cost and environmental protection. Graphite felt (GF) is often used as the electrode. However, the hydrophilicity and electrochemical activity of GF are poor, and its reaction reversibility to Cr<sup>3+</sup>/Cr<sup>2+</sup> is worse than Fe<sup>2+</sup>/Fe<sup>3+</sup>, which leads to the hydrogen evolution side reaction of the negative electrode and affects the efficiency of the battery. In this study, the optimal composite modified GF (Bi-Bio-GF-O) electrode was prepared by using the optimal pomelo peel powder modified GF (Bio-GF-O) as the matrix and further introducing Bi<sup>3+</sup>. The electrochemical performance and material characterization of the modified electrode were analyzed. In addition, using Bio-GF-O as the positive electrode and Bi-Bio-GF-O as the negative electrode, the high efficiency of ICRFB is realized, and the capacity attenuation is minimal. When the current density is 100 mA·cm<sup>−2</sup>, after 100 cycles, the coulomb efficiency (CE), voltage efficiency (VE), and energy efficiency (EE) were 97.83%, 85.21%, and 83.36%, respectively. In this paper, the use of pomelo peel powder and Bi<sup>3+</sup> composite modified GF not only promotes the electrochemical performance and reaction reversibility of the negative electrode but also improves the performance of ICRFB. Moreover, the cost of the method is controllable, and the process is simple.
Engineering machinery, tools, and implements, Technological innovations. Automation
The paper provides a knowledge increase of the circular economy model in the context of rare materials in Europe. Rare materials play a crucial role in various industries but are often associated with limited availability and environmental concerns. The paper highlights the importance of circular economy strategies in Europe to enhance the sustainable management and utilization of rare materials. It emphasizes the need for comprehensive policies, collaborative initiatives, and technological innovations to foster the transition towards a circular economy for rare materials in Europe. With the circular economy approach, Europe could minimize the environmental impact, reduce dependence on imports, and promote the sustainable use of rare materials, ultimately contributing to a more resilient and sustainable future.
ABSTRACTOn June 21, 2022, the Metaverse Standards Forum (or ‘Forum') was announced with 35 founding members, including Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Cesium, the Web3D Consortium, and the Web 3d Consortium. The Forum, a unique coordinating structure designed to develop agreement on fundamental technical, interoperability protocols for the metaverse, may provide the technical foundation for later established open (and inclusive) standards (from emergent dominant designs) in relevant technology domain standards development organizations. If implemented with a diverse array of metaverse relevant stakeholders, this exercise in pluralistic inclusion will allow for a socially and ethically responsible consensus to be embedded in the foundational outcomes, i.e., protocols, developed by the Forum. Moreover, it will have the key benefit of a ‘legitimacy’ that the industry will be able to utilize in the social and public policy arenas moving forward with formal standards-setting, and eventual commercial implementation, of this potentially revolutionary, disruptive technology.
The interest in defining and implementing Digital Twins (DT) is at the forefront of today’s product organizations. The evolution of increasingly complex systems requires that their information be organized and managed via digital twins. In addition, the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will result in an increasing degree of system complexity. These complex systems will exhibit true emergent behavior as AIs modify system aspects as the result of goal seeking and learning. DTs will need to increase in capability, becoming intelligent in their approach. This article presents a discussion on how these Intelligent Digital Twins (IDTs) will evolve and assist in developing and managing complex systems.
Sarat Chandra Patra, Sumit Swain, Pragyan Senapati
et al.
The authors developed a nanocomposite using polypropylene (PP) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) with a melt mixing method. Virgin PP was filled with three sets of GNPs with a fixed thickness (15 nm) and surface area (50–80 m<sup>2</sup>/g). The selected H-type GNPs had three different sizes of 5, 15 and 25 µm. The nanocomposites were made by loading GNPs at 1, 2 and 3 wt.%. Mechanical analysis was carried out by performing tensile, flexural and impact strength tests. The crystalline, micro-structural, thermal and dynamic mechanical properties were assessed through XRD, FESEM, PLM, DSC, TGA and DMA tests. It was observed that all three types of GNPs boosted the mechanical strength of the polymer composite. Increasing the nanofiller size decreased the tensile strength and the tensile modulus, increased the flexural strength and flexural modulus, and increased the impact strength. Maximum tensile strength (≈41.18 MPa) resulted for the composite consisting 3 wt.% H5, whereas maximum flexural (≈50.931 MPa) and impact (≈42.88 J/m) strengths were observed for nanocomposite holding 3 wt.% H25. Graphene induced the PP’s crystalline phases and structure. An improvement in thermal stability was seen based on the results of onset degradation (T<sub>D</sub>) and melting (T<sub>m</sub>) temperatures. Graphene increased the crystallization (T<sub>c</sub>) temperatures, and acted like a nucleating agent. The experimental analysis indicated that the lateral size of graphene plays an important role for the nanocomposite’s homogeneity. It was noted that the small-sized GNPs improved dispersion and decreased agglomeration. Thus overall, small-sized GNPs are preferable, and increasing the lateral size hardly establishes feasible characteristics in the nanocomposite.
Engineering machinery, tools, and implements, Technological innovations. Automation
Identifying technology trends can be a key success factor for companies to be competitive and take advantage of technological trends before they occur. The companies always work to plan for future products and services. For that, it is important to turn to methods that are used for technology forecasting. These tools help the companies to define potential markets for innovative new products and services. This paper uses text mining techniques along with expert judgment to detect and analyze the near-term technology evolution trends in a Software as a Service (SaaS) case study. The longer-term technology development trend in this case is forecasted by analyzing the gaps between science and technology. This paper contributes to the technology forecasting methodology and will be of interest to those in SaaS technology. Our findings reveal five trends in the technology: 1) virtual networking, 2) the hybrid cloud, 3) modeling methodologies, 4) mobile applications, and 5) web applications. Among the results achieved, we can summarize the interesting ones as follows: it is possible to say that traditional information systems are now evolving into online information systems. On the other hand, the use of a licensing model based on subscriptions triggers the change in perpetual licensing models. The product range that has evolved towards mobile technologies has put pressure on information storage technologies and has led to the search for new methods especially in the development of database systems.
Vagan Terziyan, Mariia Gavriushenko, Anastasiia Girka
et al.
Abstract Industry 4.0 and highly automated critical infrastructure can be seen as cyber‐physical‐social systems controlled by the Collective Intelligence. Such systems are essential for the functioning of the society and economy. On one hand, they have flexible infrastructure of heterogeneous systems and assets. On the other hand, they are social systems, which include collaborating humans and artificial decision makers. Such (human plus machine) resources must be pre‐trained to perform their mission with high efficiency. Both human and machine learning approaches must be bridged to enable such training. The importance of these systems requires the anticipation of the potential and previously unknown worst‐case scenarios during training. In this paper, we provide an adversarial training framework for the collective intelligence. We show how cognitive capabilities can be copied (“cloned”) from humans and trained as a (responsible) collective intelligence. We made some modifications to the Generative Adversarial Networks architectures and adapted them for the cloning and training tasks. We modified the Discriminator component to a so‐called “Turing Discriminator”, which includes one or several human and artificial discriminators working together. We also discussed the concept of cellular intelligence, where a person can act and collaborate in a group together with their own cognitive clones.
The most profound requirements of fifth-generation (5G) technology implementations are the architecture design and the radio base station technology to capably run applications such as device-to-device, machine-to machine and internet of things at a reduced latency. Owing to these requirements, the implementation of 5G technology is very expensive to mobile network operators (MNO). In this study we modified the existing 4G network to form a distributed wireless network architecture (DWNA); the picocell and distributed antenna system were modified to support the enabling technology of 5G technology were a multi-edge computer (MEC), software-defined networking (SDN), massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO), ultra-dense network (UDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and device-to-device (D2D) communication at a reduced cost of ownership, improved coverage and capacity. We present a mathematical model for operational expenditure, capital expenditure and total cost of ownership (TCO) for the DWNA. A mathematical model for DWNA capacity and throughput was presented. Result shows that it is very economical for MNO to rent the space of the tower infrastructure from tower companies. The sensitivity analysis also shows a significant reduction in TCO for both the modified picocell and modified distributed antenna systems.
Engineering machinery, tools, and implements, Technological innovations. Automation
O presente trabalho emerge de atividade proposta no currículo do curso Técnico em Informática Integrado ao Ensino Médio, do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina – Campus Xanxerê, na disciplina de Língua Portuguesa e Literatura VI. O texto busca comparar duas obras literárias pertencentes ao período do Modernismo, sendo elas “A metamorfose”, de Franz Kafka, e “A paixão segundo G.H.”, de Clarice Lispector, analisando personagens, cenários, enredos, buscando evidenciar problemas da sociedade. Nesse sentido, foi possível encontrar, por exemplo, que ambas as narrativas retratam dilemas enfrentados pelo ser humano, como a diferenciação entre gêneros e classes. As reflexões têm por base teórica Bordieu (2009; 2010), Candido (2002), entre outros.
In this article, we explore the concept of Open Hardware (OH) as an experimental innovation platform to take a first step in the study of the institutional and sociotechnical conditions for fostering and advancing Free and Open Source projects at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. For our purposes, OH will be described as a highly adaptable platform for present and future research infrastructures. As part of the contemporary movement for “Open Science,” OH will be examined with respect to its actual and potential contributions to the development of common tools and infrastructures for large-scale scientific collaborations. The primary data we use was gathered by the CERN Knowledge Transfer group in October 2016 through an online survey in addition to face-to-face interviews. Our preliminary findings point to the need for establishing different modes of institutional support beyond CERN and outside the hobbyist market to help advance cultures of collaborative hardware development in the sciences.