Product intelligence in industrial control: Theory and practice

This paper explores the evolving industrial control paradigm of product intelligence. The approach seeks to give a customer greater control over the processing of an order - by integrating technologies which allow for greater tracking of the order and methodologies which allow the customer [via the order] to dynamically influence the way the order is produced, stored or transported. The paper examines developments from four distinct perspectives: conceptual developments, theoretical issues, practical deployment and business opportunities. In each area, existing work is reviewed and open challenges for research are identified. The paper concludes by identifying four key obstacles to be overcome in order to successfully deploy product intelligence in an industrial application. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exploring prior experience and the effects of age on product interaction and Learning

The purpose of this research was to investigate the extent to which prior technological experience of products is related to age, and if this has implications for the success of subsequent product interaction. The contribution of this work is to provide the design community with new knowledge and a greater awareness of the diversity of user needs, and particularly the needs and skills of older people. The focus of this paper is to present how individual's mental models of products and interaction were developed through experiential learning; what new knowledge was acquired, and how this contributed to the development of mental models and product understanding. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Globally Unique Product Identifiers - Requirements and Solutions to Product Lifecycle Management

Managing product information for product items during their whole lifetime is challenging, especially during their usage and end-of-life phases. A major challenge is how to keep a link between the product item and its associated information that may be stored in backend systems of different organizations. This chapter analyses and compares three approaches for addressing this task-that is, the electronic product code (EPC) Network, DIALOG, and World Wide Article Information (WWAI). The EPC network has three key strengths with respect to Product lifecycle management (PLM): First, it is an internationally accepted standard that is supported by a world-wide standards body (GSI). Second, the lookup mechanism helps to insulate the data on the tag from change. Third, because it is becoming widespread and that this tag can also be used for PLM. WWAI is more technically sophisticated than the other approaches. The DIALOG approach might be the most general purpose one of the three because it places few restrictions on the format of the data on the tag. © 2006 Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Product intelligence in warehouse management: A case study

The need for more flexible, adaptable and customer-oriented warehouse operations has been increasingly identified as an important issue by today's warehouse companies due to the rapidly changing preferences of the customers that use their services. Motivated by manufacturing and other logistics operations, in this paper we argue on the potential application of product intelligence in warehouse operations as an approach that can help warehouse companies address these issues. We discuss the opportunities of such an approach using a real example of a third-party-logistics warehouse company and we present the benefits it can bring in their warehouse management systems. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Exploring an effective model of new product development in medical devices: A knowledge cluster approach

This study proposes a new product development (NPD) model that aims to improve the effectiveness of innovative NPD in the medical devices. By adopting open innovation theory and applying an in-depth investigation methodology, this paper proposes a knowledge cluster that improves the integration of interdisciplinary human resources and enhances the acquirement of innovative technologies. A knowledge cluster approach helps gather, organise, synthesise, and accumulate knowledge in order to become the impetus for innovation. Although enterprises are no longer the principals of research and development, they should still be capable of integrating professional physicians, external groups, and individuals through the knowledge cluster platform. However, in order to support an effective NPD model, enterprises should provide adequate incentives and trust to external individuals or groups willing to contribute their expertise and knowledge to this knowledge cluster platform. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Stakeholder engagement in early stage product-service system development for healthcare informatics

This paper presents the findings from four case studies on stakeholder engagement in new health information and communication technology (ICT) product-service system (PSS) development. The degree of connectivity between the new health ICT PSS and its intended operating environment has emerged to be an important contextual factor that may impact the decision of stakeholder engagement in the early stage development process. Along with the proposition of a four-level framework to guide stakeholder identification for new PSS development, three stakeholder engagement propositions that are based on the degree of connectivity are developed. Analysis has shown that there can be two types of connectivity: data and process. Moreover, each connectivity type can be characterized by how much the new PSS is connected with its environment: independent if there is no linkage, linked if it interfaces with, or incorporated if it is embedded into. Furthermore, depending upon whether and to what extent the PSS has data and process connectivity with its intended operating environment, the stakeholder engagement needs in early stage development vary. The propositions presented in this paper provide important directions for future work exploring PSS characterization and stakeholder engagement decision in early stage new PSS development in the healthcare industry. © 2013 PICMET.

A study of converter rating for brushless DFIG wind turbines

This paper studies the converter rating requirement of a Brushless Doubly-Fed Induction Generator for wind turbine applications by considering practical constraints such as generator torque-speed requirement, reactive power management and grid low-voltage ride-through (LVRT). Practical data have been used to obtain a realistic system model of a Brushless DFIG wind turbine using steady-state and dynamic models. A converter rating optimization is performed based on the given constraints. The converter current and voltage requirements are examined and the resulting inverter rating is compared to optimization algorithm results. In addition, the effects of rotor leakage inductance on LVRT performance and hence converter rating is investigated.

An architecture design with data model for product recovery management systems

Due to concerns about environmental protection and resource utilization, product lifecycle management for end-of-life (EOL) has received increasing attention in many industrial sectors including manufacturing, maintenance/repair, and recycling/refurbishing of the product. To support these functions, crucial issues are studied to realize a product recovery management system (PRMS), including: (1) an architecture design for EOL services, such as remanufacturing and recycling; (2) a product data model required for EOL activity based on international standards; and (3) an infrastructure for information acquisition and mapping to product lifecycle information. The presented works are illustrated via a realistic scenario. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

UbiDM: A new paradigm for product design and manufacturing via ubiquitous computing technology

Since ubiquitous technology was introduced in the early 1980s, it has rapidly developed, and been applied to various domains mainly for the improvement of human life. In this article, the authors propose that ubiquitous computing technology can be effectively used for the design and manufacturing of a product by proposing a new paradigm, called UbiDM (Design and Manufacture via Ubiquitous Computing Technology). The key aspect of UbiDM is the utilisation of the entire product lifecycle information obtained via ubiquitous computing technology for the design and manufacture of the product. The new paradigm can solve many of the problems that have not been properly handled by previous manufacturing paradigms. Specifically, it will address the concept of UbiDM by the following aspects: (1) why there is a need for UbiDM; (2) the essence of UbiDM; (3) enabling technologies; (4) application area; (5) worldwide RD status; and (6) the societal impacts of UbiDM.

Hydrodynamics in an expanded bed of large size ion-exchange resin, and natural product adsorption

Successful applications of expanded bed adsorption (EBA) technology have been widely reported in the literature for protein purification. Little has been reported on the recovery of natural products and active components of Chinese herbal preparations using EBA technology. In this study, the hydrodynamic behavior in an expanded bed of cation resin, 001 x 7 Styrene-DVB, was investigated. Ephedrine hydrochloride (EH) was used as a model natural product to test the dynamic binding capacity (DBC) in the expanded bed. EBA of EH directly from a feedstock containing powdered herbs has also been investigated. These particles are different from commercially available expanded bed adsorbents by virtue of their large size (20S to 1030 gm). When the adsorbent bed is expanded to approximately 1.3 to 1.5 times its settled bed height, the axial liquid-phase dispersion coefficient was found to be of the order 10(-5) m(2) s(-1), which falls into the range 1.0 x 10(-6) to 1.0 X 10(-5) m(2) s(-1) observed previously in protein purification. Because of the favorable column efficiency (low axial dispersion coefficient), the recovery yield and purification factor values of EH directly from a feedstock reached 86.5% and 18, respectively. The results suggest that EBA technology holds promise for the recovery of natural products and active components of Chinese herbal preparations.

Lean product development in practice: Insights from 4 companies

This paper aims to elucidate practitioners' understanding and implementation of Lean in Product Development (LPD). We report on a workshop held in the UK during 2012. Managers and engineers from four organizations discussed their understanding of LPD and their ideas and practice regarding management and assessment of value and waste. The study resulted in a set of insights into current practice and lean thinking from the industry perspective. Building on this, the paper introduces a balanced value and waste model that can be used by practitioners as a checklist to identify issues that need to be considered when applying LPD. The main results indicate that organizations tend to focus on waste elimination rather than value enhancement in LPD. Moreover, the lean metrics that were discussed by the workshop participants do not link the strategic level with the operational one, and poorly reflect the value and waste generated in the process. Future directions for research are explored, and include the importance of a balanced approach considering both value and waste when applying LPD, and the need to link lean metrics with value and waste levels.

Partial and total replacement of fishmeal with poultry by-product meal in diets for gibel carp, Carassius auratus gibelio Bloch

Triplicate groups of gibel carp Carassius auratus gibelio Bloch (initial body weight: 4.89 g) were fed for 8 weeks at 24.8-30.8 degrees C with nine isonitrogenous and isoenergetic diets. The control diet (F1) used white fishmeal (FM) as the sole protein source. In the other eight diets (F2-F9), 40.5-100% of FM protein was substituted by poultry by-product meal (PBM) at 8.5% increments. The specific growth rate (SGR), feed efficiency ratio, protein efficiency ratio, protein retention efficiency and energy retention rate for fish fed PBM diets (F2-F9) were all higher, but not always significantly, than those for fish fed F1. All apparent digestibility coefficients for fish fed PBM diets were lower than those for fish fed F1. Fish fed F1 had a significantly higher hepatosomatic index value than fish fed PBM diets (P < 0.05). No significant (P > 0.05) effect of diet was found in whole-body moisture and fat content. Whole-body protein and energy content for fish fed PBM diets were slightly higher than that for fish fed F1. The optimal replacement level of FM by PBM was estimated by second-order polynomial regression to be 66.5% in protein.

A derivation of the source-channel error exponent using nonidentical product distributions

This paper studies the random-coding exponent of joint source-channel coding for a scheme where source messages are assigned to disjoint subsets (referred to as classes), and codewords are independently generated according to a distribution that depends on the class index of the source message. For discrete memoryless systems, two optimally chosen classes and product distributions are found to be sufficient to attain the sphere-packing exponent in those cases where it is tight. © 2014 IEEE.