Search results

The Bass model was created to analyse the product life cycle (PLC) in order to help sales and marketing departments in their business decision making. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the diferences between the clients assisted and sales variables, to discover which of the two variables is the more useful for the estimation of the PLC phases through the Bass model, thus aiding the managers of company sales and marketing departments.

In this research, the authors analysed the 223,577 clients assisted by a nationwide network of car dealerships, who acquired 36,819 vehicles, during a 24-month period. In the analysis, the Bass model was applied to define the PLC phases; and nonlinear regression models were used to carry out the estimations.

The results show that more consistent estimates of the PLC phases are obtained from the clients assisted variable. This work has theoretical and practical implications that can help business management.

The most remarkable thing about this research is that we have shown that the functionality of the clients assisted variable is greater than the sales variable for the Bass model and, therefore, for PLC estimation.

The results of this research are very useful, since they allow marketing decision makers to obtain more consistent estimations of the PLC phases using the Bass model and the clients assisted variable. This is based on the fact that the use of this variable helps to detect if there is any deficiency in the design of the marketing strategy when the client does not make the purchase.

The data on clients assisted are as easily available to companies as sales data. However, the use of this variable improves PLC analysis and this allows an improvement in company forecasting. Thus, making the clients assisted variable a tool to strategically plan investments in innovation and marketing would reduce uncertainty in business management.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the diferences between the clients assisted and sales variables, to discover which of the two variables is the more useful for the estimation of the PLC phases through the Bass model, thus aiding the managers of company sales and marketing departments.

The purpose of this study is to develop new type of reverse mortgage contract. How to provide adequate services and housing for an increasing number of people that are dependent on the help of others is a crucial question in the European Union (EU). The housing stock in Europe is not fit to support a shift from institutional care to the home-based independent living. Some 90% of houses in the UK and 70%–80% in Germany are not adequately built, as they contain accessibility barriers for people with emerging functional impairments. The available reverse mortgage contracts do not allow for relocation to their own adapted facilities. How to finance the adaptation from housing equity is discussed.

The authors have extended the existing loan reverse mortgage model. Actuarial methods based on the equivalence of the actuarial present values and the multiple decrement approach are used to evaluate premiums for flexible longevity and lifetime long-term care (LTC) insurance for financing adequate facilities.

The adequate, age-friendly housing provision that is appropriate to support the independence and autonomy of seniors with declining functional capacities can lower the cost of health care and improve the well-being of older adults. For financing the development of this kind of facilities for seniors, the authors developed the reverse mortgage scheme with embedded longevity and LTC insurance as a possible financial instrument for better LTC services and housing with care in assisted-living facilities. This kind of facilities should be available for the rapid growth of older cohorts.

The numerical example is based on rather crude numbers, because of lack of data, as the developed reverse mortgage product with LTC insurance is a novelty. Intensity of care and probabilities of care in certain category of care will change after the introduction of this product.

The model results indicate that it is possible to successfully tie an insurance product to the insured and not to the object.

The introduction of this insurance option will allow many older adult with low pension benefits and a substantial home equity to safely opt for a reverse mortgage and benefit from better social care.

While currently available reverse mortgage contracts lapse when the homeowner moves to assisted-living facilities in any EU Member State, in the paper a new method is developed where multiple adjustments of housing to the functional capacities with relocation is possible, under the same insurance and reverse mortgage contract. The case of Slovenia is presented as a numerical example. These insurance products, as a novelty, are portable, so the homeowner can move in own specialised housing unit in assisted-living facilities and keep the existing reverse mortgage contract with no additional costs, which is not possible in the current insurance products. With some small modifications, the method is useful for any EU Member State.

This work aims at proposing a novel Internet of Things (IoT)-based and cloud-assisted monitoring architecture for smart manufacturing systems able to evaluate their overall status and detect eventual anomalies occurring into the production. A novel artificial intelligence (AI) based technique, able to identify the specific anomalous event and the related risk classification for possible intervention, is hence proposed.

The proposed solution is a five-layer scalable and modular platform in Industry 5.0 perspective, where the crucial layer is the Cloud Cyber one. This embeds a novel anomaly detection solution, designed by leveraging control charts, autoencoders (AE) long short-term memory (LSTM) and Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). The proper combination of these methods allows, not only detecting the products defects, but also recognizing their causalities.

The proposed architecture, experimentally validated on a manufacturing system involved into the production of a solar thermal high-vacuum flat panel, provides to human operators information about anomalous events, where they occur, and crucial information about their risk levels.

Thanks to the abnormal risk panel; human operators and business managers are able, not only of remotely visualizing the real-time status of each production parameter, but also to properly face with the eventual anomalous events, only when necessary. This is especially relevant in an emergency situation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The monitoring platform is one of the first attempts in leading modern manufacturing systems toward the Industry 5.0 concept. Indeed, it combines human strengths, IoT technology on machines, cloud-based solutions with AI and zero detect manufacturing strategies in a unified framework so to detect causalities in complex dynamic systems by enabling the possibility of products’ waste avoidance.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the potential of three-dimensional printing technology for the remanufacturing of end-of-life (EoL) composites. This technology will enable the rapid fabrication of environmentally sustainable structures with complex shapes and good mechanical properties. These three-dimensional printed objects will have several application fields, such as street furniture and urban renewal, thus promoting a circular economy model.

For this purpose, a low-cost liquid deposition modeling technology was used to extrude photo-curable and thermally curable composite inks, composed of an acrylate-based resin loaded with different amounts of mechanically recycled glass fiber reinforced composites (GFRCs). Rheological properties of the extruded inks and their printability window and the conversion of cured composites after an ultraviolet light (UV) assisted extrusion were investigated. In addition, tensile properties of composites remanufactured by this UV-assisted technology were studied.

A printability window was found for the three-dimensional printable GFRCs inks. The formulation of the composite printable inks was optimized to obtain high quality printed objects with a high content of recycled GFRCs. Tensile tests also showed promising mechanical properties for printed GFRCs obtained with this approach.

The novelty of this paper consists in the remanufacturing of GFRCs by the three-dimensional printing technology to promote the implementation of a circular economy. This study shows the feasibility of this approach, using mechanically recycled EoL GFRCs, composed of a thermoset polymer matrix, which cannot be melted as in case of thermoplastic-based composites. Objects with complex shapes were three-dimensional printed and presented here as a proof-of-concept.

Ageing populations induce needs to adapt existing housing. With ageing, the number of frail old people, who require assistance in daily life, is also increased. Converting existing housing into assisted living enables them to remain in their community while receiving necessary support and care. The purpose is to investigate whether post-war mass housing is spatially appropriate for adaptation into group homes for older people.

The research material is attained from Finland. Spatial requirements for group homes are drawn from 130 units built or renovated during 2000–2015. Spatial characteristics of mass housing are mapped from 105 apartment buildings built in the 1970s. The latter are matched with the former by comparing the connectivity of layouts, sizes of units and the numbers and sizes of individual spaces.

Group homes typically utilize a linear layout, which can easily be created in apartment buildings. Individual spaces of a group home fit apartment buildings effortlessly. Whole group home units mostly prove to be spatially feasible but result in looser dimensioning than is typical in existing units. The mass housing stock can be considered a spatial reserve for adaptation into group homes.

This is the first study to employ a large-scale, multi-case spatial mapping approach to analyse the adaptability properties of mass housing into assisted living. The findings pertain primarily to the Finnish context, but a methodology is presented which can be applied to other countries and also to other spatial functions.

The behavioral decision-making of digital-self is one of the important research contents of the network of crowd intelligence. The factors and mechanisms that affect decision-making have attracted the attention of many researchers. Among the factors that influence decision-making, the mind of digital-self plays an important role. Exploring the influence mechanism of digital-selfs’ mind on decision-making is helpful to understand the behaviors of the crowd intelligence network and improve the transaction efficiency in the network of CrowdIntell.

In this paper, the authors use behavioral pattern perception layer, multi-aspect perception layer and memory network enhancement layer to adaptively explore the mind of a digital-self and generate the mental representation of a digital-self from three aspects including external behavior, multi-aspect factors of the mind and memory units. The authors use the mental representations to assist behavioral decision-making.

The evaluation in real-world open data sets shows that the proposed method can model the mind and verify the influence of the mind on the behavioral decisions, and its performance is better than the universal baseline methods for modeling user interest.

In general, the authors use the behaviors of the digital-self to mine and explore its mind, which is used to assist the digital-self to make decisions and promote the transaction in the network of CrowdIntell. This work is one of the early attempts, which uses neural networks to model the mental representation of digital-self.

This paper aims to describe the control software of a novel manufacturing system called plasma-assisted bio-extrusion system (PABS), designed to produce complex multi-material and functionally graded scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. This fabrication system combines multiple pressure-assisted and screw-assisted printing heads and plasma jets. Control software allows the users to create single or multi-material constructs with uniform pore size or pore size gradients by changing the operation parameters, such as geometric parameters, lay-down pattern, filament distance, feed rate and layer thickness, and to produce functional graded scaffolds with different layer-by-layer coating/surface modification strategies by using the plasma modification system.

MATLAB GUI is used to develop the software, including the design of the user interface and the implementation of all mathematical programing for both multi-extrusion and plasma modification systems.

Based on the user definition, G programing codes are generated, enabling full integration and synchronization with the hardware of PABS. Single, multi-material and functionally graded scaffolds can be obtained by manipulating different materials, scaffold designs and processing parameters. The software is easy to use, allowing the efficient control of the PABS even for the fabrication of complex scaffolds.

This paper introduces a novel additive manufacturing system for tissue engineering applications describing in detail the software developed to control the system. This new fabrication system represents a step forward regarding the current state-of-the-art technology in the field of biomanufacturing, enabling the design and fabrication of more effective scaffolds matching the mechanical and surface characteristics of the surrounding tissue and enabling the incorporation of high number of cells uniformly distributed and the introduction of multiple cell types with positional specificity.

Sharīʿah Secretariat plays a significant role in assisting Sharīʿah Supervisory Boards (SSBs) in their role in achieving Sharīʿah compliance in Islamic banks (IBs). The key objective of the study is to develop a organizational framework of the Sharīʿah Secretariat for the IBs in Bangladesh.

The study applied qualitative case study research. The data have been collected from 17 respondents through semi-structured interviews from IBs and professional experts in Bangladesh.

This study proposes a full-time Sharīʿah Secretariat and several departments for further enhancement of the Sharīʿah functions in IBs in Bangladesh. The framework proposed in this study covers the formation, functions, composition, qualification, reporting line, independence, remuneration and terms of appointment of the Sharīʿah Secretariat to set a uniform benchmark for all IBs in Bangladesh. It is anticipated that the outcomes of this research will assist to further strengthen the Sharīʿah governance of IBs in Bangladesh.

This research contributed to the national and global regulatory authorities and IBs by proposing a Sharīʿah Secretariat framework for the smooth functioning of the IBs in Bangladesh. The framework proposed in this study covers the formation, functions, composition, qualification, reporting line, independence, remuneration and terms of appointment of Sharīʿah Secretariat.

This study proposed a framework which is considered the first organizational framework so far for the Sharīʿah Secretariat of IBs in Bangladesh. IBs can apply this proposed framework to form their Sharīʿah Secretariat structure.

Equine-assisted therapy (EAT) uses the horse and its environment to achieve therapeutic goals as designed by an allied health professional (Taylor, 2010). The benefits of these interventions affect areas such as motor skills (Bass et al., 2009; Silkwood-Sherer et al., 2012), sensory processing (Ward et al., 2013), learning, social interaction and socioemotional development (Bracher, 2000). It was felt that occupational therapists could offer valuable input in this area. This paper aims to investigate the impact of a specific six-week EAT programme on six participants’ occupational performance.

Mixed methods were used in this pilot study, consisting of a pre- and post-design with two follow-up periods. Participants were aged between 5 and10 years with a diagnosis of a visual impairment, and some had additional diagnoses. The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) was administered to parents pre-programme, post-programme and approximately six week after the programme ceased. Additional information from notes that contained children’s and parents’ reports was analysed thematically.

Five of the six children were rated as having clinically significant changes in their occupational performance. Analysis of parents’ and children’s reports on their experience of the programme showed the main themes to be: peer interaction, taking on new challenges, feelings towards EAT and change.

Although there are many practitioners of EAT in Ireland, there is little research, and none was found in relation to the role of occupational therapists within this context. These results indicate that EAT may be effective in assisting some children to reach a variety of goals. This pilot study not only suggests that EAT is worth further research but also begins to explore the role of occupational therapy in this form of intervention.

Previous studies on the associations between approaches to studying and outcomes have been conducted largely in Europe, where participants have been largely undergraduate-level students. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between study approaches and academic outcomes of graduate occupational therapy students in the USA.

In this study, 120 masters- and doctoral-level occupational therapy students in their first and second study year in a large metropolitan city completed the short version of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). A total of 18 items from the full 52-items version comprise the short version of the ASSIST, with 6 items belonging to each of the deep, strategic and surface scales. Associations between the study approach scales and exam grades were analyzed with single and multiple logistic regression analyses.

There was a direct association between the use of strategic studying and higher grade point average. Thus, students who want to perform well academically are encouraged to use study behaviours comprised by the strategic approach to studying.

This study appears to be the first to examine associations between study approaches and academic performance among occupational therapy students in the US context. More research on the study approaches of US American students is warranted.