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Although the industrial application of drones is increasing quickly, there is a scarcity of applications in manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to explore current and potential applications of drones in manufacturing, examine the opportunities and challenges involved and propose a research agenda.

The paper reports the result of an extensive qualitative investigation into an emerging phenomenon. The authors build on the literature on advanced manufacturing technologies. Data collected through in-depth interviews with 66 drone experts from 56 drone vendors and related services are analyzed using an inductive research design.

Drones represent a promising AMT that is expected to be used in several applications in manufacturing in the next few years. This paper proposes a typology of drone applications in manufacturing, explains opportunities and challenges involved and develops a research agenda. The typology categorizes four types of applications based on the drones’ capabilities to “see,” “sense,” “move” and “transform.”

The proposed research agenda offers a guide for future research on drones in manufacturing. There are many research opportunities in the domains of industrial engineering, technology development and behavioral operations.

Guidance on current and promising potentials of drones in manufacturing is provided to practitioners. Particularly interesting applications are those that help manufacturers “see” and “sense” data in their factories. Applications that “move” or “transform” objects are scarcer, and they make sense only in special cases in very large manufacturing facilities.

The application of drones in manufacturing is in its infancy, but is foreseen to grow rapidly over the next decade. This paper presents the first academically rigorous analysis of potential applications of drones in manufacturing. An original and theory-informed typology for drone applications is a timely contribution to the nascent literature. The research agenda presented assists the establishment of a new stream of literature on drones in manufacturing.

The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.

The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.

Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.

Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development and testing of an innovative mobile application using design-based research.

This paper reports on the process of transformation of existing printed course material into digitized content through design-based research where design, research and practice were concurrently applied through several iterations of the mobile application. For this transformation, one session each from BSc in Nursing, Bachelor of Pharmacy and Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences was selected. In the first phase of the design-based research, the main research question was formulated. In the second phase, a mobile learning application (OUSL MLearn) was designed and developed to address the research question. In the third phase, this application was evaluated by five groups of stakeholders: content experts to validate the content; educational technologists to check the alignment of technical and pedagogical features; novice users to check the overall effectiveness of the application; developer to develop the application, to check the ease of usage; and researchers to identify the impact of this innovation. These stakeholders were closely involved throughout the whole process which lasted over a period of four months. At the end of this development phase, the results were reflected upon and used for further enrichment.

It was observed that the developed mobile application was accessible, appealing and pedagogically constructive for users. However, optimization, development time, technical and organizational issues, workload of academics and production costs were identified as major challenges.

This study was based on the findings of a small sample of potential users.

The findings have implications for designing culturally adaptive interactive mobile applications.

This study will benefit practitioners to design culturally sensitive mobile learning courses and researchers to conduct design-based research.

This paper addresses a gap in research literature in the fields of blockchain technology (BC), supply chain network dynamics (SC) and network effect phenomena (NE). Extant BC and SC literature describes the potential benefits to be reaped through the adoption of BC technology. While BC technology does not yet meet the researched expectations of adoption, performance and efficacy, the authors analyze the three inter-related fields (BC, SC and NE) to bridge this gap in theory.

This paper begins with a research review correlating the technological fundamentals of BC technology into fundamental value propositions for SC logistics contexts. The authors review the gap between these theoretical technological functions and the current ecosystem of BC applications. With an overarching understanding of BC in SC contexts, this paper then explores the phenomena of NE and attempts to synthesize various interrelated aspects of the three fields (BC, SC and NE). Research frameworks from extant literature are used for cross-comparing legacy software/information system solutions with potential and existing BC-based solutions. Case studies are utilized to support this analysis.

Several key considerations and themes are identified to better inform practitioner and researcher decision-making. Novel insights pertain to BC platform architecture and application modularity, integrated governance and decision-making capabilities, and the automation capabilities that arise from a healthy application and smart contract ecosystem.

The core contribution is the synthesis of network effect theory with SC phenomena and BC theory and the exploration of how these three fields are inter-related in the maturation of BC technology. Specifically, the authors deepen insights from extant literature by contextualizing findings with relevant interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks.

Large-scale text-based data increasingly poses methodological challenges due to its size, scope and nature, requiring sophisticated methods for managing, visualizing, analyzing and interpreting such data. This paper aims to propose semantic network analysis (SemNA) as one possible solution to these challenges, showcasing its potential for consumer and marketing researchers through three application areas in phygital contexts.

This paper outlines three general application areas for SemNA in phygital contexts and presents specific use cases, data collection methodologies, analyses, findings and discussions for each application area.

The paper uncovers three application areas and use cases where SemNA holds promise for providing valuable insights and driving further adoption of the method: (1) Investigating phygital experiences and consumption phenomena; (2) Exploring phygital consumer and market discourse, trends and practices; and (3) Capturing phygital social constructs.

The limitations section highlights the specific challenges of the qualitative, interpretivist approach to SemNA, along with general methodological constraints.

Practical implications highlight SemNA as a pragmatic tool for managers to analyze and visualize company-/brand-related data, supporting strategic decision-making in physical, digital and phygital spaces.

This paper contributes to the expanding body of computational, tool-based methods by providing an overview of application areas for the qualitative, interpretivist approach to SemNA in consumer and marketing research. It emphasizes the diversity of research contexts and data, where the boundaries between physical and digital spaces have become increasingly intertwined with physical and digital elements closely integrated – a phenomenon known as phygital.

The main purpose of the study was to identify the key elements that characterize successful grant proposals and the relative importance of issues that constitute difficulties and concerns in preparing the proposals. The study aimed, in particular, to explore grantsmanship perceptions based on the experiences of researchers in Thailand who had, or had not yet, successfully been awarded domestic and/or international research funding.

Anonymous online questionnaires were distributed to researchers in biomedical and public health fields in Thai academic institutes. The online survey asked the anonymous participants to complete a questionnaire comprising both multiple-choice and open-ended questions.

About 19% of 300 respondents had received both domestic and international research grants, and 60% of domestic research grants. The top 5 issues in grant applications were: (1) choosing a topic that matched the grant opportunity, (2) feasibility of research design and methods, (3) suitable research design and methodology, (4) model and theoretical justification, and (5) ethical considerations. Significant differences in perceptions among researchers were found for the feasibility of research design and methods and proposing a reasonable and justifiable budget.

The information derived from this analysis reflected the perceptions of the researchers and may or may not correlate with those of grant agency reviewers. The results of this study may be insightful and instructive for other researchers and form the basis for training and mentoring researchers in informed and effective grantsmanship, particularly novice researchers with limited or no experience in grant proposal writing. This study particularly reflected grantsmanship perceptions among researchers in Thailand. It may also serve to exemplify lessons learned for researchers in other low-income and middle-income countries (LMIC) exposed to similar settings and situations applying for research grants.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the application of blockchain to agri-food supply chains, including key issues and trends. It examines the state of the art and conceptual structure of the field and proposes an agenda to guide future research.

This article performs a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software on a sample of 205 articles from the WoS database to identify research trend topics.

The number of publications in this area has increased since 2020, which shows a growing research interest. The research hotspots are related to the integration of blockchain technology in the agri-food supply chain for traceability, coordination between all actors involved, transparency of operations and improvement of food safety. Furthermore, this is linked to sustainability and the achievement of the sustainable development gtoals (SDGs), while addressing key challenges in the implementation of blockchain-based technologies in the agri-food supply chain.

The application of blockchain in the agri-food supply chain may consider four key aspects. Firstly, the implementation of blockchain can improve the traceability of food products. Secondly, this technology supports sustainability issues and could avoid disruptions in the agri-food supply chain. Third, blockchain improves food quality and safety control throughout the supply chain. Fourthly, the findings show that regulation is needed to improve trust between stakeholders.

The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the blockchain phenomenon in the agri-food supply chain by optimising the search criteria. Moreover, it serves to bridge to future research by identifying gaps in the field.

Metaverse is a virtual application spawned by digital technology that is becoming increasingly relevant to our lives. However, for the opportunities created and challenges posed by the metaverse, its important elements and future evolution trend remain largely unknown. Thus, this paper aims to understand the current status of metaverse research and its future research directions.

Based on the analysis of the literature data on the metaverse both in English and Chinese using Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling and bibliometrics, this study discussed the related research and development trend of the metaverse. The authors first defined the concept of the metaverse and analyzed 1,378 English articles from seven publishers and 590 Chinese articles from the CNKI database. Following that, the authors summarized three important themes from the current studies: virtual world, metaverse technologies and metaverse applications. Finally, a framework of future directions on metaverse research was proposed.

The review found that during the rapid development of the metaverse, opportunities and challenges coexisted. In the virtual world, metaverse technologies drive the implementation of application scenarios, and in turn, applications promote the improvement of technologies. The interrelationship between technology and application lays the foundation for the development of the metaverse. Future metaverse research will generate different research directions.

This review provides a valuable, systematic perspective for individuals who want to understand the metaverse. The conceptual framework on metaverse research proposed in this paper offers a comparison of literature analysis from domestic and international perspectives and brings new insights into the development of the metaverse.

Site supervision features largely influence the productivity status of construction operational processes. This study aims to use a case study containing mixed methods to test the site supervisory traits in applying mathematical theories to construction operations for directing supervisory capabilities under various operational characteristics.

A total of 62 construction site supervisors were trained as part of a new apprenticeship programme. Through literature reviews and expert consultations, grading criteria were designed with various degrees of descriptions and score ratings. The supervisory attributes were evaluated under seven competency element characteristics mapped with the relevant learning domains.

The results demonstrate a detailed sectional view of performance ratings of supervisors under different characteristics of competency factors with the validity, reliability, applicability and generalisability assurance of the research findings using relevant statistical tests and expert evaluations.

Though the research applications were engaged directly with the construction industry in the Sri Lankan setting, other developing countries and emerging industries can also employ equivalent tactics to attain similar outcomes in their industry-based operations.

The research findings have led to producing a new guide that makes significant impacts on deciding the capability levels in construction supervisory attributes while executing problem-solving applications in construction planning and operational processes. Accordingly, the findings push to open a gate to intake advanced cognitive attributes towards addressing the industry's knowledge gap on how the problem-solving-based apprenticeship protocols need to be linked with the supervision features.

Through this research study, the authors found that digital thread has made significant progress in the life cycle management of the US Air Force. The authors hope that by reviewing similar studies in the aerospace field, the meaning of digital thread can be summarized and applied to a wider range of fields. In addition, theoretically, the definition of digital twin and digital thread are not unified. The authors hope that the comparison of digital thread and digital twin will better enable scholars to distinguish between the two concepts. Besides, the authors are also looking forward that more people will realize the significance of digital thread and carry out future research.

Complete research about digital thread and the relevant concept of the digital twin is conducted. First, by searching in Google Scholar with the keyword “digital thread”, the authors filter results and save literature with high relevance to digital thread. The authors also track these papers’ references for more paper of digital thread and digital twin. After removing the duplicate and low-relevance literature, 72 digital thread-related literature studies are saved and further analyzed from the perspective of time development, application field and research directions.

Digital thread application in industries other than the aviation manufacturing industry is still relatively few, and the research on the application of digital thread in real industrial scenarios is mainly at the stage of framework design and design-side decision optimization. In addition, the digital thread needs a new management mechanism and organizational structure to realize landing. The new management mechanism and the process can adapt to the whole life cycle management process based on the digital thread, manage the data security and data update, and promote the digital thread to play a better effect on the organizational management.

Based on a review of digital thread, future research directions and usage suggestions are given. The fault diagnosis of high-speed train bogie as an example shows the effectiveness of the method and also partially demonstrates the advantages and effects brought by the digital thread connecting the data models at various stages.

This paper first investigates and analyzes the theoretical connotation and research progress of digital thread and gives a complete definition of digital thread from the perspective of the combination of digital thread and digital twins. Next, the research process of digital thread is reviewed, and the application fields, research directions and achievements in recent years are summarized. Finally, taking the fault diagnosis of high-speed train bogie as an example partially demonstrates the advantages and effects brought by the digital thread connecting the data models at various stages.