Search results

The aim of this study is to identify and prioritize a list of key digitization enablers that can improve supply chain management (SCM). SCM is an important driver for organization's competitive advantage. The fierce competition in the market has forced companies to look the past conventional decision-making process, which is based on intuition and previous experience. The swift evolution of information technologies (ITs) and digitization tools has changed the scenario for many industries, including those involved in SCM.

The Best Worst Method (BWM) has been applied to evaluate, rank and prioritize the key digitization and IT enablers beneficial for the improvement of SC performance. The study also used additive value function to rank the organizations on their SC performance with respect to digitization enablers.

The total of 25 key enablers have been identified and ranked. The results revealed that “big data/data science skills”, “tracking and localization of products” and “appropriate and feasibility study for aiding the selection and adoption of big data technologies and techniques ” are the top three digitization and IT enablers that organizations need to focus much in order to improve their SC performance. The study also ranked the SC performance of the organizations based on digitization enablers.

The findings of this study will help the organizations to focus on certain digitization technologies in order to improve their SC performance. This study also provides an original framework for organizations to rank the key digitization enablers according to enablers relevant in their context and also to compare their performance with their counterparts.

This study seems to be the first of its kind in which 25 digitization enablers categorized in four main categories are ranked using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool. This study is also first of its kind in ranking the organizations in their SC performance based on weights/ranks of digitization enablers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the development of the digital transformation literature and to the systematic literature review methodology.

The authors run a systematic literature review, followed by a rigorous thematic analysis of both academic and grey literature dataset, in order to develop a conceptual map of organizations' digital transformation. The authors aggregate the concepts and topics identified across the literature to find that they overwhelmingly tackle digital business models. At the same time, the authors identify a major blind spot resulting from ignoring the organization itself as a unit of analysis.

The findings show that developing a digital theory of the organization or the theory of digitally transformed organization is a major challenge to management researchers. The analysis exposed numerous research gaps that can be helpful for future research directions.

Digital transformation research enjoys an increasingly rapid rise to recognition across many academic disciplines and strongly impacts the management domain. adopt the view that published documents reflect the collective understanding of a phenomenon. This paper contributes to filtering the digital transformation literature, clarify complex relation between digital transformations of organizations and identify the key blind points.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the digitization of rare materials in one Indian university.

This paper highlights the digitization activities undertaken by Shivaji University Library to preserve rare materials. It attempts to calculate the costs incurred in the digitization process.

The paper finds that digitization is the solution for the preservation of, and access to, rare manuscripts.

The paper provides the complete budget required for the digitization of manuscripts and also suggest best possible preservation and access strategy according to the local needs of the users.

The paper provides valuable insight into the development of digital libraries in India. It is useful for setting the infrastructure required for digitization and a guideline for preservation and access to the rare materials.

The librarianship profession has gone through many changes over time, more so with the emergence of digital technologies. To thrive in the library and information science (LIS) profession, professionals must have knowledge, skills, competencies and abilities to perform their job duties. The purpose of this paper was to identify essential knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) for the LIS professionals.

The targeted survey group for the study were alumni of ten LIS schools in India, who are now working in various library sectors. A structured questionnaire was designed to seek their opinions, and the snowball sampling technique was adopted to collect the data. A total of 377 responses were received from the respondents.

Five broad areas of KSAs were identified: traditional library skills, research skills, computing skills, data management skills and soft skills. This study found that computing skills, library automation and library digitization are considered absolutely essential for the LIS professionals. The results also brought out the importance of “soft skills” for the LIS professionals. Prerequisite knowledge of library liaison services, technical services and foreign language were reportedly important only for working in special libraries.

This study identified 54 skills across five broad areas that are essential for the professionals working in library and information centres. The research findings will be helpful for the educators who want to design, develop and upgrade the LIS course curriculum in accordance with the skills that are in demand in the market.

This study establishes that though the participants expressed satisfaction with the practicum of the curriculum, the LIS course curriculum needs to be improved. It would be in the best interest of the LIS schools to identify and rectify the gap.

The authors share a real-world case study of a multiple-year adoption process of robotic process automation (RPA) in procurement to add to the limited empirical research base on RPA in supply chain management. The Maersk case offers hard evidence of the value of RPA that can be used as a benchmark for decision-making in companies and as a basis for further research in key areas such as change management and behavioral aspects as well as return on investment on RPA and the need for RPA capability development.

Together with the co-author from Maersk, the authors cover a multiple year RPA program in procurements, to capture lessons learned and develop research questions for the future. The authors consider 39 generic action principles for RPA adoption in a specific procurement context.

The authors find RPA for procurement to be an enabler of strategic progress and of advancing the concept of triple values (enterprise, customer and employee) in a supply chain setting. The authors offer RPA adoption scoping guidance and show how, with growth and maturity of the program, conditions such as predictability of volume become less relevant as a scoping criterium. The authors also find that RPA augments work rather than replace staff. Maersk utilizes staff time freed up by automation to focus employees on more strategic priorities. The authors consider 39 generic action principles for RPA adoption in a procurement-specific context and develop additional action principles based upon the Maersk case.

The authors study both a unique and rich case to complement limited empirical research on RPA in procurement and supply chain management and the limited research into RPA past early stage adoptions. The authors address Hofmann et al.'s (2019) questions about the change management involved in RPA and consider generic RPA action principles from literature in this specific procurement setting. The authors extend those action principles and develop a rich set of research opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is to address the most urgent challenges that libraries face in the mass digitization of historical printed text: the unsatisfactory result of the conversion of scanned images to full featured electronic text by means of automated optical character recognition (OCR); the historical language barrier around 1850, caused by inadequacy of most existing lexica for historical language for OCR or post‐correction and a lack of institutional knowledge and expertise in libraries, museums and archives.

In the EC‐funded project IMPACT (Improving Access to Text), seven libraries, six research institutes and two private sector companies across Europe work together to address the challenges by the development of OCR software and technologies which exceed the accurateness of current state‐of‐the‐art software significantly. The IMPACT solutions focus on the entire process of recognition after the document leaves the scanner: Image processing, OCR processing (including use of dictionaries), OCR correction and Document formatting. IMPACT will also build capacity in mass digitization by sharing best practice and expertise with the cultural heritage communities in Europe.

Technical results will include toolkits for image enhancement and segmentation, an adaptive OCR engine and several prototypes of experimental OCR engines, computational lexica and several post‐correction modules including a web based collaborative correction system and a parser for structural metadata. Strategic tools include several decision support tools, guidelines, a web site with demonstrator platform, a training programme and ultimately, a sustainable Centre of Competence for mass digitization in Europe.

The IMPACT solutions will allow for the first time to transform large amounts of digitized historical texts into electronic text with a minimum of manual interference and a significantly improved accessibility for the user.

This paper aims to present an evaluation of open source OCR for supporting research on material in small‐ to medium‐scale historical archives.

The approach was to develop a workflow engine to support the easy customisation of the OCR process towards the historical materials using open source technologies. Commercial OCR often fails to deliver sufficient results here, as their processing is optimised towards large‐scale commercially relevant collections. The approach presented here allows users to combine the most effective parts of different OCR tools.

The authors demonstrate their application and its flexibility and present two case studies, which demonstrate how OCR can be embedded into wider digitally enabled historical research. The first case study produces high‐quality research‐oriented digitisation outputs, utilizing services that the authors developed to allow for the direct linkage of digitisation image and OCR output. The second case study demonstrates what becomes possible if OCR can be customised directly within a larger research infrastructure for history. In such a scenario, further semantics can be added easily to the workflow, enhancing the research browse experience significantly.

There has been little work on the use of open source OCR technologies for historical research. This paper demonstrates that the authors' workflow approach allows users to combine commercial engines' ability to read a wider range of character sets with the flexibility of open source tools in terms of customisable pre‐processing and layout analysis. All this can be done without the need to develop dedicated code.

To provide an introduction to the eight articles in the issue that deal with collaborative digitization programs.

This introduction summarizes the articles within the context of sustainability.

In addition to business planning, efforts to build collaborative networks, empower content providers, and engage end‐users are central to developing sustainable programs.

Readers gain a quick overview of some of the key issues that digitization programs face.

This paper aims to introduce a model using a digital twin concept in a cold heading manufacturing and develop a digital visual management (VM) system using Lean overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) tool to enhance the process performance and establish Fourth Industrial Revolution (I4.0) platform in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

This work utilised plan, do, check, act Lean methodology to create a digital twin of each machine in a smart manufacturing facility by taking the Lean tool OEE and digitally transforming it in the context of I4.0. To demonstrate the effectiveness of process digitisation, a case study was carried out at a manufacturing department to provide the data to the model and later validate synergy between Lean and I4.0 platform.

The OEE parameter can be increased by 10% using a proposed digital twin model with the introduction of a Level 0 into VM platform to clearly define the purpose of each data point gathered further replicate in projects across the value stream.

The findings suggest that researchers should look beyond conversion of stored data into visualisations and predictive analytics to improve the model connectivity. The development of strong big data analytics capabilities in SMEs can be achieved by shortening the time between data gathering and impact on the model performance.

The novelty of this study is the application of OEE Lean tool in the smart manufacturing sector to allow SME organisations to introduce digitalisation on the back of structured and streamlined principles with well-defined end goals to reach the optimal OEE.

The concept of digitization covers a wide range of initiatives to achieve sustainable development. This paper aims to determine the impact of bank digitization strategies on financial performance in an African country.

This study used the generalized least squares estimation method to analyze data from a sample of 12 Tunisian banks from 2010 to 2020. The reason for selecting this method was its ability to address issues of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.

This study indicates that digital transformation has a positive effect on Tunisian banks financial performance, as measured by return on assets and return on equity. Specifically, investing in payment tools, digital channels and internet security leads to improved performance for banks. These findings suggest that banks that offer digital services perform better, as they are able to increase profitability, maintain financial stability and improve transparency.

This study is important for central bank, regulators, policymakers and investors. Overall, this study emphasizes the need for banks in Tunisia to embrace digital transformation to improve their performance and remain viable in the modern business landscape.

This study ponders the effect of Tunisian banks’ digital transformation on financial performance. Tunisia context serves as model for other African countries. Tunisian banks should prioritize investments in digital technologies to stay competitive in the market.