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The purpose of this paper is to develop the steps required for establishing and running cost‐effective condition‐based maintenance (CBM) exemplified for vibration‐based maintenance (VBM) and compared with real implementations in case companies.

The study is based on published knowledge and experience within condition monitoring (CM) and CBM, and three case studies.

The study has shown that all three case companies are in a big need for systematic procedures for doing right things right, in the right time cost‐effectively (establishing and running a cost‐effective CBM).

The paper focuses on development of cost‐effective CBM exemplified for VBM. Also, the case companies belong to three branches: paper and pulp mills, energy producer and engineering manufacturing. The case companies have different levels in applying CBM/VBM, experience and knowledge in CM and CBM.

Systematic procedures for establishing CBM/VBM policy are developed, motivated and discussed in a way which enables the user to establish and run CBM/VBM policy cost‐effectively.

The steps of establishment of CBM/VBM provide a unique model for companies to establish and run cost‐effective maintenance its originality.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the disadvantages of traditional sensors and establish a new structure for pressure measurement.

A kind of novel piezoresistive micro‐pressure sensor with a cross‐beam membrane (CBM) structure is designed based on the silicon substrate. Through analyzing the stress distribution of the new structure by finite element method, the model of structure is established and compared with traditional structures. The fabrication is operated on silicon wafer, which applies the technology of anisotropy chemical etching and inductively coupled plasma.

Compared to the traditional C‐ and E‐type structures, this new CBM structure has the advantages of low nonlinearity and high sensitivities by the cross‐beam on the membrane, which cause the stress is more concentrated in sensitive area and the deflections that relate to the linearity are decreased.

The paper provides the first empirical reports on the new piezoresistive structure for the pressure measurement by fabricating a cross‐beam on the membrane and resolving the conflict of nonlinearity and sensitivity of the piezoresistive sensors.

What drives small to medium‐sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) internationalisation strategy remains a significant issue in international business research, despite the huge research efforts on this subject over the past three decades. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the motives behind the equity modes of foreign market entry in Norway.

Employing a cross sectional survey, a sample of 146 firms consisting of 42 international equity joint ventures (IJVs), 53 cross‐border mergers & acquisitions (CBM&As) and 51 wholly owned subsidiaries (FWOS) from Norway was collected and analysed.

It was found that whereas market development and power influence the choice of IJVs and CBM&As, the need to access resources and control resources appear to be the most important motives behind FWOS as an entry mode choice. Moreover, the regression results indicate that market development and power, technology development, location advantage and synergistic gains appear to have a significant bearing on different entry mode choice in Norway.

The paper examines the motivation for the choice of foreign entry mode from the point of view of senior managers in Norway. Future research should accommodate multiple perspectives simultaneously from the parent companies and subsidiaries in a single paper to significantly advance the field.

The paper discovers that the motives behind the choice of cooperative modes of entry tend to be more linked with market development, technological development while FWOS are motivated by the need to control proprietary resources. The implication for the Norwegian government is that its financial incentives do not affect the mode choice of entry.

The paper finds that different motives and theories influence the choice of foreign market entry by SMEs in Norway and provides insights for senior managers on the factors taken into account in making choice decisions in Norway.

Componentization is a common approach in manufacturing that is suggested to lead to increased innovativeness at the firm level. Componentization has recently been given attention as a relevant approach for service providers. However, due to differences between services and manufactured products, and due to the diversity of the service sector, it is not obvious to what degree the application of componentization is relevant for all service providers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of componentization for specialized service providers in the public sector.

The paper applies an interventionist research design, in which the componentization approach is implemented in one case organization.

The paper finds that componentization increases the service orientation of specialized public sector organizations (PSOs) and improves the ability of the top management to manage and control specialized PSOs. Perhaps most importantly, the paper determines that componentization represents a foundation and a baseline for identifying service innovation ideas in specialized PSOs.

The practical experiences reported in the paper may provide guidance to managers of specialized service providers who are seeking for ways to increase the efficiency, flexibility, and innovativeness of their organization.

By empirically testing and evaluating a componentization approach, the paper contributes to the knowledge base of how componentization increases the efficiency, flexibility, and innovativeness of specialized service providers. In addition, the paper demonstrates that the application of an interventionist research approach may be useful when the research aims to develop, adopt, or evaluate new service management methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of condition based maintenance (CBM) with definitions of various terms, overview of some history, recent developments, applications, and research challenges in the CBM domain.

The article presents the insight into various maintenance strategies and provides their respective merits and demerits in various aspects. It then provides the detailed discussion of CBM that includes applications of various methodologies and technologies that are being implemented in the field. Finally, it ends with open challenges in implementing condition based maintenance systems.

This paper surveys research articles and describes how CBM can be used to optimize maintenance strategies and increase the feasibility and practicality of a CBM system.

CBM systems are completely practical to implement and applicable to various domains including automotive, manufacturing, aviation, medical, etc. This paper presents a brief overview of literature on CBM and an insight into CBM as a maintenance strategy. CBM has wide applications in automotive, aviation, manufacturing, defense, and other industries. It involves various disciplines like data mining, artificial intelligence, and statistics to enable the systems to be maintenance intelligent. These disciplines help in predicting the future consequences based on the past and current system conditions. Based on the authors’ studies, implementation of such a system is easy and cost effective because it uses existing subsystems to collect statistical data. On top of that it requires building a software layer to process the data and to implement the prognosis techniques in the form of algorithms.

The design of CBM systems highly impact the society in terms of maintenance cost (i.e. reduces the maintenance cost of automobiles, safety by providing real time reporting of the fault using prognosis).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is first of its kind in the literature which presents several maintenance strategies and provides a number of possible research directions listed in open research challenges.

In recent times, both academics and industrialists have undertaken research into various areas of circular business models (CBM) in a bid to promote a green economy. Yet despite numerous studies conducted, the ensuing discourse contains scant information regarding the contributions of CBM towards the transition of green economy in the construction industry. This present study therefore aims to explore the contributions of CBM in the transition towards a green economy in the Ghanaian construction industry.

A comprehensive literature review was first conducted to identify the contributions of CBM towards the transition towards a green economy. A quantitative research strategy was then adopted to collect primary questionnaire data from professionals with knowledge of CBM and the green economy from 104 participants for the study. The data gathered was analyzed using descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis viz. Principal component analysis.

The contributions of CBM towards the transition towards a green economy were found to be: value contributions (i.e. lower carbon footprint, lower emission of waste by the industry, value creation for clients, innovation in construction materials and methods, reduced maintenance cost, creation of energy efficient infrastructures, improved value proposition for firms, improved sustainability of the industry and reduced pressure on finite resource.); green contributions (i.e. recycling and reuse of construction waste, promotion of green building technology, increased potential for economic growth, increased resource efficiency and creation of green building market) and longevity contribution (i.e. increased life span of buildings). It was evident that CBM make significant contributions in the transition towards green economy and as such, policymakers and other stakeholders within the construction industry must adopt these models to maximize their green credentials and accrue inherent benefits associated with transitioning towards a green economy.

This paper presents a novel and comprehensive study that explores the contributions of CBM towards engendering a green economy. The study’s results provide construction industry stakeholders and policymakers with clear insight into the contributions of CBM towards the transition into a green economy. In practice, this study provides much needed guidance to support construction practitioners to transition towards a green economy in alignment with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Progress monitoring and data-based intervention are unique special education developments stemming from efforts to find an effective alternative to diagnostic/prescriptive instruction. Springing from research on Curriculum-based Measurement (CBM) in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the Minnesota Institute for Research on Learning Disabilities, the approach has generated a large body of empirical research and development. While the original work demonstrated that teachers could be more effective using progress monitoring in data-based intervention, most research and development activity has focused on development and extensions of the CBM model with less attention to data-based intervention. While research on progress monitoring has occurred at a high rate, widespread implementation of progress monitoring has been spurred by both federal funding and commercial development. As might be expected, all of this activity has resulted in a large set of successes and disappointments that are described here. For better or worse, as progress monitoring and data-based intervention have been incorporated into Response to Intervention (RTI) models it seems likely that the future of progress monitoring and data-based intervention is tied to the future of RTI. The question is whether this linking will result in adding to the set of successes or to that of disappointments for this unique special education innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a piezoresistive pressure sensor for micro-pressure measurement with a cross-beam membrane (CBM) structure. This study analyzes the dynamic characteristics of the proposed device.

This CBM sensor possesses high stiffness and sensitivity, measuring dynamic pressure more effectively in a high-frequency environment compared with other piezoresistive structures. The dynamic characteristics are derived using the finite element method to analyze the dynamic responses of the new structure, including natural frequency and lateral effect performances. The CBM dynamic performances are compared with traditional structures.

The pressure sensor performance was evaluated, and the experimental results indicate that they all exhibit similar dynamic characteristics as the designed model. Compared with traditional structures such as the single island, the CBM proves to be superior in evaluating the dynamic performances of pressure sensors at high frequencies of > 30 kHz.

Most studies of this micro pressure sensors attempt to promote the sensitivity or focus on the static performance of pressure sensor with micro gauge. This study is concerned with analyze the dynamic characterism of micro pressure sensor and compared with the traditional structures, that prove the CBM structure has stable dynamic performance and is a better option for measuring dynamic micro pressure in biomedical applications.

This paper reviews the literature on maintenance strategies for energy efficiency as a potential maintenance approach. The purpose of this paper is to identify the main concept and common principle for each maintenance strategy for energy efficiency.

A literature review has been carried out on maintenance and energy efficiency. The paper systematically classified the literature into three maintenance strategies (e.g. inspection-based maintenance [IBM], time-based maintenance [TBM] and condition-based maintenance [CBM]). The concept and principle of each maintenance strategy are identified, compared and discussed.

Each maintenance strategy's main concept and principle are identified based on the following criteria: data required and collection, data analysis/modeling and decision-making. IBM relies on human senses and common senses to detect energy faults. Any detected energy losses are quantified to energy cost. A payback period analysis is commonly used to justify corrective actions. On the other hand, CBM monitors relevant parameters that indicate energy performance indicators (EnPIs). Data analysis or deterioration modeling is needed to identify energy degradation. For the diagnostics approach, the energy degradation is compared with the threshold to justify corrective maintenance. The prognostics approach estimates when energy degradation reaches its threshold; therefore, proper maintenance tasks can be planned. On the other hand, TBM uses historical data from energy monitoring. Data analysis or deterioration modeling is required to identify degradation. Further analysis is performed to find the optimal time to perform a maintenance task. The comparison between housekeeping, IBM and CBM is also discussed and presented.

The literature on the classification of maintenance strategies for energy efficiency has been limited. On the other hand, the ISO 50001 energy management systems standard shows the importance of maintenance for energy efficiency (MFEE). Therefore, to bridge the gap between research and industry, the proposed concept and principle of maintenance strategies will be helpful for practitioners to apply maintenance strategies as energy conservation measures in implementing ISO 50001 standard.

The novelty of this paper is in-depth discussion on the concept and principle of each maintenance strategy (e.g. housekeeping or IBM, TBM and CBM) for energy efficiency. The relevant literature for each maintenance strategy was also summarized. In addition, basic rules for maintenance strategy selection are also proposed.

Maintenance and its management has moved from being considered a “necessary evil” to being of strategic importance for most competitive organisations around the world. In terms of the identification and use of organisational-wide maintenance management models the picture is not clears from both a literature and practical perspective. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the various models and their use in real-world applications, and in doing so, explores the gap between academic research and practice.

For this paper two comprehensive reviews of the literature were undertaken, first, to identify and categorise the various maintenance management models, and second, to determine the depth of empirical evidence for the popular models in real-world applications. Descriptive analysis of both the practical examples and empirical evidence rates (EER) for maintenance related journals is provided.

Within the literature 37 maintenance management models were identified and categorised. From these, three models were found to be popular: total productive maintenance (TPM), condition based maintenance, and reliability centred maintenance. While several thousand papers discussed these three models, only 82 articles were found to provide empirical evidence.

While providing a sound foundation for future research the outcomes are based solely on academic literature. Analysis of EER outside the field of maintenance is needed to make comparisons.

The paper offers practitioners a detailed contemporary overview of maintenance management models along with tabulated results of practical examples to present day organisations. Such practical-focused papers are very limited within academic literature.

With EER as low as 1.5 per cent for some journals this paper acts as a reminder to researchers that they have an obligation to society to spend taxpayer funded research on addressing social needs and real-world problems.

This paper makes a concerted attempt to link academic research with management and operational practitioners. While the paper is critical of the current academic imbalance between theory and practice, a number of suggestions to improve EER are offered in the conclusions.