Search results

Mapel wins big Iranian order. Over eighty transformer rectifiers worth close to £100,000 are being supplied to Iran by Metal and Pipeline Endurance Ltd (MAPEL).

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework as a valuable investigative tool for future empirical studies examining stakeholders’ interactions within a high-performance computing (HPC) service ecosystem and identifying the enablers for better value co-creation under various service provisioning contexts.

This conceptual paper follows a theory adaptation research design that systematically examines the literature on a substantive topic encompassing HPC technology adoption and usage by European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, it introduces theoretical perspectives from service innovation research as its methodological approach (method theory) to develop a theoretical framework for value co-creation within an HPC service ecosystem.

The conceptual framework presented in this paper identifies the critical resource elements of SMEs, which can potentially be integrated with other stakeholders’ resources and complement the limited internal resources of SMEs for enhanced value co-creation within an HPC service ecosystem.

The conceptualisation of an HPC service ecosystem and the potential of value co-creation through integrating stakeholders’ resources, presented in this paper, underscore further empirical research in this direction.

Findings from this paper can inform European policymakers for regional development to frame regional strategies and policies that enable SMEs to better uptake HPC services. Service providers can revisit their business models to reconfigure their organisational resources for enhanced value proposition and co-creation.

This study advances the agenda of transformative service research that aims uplifting changes and societal well-being through a more inclusive and sustainable value co-creation among a wider set of stakeholders within the service ecosystem.

The paper addresses an under-investigated research gap by examining SMEs’ adoption of HPC services and opportunities for higher value co-creation using a service ecosystem approach based on multi-actor interaction, collaboration and resource integration.

The paper discusses how to succeed in the new economy by utilizing e‐business in transforming business processes and strategy. The Collaborative One‐Stop Virtual Engineering Services (COVES) portal provides users with collaborative engineering services for government agencies and private sectors involved in various areas like safety, health and environment. The portal helps in design through modeling and simulation over the Internet for the above sectors. The portal provides a Web‐based environment for tackling the above issues during the design of a factory via the use of e‐computational fluid dynamics. Besides the above, COVES has re‐engineered the traditional business processes associated with construction industry by integrating various enterprises. The portal also improves competitiveness by installing a strong culture of knowledge collaboration and increased accessibility to expensive high‐performance‐computing (HPC) resources and tools. The integrated inter‐enterprise workflow with various public and private parties has simplified the procedure and expedites building plan approvals.

Long term supplier relationships are achievable, workable and profitable as this case study from the automotive sector shows.

Prior research shows that companies that achieve high performance excel at certain financial objectives. This chapter addresses the question: Do companies that excel at these financial performance objectives also excel in integrated reporting and sustainability reporting?

We compare a sample of high performance companies (HPC) with a sample of companies that purport to support integrated reporting, and a sample that purport to support sustainability reporting. Our hypotheses are that HPC will equal or exceed the integrated reporting and sustainability reporting practices shown by International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) companies and US companies will be less at these practices than non-US companies.

Our findings indicate that IIRC companies and GRI companies generally do not meet the high financial performance measures of the HPC. Based on an integrated reporting and sustainability reporting matrix, we show that HPC exhibit equal performance on the practices of sustainability and integrated reporting compared to GRI companies, but both HPC and GRI are lower on these practices than IIRC companies. Also, US companies disclose less information in sustainability reports and integrated reports as compared to non-US companies. Overall, all three groups fall short of full compliance with standards of integrated reporting and sustainability reporting.

This chapter provides evidence as to the financial performance and the current state of integrated reporting and sustainability reporting among HPC, GRI, and IIRC companies. This chapter highlights the global need for a generally accepted set of standards for sustainability and integrated reporting practices.

Even though it is widely used, reinforced concrete (RC) is susceptible to damage from various environmental factors. The hazard of a fire attack is particularly severe because it may cause the whole structure to collapse. Furthermore, repairing and strengthening existing structures with high-performance concrete (HPC) has become essential from both technical and financial points of view. In particular, studying the postfire behavior of HPC with normal strength concrete substrate requires experimental and numerical investigations. Accordingly, this study aims to numerically investigate the post-fire behavior of reinforced composite RC slabs.

Consequently, in this study, a numerical analysis was carried out to ascertain the flexural behavior of simply supported RC slabs strengthened with HPC and exposed to a particularly high temperature of 600°C for 2 h. This behavior was investigated and analyzed in the presence of a number of parameters, such as HPC types (fiber-reinforced, 0.5% steel, polypropylene fibers [PPF], hybrid fibers), strengthening side (tension or compression), strengthening layer thickness, slab thickness, boundary conditions, reinforcement ratio and yield strength of reinforcement.

The results showed that traction-separation and full-bond models can achieve accuracy compared with experimental results. Also, the fiber type significantly affects the postfire performance of RC slab strengthened with HPC, where the inclusion of hybrid fiber recorded the highest ultimate load. While adding PPF to HPC showed a rapid decrease in the load-deflection curve after reaching the ultimate load.

The proposed model accurately predicted the thermomechanical behavior of RC slabs strengthened with HPC after being exposed to the fire regarding load-deflection response, crack pattern and failure mode. Moreover, the considered independent parametric variables significantly affect the composite slabs’ behavior.