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The paper aims to raise awareness in the industry of design automation tools, especially in early design phases, by demonstrating along a case study the seamless integration of a prototypically implemented optimization, supporting design space exploration in the early design phase and an in operational use product configurator, supporting the drafting and detailing of the solution predominantly in the later design phase.

Based on the comparison of modeled as-is and to-be processes of ascent assembly designs with and without design automation tools, an automation roadmap is developed. Using qualitative and quantitative assessments, the potentials and benefits, as well as acceptance and usage aspects, are evaluated.

Engineers tend to consider design automation for routine tasks. Yet, prototypical implementations support the communication and identification of the potential for the early stages of the design process to explore solution spaces. In this context, choosing from and interactively working with automatically generated alternative solutions emerged as a particular focus. Translators, enabling automatic downstream propagation of changes and thus ensuring consistency as to change management were also evaluated to be of major value.

A systematic validation of design automation in design practice is presented. For generalization, more case studies are needed. Further, the derivation of appropriate metrics needs to be investigated to normalize validation of design automation in future research.

Integration of design automation in early design phases has great potential for reducing costs in the market launch. Prototypical implementations are an important ingredient for potential evaluation of actual usage and acceptance before implementing a live system.

There is a lack of systematic validation of design automation tools supporting early design phases. In this context, this work contributes a systematically validated industrial case study. Early design-phases-support technology transfer is important because of high leverage potential.

In the vast majority of the individual robot installations, the robot arm is just one piece of a complex puzzle of components, such as grippers, jigs or external axis, that together compose an industrial robotic cell. The success of such installations is very dependent not only on the selection of such components but also on the layout and design of the final robotic cell, which are the main tasks of the system integrators. Consequently, successful robot installations are often empirical tasks owing to the high number of experimental combinations that could lead to exhaustive and time-consuming testing approaches.

A newly developed optimized technique to deal with automatic planning and design of robotic systems is proposed and tested in this paper.

The application of a genetic-based algorithm achieved optimal results in short time frames and improved the design of robotic work cells. Here, the authors show that a multi-layer optimization approach, which can be validated using a robotic tool, is able to help with the design of robotic systems.

The usage of the proposed approach can be valuable to industrial corporations, as it allows for improved workflows, maximization of available robotic operations and improvement of efficiency.

To date, robotic solutions lack flexibility to cope with the demanding industrial environments. The results presented here formalize a new flexible and modular approach, which can provide optimal solutions throughout the different stages of design and execution control of any work cell.

Lean implementation is a strategic decision. The capacity of organisation to be “Lean” can be identified before lean implementation by assessing leanness of an organisation. This study aims to attempt developing a holistic leanness assessment tool for assessing organisational leanness.

A neuro-fuzzy leanness assessment model for assessing the leanness of a manufacturing system is presented. The model is validated academically and industrially by conducting a case study.

Neuro-fuzzy hybridisation helped assess the leanness accurately. Fuzzy logic helped to perform the leanness assessment more realistically by accounting ambiguity and vagueness in organisational functioning and decision-making processes. Neural network increased the learning capacity of assessment model and increased the accuracy of leanness index.

The industrial case study in the paper shows the results in telecom equipment manufacturing industry. This may not represent entire manufacturing sector. The generic nature of the model developed in this research ensures its wide applicability.

The neuro-fuzzy hybrid model for assessing leanness helps to identify the potential of an organisation to become “Lean”. The organisational leanness index developed by the study helps to monitor the effectiveness and impact of lean implementation programmes.

The leanness assessment models available in literature lack depth and coverage of leanness parameters. The model developed in this research assesses leanness of an organisation by accounting for leanness aspects of inventory management, industrial scheduling, organisational flexibility, ergonomics, product, process, management, workforce, supplier relationship and customer relationship with the help of neuro-fuzzy hybrid modelling.

Knowledge sharing across health ecosystems is extremely fuzzy because of knowledge asymmetries, barriers and diverse types and sources of knowledge, all of which together affect patient decision making and value creation. The purpose of this study is to identify core knowledge mediators across ecosystem with the focus on a patient as a central decision maker in their own health management to ensure smooth knowledge flows across actors.

To understand the knowledge flows in the health ecosystem, a phenomenological approach was applied in this study. Based on case study research. The analysis is based on the patient-centric approach and draws on qualitative, semi-structured interviews. Moreover, a knowledge-creating community approach (Paavola et al., 2004) is applied in which various stakeholders create and share knowledge of clinical and social domain, which together contribute to patient value creation.

Knowledge socialization and development starts within very close and trusted community members. Trust, validity, reliability and responsibility of knowledge have emerged as full mediators for knowledge absorption. Thus, health communities and knowledge ecosystems need safe places for “unverified” knowledge to ensure that the important trends and unresolved questions are not missed.

This study proposes a new health knowledge management approach for communities, which is more than clinical decisions and formal medical knowledge and embraces varieties of knowledge and information sources and types. At the end, the identified barriers and mediators can be used for serving the main goal of patient value increase because it responds to the need for a systematic approach in encouraging patients to play a more active role in their own health management.

Examines the eleventh published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

The purpose of this paper is standardize and provide a multidimensional measure for assessing human resources competencies (HRCs) scale.

The data collected in this study were 2018 from the 234 people selected from 603 managers and experts in human resources of selected firms existing in the Yazd Industrial Town randomly. Based on the model of HRCs designed by Ulrich et al. (2008), a questionnaire was developed to assess HRCs. Internal consistency and split-half methods were used to obtain the reliability of the instrument. Content validity and construct validity of the instrument were also assessed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

This paper elucidates a key scale for assessing HRCs including three dimensions: knowledge business, functional expertise and managing change. Also, results revealed that two items were then dropped from the questionnaire as they were unreliable, and a final 31 items were extracted to form the scale for assessing HRCs. The coefficients for Cronbach’s α and split-half were 0.963 and 0.947, respectively. In EFA, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test yielded optimal 0.962, and Bartlett’s test was statistically significant. Additionally, three factors with eigenvalues higher than 1 explained 63% of the total variance. Hence, CFA confirmed the results from EFA too. Moreover, the model proved to enjoy a good fit.

The scale is useful for both researchers and practitioners. Also, the scale provides researchers with a sought-after conceptualization of HRCs.

Consequently, considering that the validity and reliability indices of HRCs were estimated to be desirable, the authors believe that the developed questionnaire can be used as an appropriate scale for measuring HRCs in future research.

Examines the twelfth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/02635579010142122. When citing the article, please cite: Mark Fielden, (1990), “Data Validation”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 90 Iss: 4, pp. 3 - 5.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new business process representation adapted to the needs of Industry 4.0 to facilitate the implementation of technological solutions in the construction sector.

This work is based on the Design Research Methodology approach and includes four phases: (1) a literature review on the main business process modeling standards and their ability to take into account the specificities of Industry 4.0; (2) the identification of the attributes to be considered to model Industry 4.0 processes; (3) the development of a mapping model for Industry 4.0; and (4) the validation of the model using a case study from the construction sector.

To the authors’ knowledge, current business process modeling standards do not effectively represent business processes in the context of Industry 4.0.

The proposed model can represent not only the 4.0 solutions that can be implemented in the construction sector, particularly from a technology and data perspective but also measures, with the help of performance indicators, the impacts of successive process changes in terms of skills, cost and time for a true 4.0 transformation.

This paper aims to explore the practical feasibility of deploying value stream mapping (VSM) for enabling lean manufacturing.

The literature on lean manufacturing and VSM has been reviewed. VSM has been selected as a technique for solving the problem existing in the case organization. The current state map has been developed after making necessary observations and calculations. Then various improvement proposals have been identified and the future state map has been developed. The simulation approach has been used for validating performance improvements. The practicality of the approach has been validated.

Two kinds of validation are being conducted in the case organization using questionnaire based approach. In the first stage, the practical receptivity of deploying the proposals has been gathered from the executives. In the second stage, statistical validation has been performed.

VSM has been applied for solving the problem in the case organisation. But the organisation has implemented world class strategies such as ISO quality management system and total quality management. Hence, the experiences gained by the conduct of this implementation study are feasible and deployable in similar organisations.

In order to acquire lean characteristics, modern organisations are focussed on the implementation of various lean tools/techniques. The results of the implementation study indicated significant improvement in lean characteristics.

The implementation study reported in this article is an original contribution of the authors which has been conducted in a typical industrial scenario. By the virtue of its research background and practical compatibility, the implementation study is considered to be highly valuable.