Search results

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into whether additive manufacturing (AM) represents incremental, radical, disruptive innovation or an industrial revolution and its implications.

This study applies a desk research strategy. Data were collected through a variety of industry sources as well as academic publications.

It was found that AM represents different innovations in different settings, while it represents incremental innovation in one industry, it has led to radical changes in other industries. There are also indications that it has a disruptive nature and some of the developments appear to be of the industrial revolutionary type, i.e. they cause fundamental shifts in society. Some explanation for the observed differences can come from different performance objectives.

The spread of AM has been limited due to initial intellectual property protection. That means that while illustrations and examples were found for the different types of innovations, the level in which AM will ultimately penetrate manufacturing industries and society overall is not (yet) known. This calls for continued research for instance to study, in-depth, the adoption characteristics of AM in very specific settings.

Manufacturing is undergoing many changes as a consequence of the AM innovation. Many manufacturing industries have already been impacted through incremental changes as well as radical changes to entire industry dynamics. Manufacturers are advised to carefully monitor the continuous innovations in the technological capabilities of AM and their competitive and strategic consequences for adoption decisions.

AM has an impact on many aspects of society because it affects many industries and enables household manufacturing. It has also affected education, i.e. the current generation of students in terms of skill requirements, and leads to legal difficulties in terms of intellectual property.

This study contributes to the understanding of the AM innovation and the widespread implications for different manufacturing industries and society at large.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what underlies the development of the consumer 3D printing industry and gain insight into future developments and its potentially disruptive impact on the existing manufacturing industry.

A combination of approaches was followed. Initially a consumer 3D printer was purchased to gain first-hand experience as part of a practical research case study. Results were discussed with manufacturers and additional information was sought, and triangulated, via a survey and an exploratory bibliometric study.

Many characteristics are in place to identify consumer 3D printing as a potential disruptive technology for the manufacturing industry. For example, the cost of consumer 3D printing is lower than for traditional manufacturing. However, the current adoption rate is low and the user friendliness and technological capabilities need to improve.

The main limitation is the exploratory nature of the study which does not allow generalizations.

If developments and adoption patterns continue, then traditional manufacturing industries, distribution channels and the transportation sector may become threatened.

Technological advances in consumer manufacturing can potentially threaten several economic sectors, which can lead to loss of jobs and affect budgets of states of countries that depend on sales tax.

One of the first studies to employ experiments in combination with other methods to gain insight into adoption patterns and the disruptive nature of consumer 3D printers specifically, rather than industrial 3D printers or new business models as a result of 3D printing technology.

Risk management has become an integral part in businesses around the world. In the construction industry, risk management has also been introduced and has been mainly entrusted in the hands of the project team to go through a laid down risk management processes to identify possible risk events, which may occur during the project execution and the impact they may have on the project deliverables should they occur. It is, however, believed that small construction firms do not take risk management as a serious exercise even though most of the project risks are transferred to them as subcontractors. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate risk management processes in the small construction companies and the impact of risk management on their project deliverables.

A case study of a single construction company was used for this study. Data were collected through structured questionnaire to 16 respondents who are involved in the project execution in the case study company. Two managing directors of the case study company were also interviewed. In total, 11 project site meetings were also attended to observe meeting proceedings and to record issues discussed. In total, 15 monthly project reports and project close-out reports were also studied. In total, One hundred and five completed projects of which 58 per cent were renovation projects, 27 per cent were new projects and 15 per cent were civil/structural works were also examined. The data were then analysed using excel analytical tool and the content analysis method.

The findings indicate that small construction companies with respect to the case study company do not have a specific laid down risk management processes that project team are made to go through before and during the execution of their projects. There is, however, no conclusive evidence regarding the impact of risk management on project performance as a significant number of projects done were able to meet a successful project performance indicators even though risk management exercises were not done. Some of the identified risk events that caused project failures are payment delays, labour related issues, subcontractor/main contractor related issues, insufficient contingency reserves/plan, etc.

Only one construction company was used as a case study for this research and all sources of data were related to a single company. The results may, therefore, be not generalisable.

The research has discovered that projects outcome could have improved tremendously if proper risk management exercises were implemented before project execution as most of the causes of project failures could have been identified through the risk management processes. This study, hence, gives an insight as to why small construction firms like the case study company should take risk management seriously in their projects execution to improve on the performance of their projects.

The research has discovered that projects outcome could have improved tremendously if proper risk management exercises were implemented before project execution as most of the causes of project failures could have been identified through the risk management processes. This study, hence, gives an insight as to why small construction firms like the case study company should take risk management seriously in their projects execution to improve on the performance of their projects.

The aim of this paper is to explore the benefit of forecasting emerging biomedical therapy technologies as well as the rate of diffusion of resultant biomedical products in the context of management of technology.

The research method is exploratory using a case study approach. Techniques such as bibliometric analysis and the Bass diffusion model are utilized to assess the growth rate and market penetration of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) as a technology.

The penetration and growth rate of user acceptance of the technology in a global context are simulated across a 15‐year period. The technology forecasting model is also used in a case study to simulate the penetration of a product using ten years' medical application data of a patented pulsed electromagnetic field for biomedical therapy application in the global context. Useful correlation between bibliometric data for PEMF and real data for the case study is illustrated.

The research is limited to the case of PEMF data presented. Further research may be done on other PEMF technology applications.

Aspects of a holistic management model that was developed for high technology companies are invoked in the practical realisation of the professional paradigm shift required when an emerging biomedical therapy technology is in the process of becoming mainstream.

It has been shown that technology diffusion traces exist for PEMF therapy technology as is evident from the bibliometric PEMF global data presented. Furthermore it is possible to simulate the PEMF therapy technology diffusion process with a Bass diffusion model incorporating innovation imitation and market size coefficients.

In this regard, this paper aims to wonder how willing to co-create sustainable practices customers of irresponsible Industry 4.0 (I4.0) companies are? With this purpose, the authors began introducing I4.0 and sustainability, showing their theoretical gaps.

I4.0 has recently spread with its technological developments and social, economic and political ambitions, facing challenges-related, for example, to the implementation of sustainable practices and the stakeholders’ participation.

Then the authors conduct a literature review following a sequential mix-method approach that begins with a bibliometric analysis and ends with a content study to propose a conceptual model for I4.0 and sustainability. Once the authors understood the theoretical gaps in the framework of the conceptual model, the authors conducted an empirical verification between clients of a Colombian company of the I4.0 belonging to the logistic sector, specifically of the deliveries, asking them about the labor issues that the company faces with delivery people and their willingness to co-create. The authors analyzed the collected data through a structural equation modeling model, where the authors found that customers’ willingness to co-create depends on intrinsic behaviors like “responsible behavior,” followed by extrinsic behaviors such as “helping.”

In fact, stakeholders may support companies, but customers must learn how to assume a critical posture during their purchase decision.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the macroeconomic environment on South African industrial sector returns.

Using standardized coefficients derived from time-series factor models, the authors quantify the impact of macroeconomic influences on industrial sector returns. The authors analyze the structure of the resultant residual correlation matrices to establish the level of factor omission and apply a factor analytic augmentation to arrive at a specification that is free of omitted common factors.

The authors find that global influences are the most important drivers of returns and that industrial sectors are highly integrated with the global economy. The authors show that specifications that comprise only macroeconomic factors and proxies for omitted factors in the form of residual market factors are likely to be underspecified. This study demonstrates that a factor analytic augmentation is an effective approach to ensuring an adequately specified model.

The findings have a number of implications that are of interest to investors, econometricians and researchers. While the study focusses on a single market, the South African stock market, as represented by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), it is a highly developed and globally integrated market. In terms of market capitalization, it exceeds the Madrid Stock Exchange, the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the BM&F Bovespa. Yet, a limited number of studies investigate the macroeconomic drivers of the South African stock market.

Investors should be aware that while the South African domestic environment, especially political risk, has an impact on returns, global influences are the greatest determinants of returns. No industrial sectors are insulated from global influences and this limits the potential for diversification. This study suggests an alternative set of macroeconomic factors that may be used in further analysis and asset pricing studies. From an econometric perspective, this study demonstrates the usefulness of a factor analytic augmentation as a solution to factor omission in models that use macroeconomic factors to proxy for systematic influences that describe asset prices.

The contribution lies in providing insight into a large and well-developed yet understudied financial market, the South African stock market. This study considers a much broader set of macroeconomic factors than prior studies. A methodological contribution is made by estimating and interpreting standardized coefficients to discriminate between the impact of domestically and internationally driven factors. This study shows that should coefficients not be standardized, inferences relating to the relative importance of factors will differ. Finally, the authors unify an approach of using pre-specified factors with a factor analytic approach to address factor omission and to ensure a valid and readily interpretable specification.

The purpose of this paper is 1) to investigate the effects on the crucial Industry 4.0 technological innovations that interact between the real and virtual worlds and that are applied in the sustainable supply chain process; 2) to contribute to the identification of the opportunities, the challenges and the gaps that will support the new research study developments and 3) to analyze the impact of the Industry 4.0 technologies as facilitators of the sustainable supply chain performance in the midst of the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

This research is performed through a bibliographic review in the electronic databases of the Emerald Insight, the Scopus and the Web of Science, considering the main scientific publications on the subject.

The bibliographic search results in 526 articles, followed by two sequential filters for deleting the duplicate articles (resulting in 487 articles) and for selecting the most relevant articles (resulting in 150 articles).

This article identifies the opportunities and the challenges focused on the emerging Industry 4.0 theme. The opportunities can contribute to the sustainable performance of the supply chains and their territories. The Industry 4.0 can also generate challenges like the social inequalities related to the position of the man in the labor market by replacing the human workforce with the machines. Therefore, the man-machine relationship in the Industry 4.0 era is analyzed as a gap in the literature. Therefore, as a way to fill this gap, the authors of this article suggest the exploration of the research focused on the Society 5.0. Also known as “super-smart society,” this recent theme appeared in Japan in April 2016. According to Fukuda (2020), in addition to the focus on the technological development, the Society 5.0 also aims at the quality of life and the social challenge resolutions.

This article contributes to the analysis of the Industry 4.0 technologies as facilitators in the sustainable supply chain performance. It addresses the impacts of the Industry 4.0 technologies applied to the supply chains in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it analyzes the research gaps and limitations found in the literature. The result of this study can add value and stimulate new research studies related to the application of the Industry 4.0 technologies as facilitators in the supply chain sustainable performance. It can encourage the studies related to the COVID-19 impacts on the sustainable supply chains, and it can promote the research development on the relationship among the man, the machine and the labor in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This paper aims to validate an initially developed e-Health readiness assessment model.

The authors thematically analysed an initial qualitative data collected and used the outcome to develop survey instruments for this study. To collect the quantitative data, the authors used the drop and collect survey approach given the research setting. The quantitative data was analysed using factor and regression analyses of SPSS 23 in which hypotheses formulated were tested.

The results suggest that the model [R² = 0.971; F (5, 214) = 1414.303], which is made up of readiness assessment factors (constructs) and measuring tools explain about 97% of the variance of the overall health information technology/e-Health adoption readiness at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. The measuring tools were reliable for assessing the composite variables (constructs): technology readiness; operational resource readiness; organizational and cultural readiness; regulatory and policy readiness; and core readiness, which have significant influence on eHealth adoption readiness assessment..

This study has successfully validated empirically developed eHealth readiness assessment model with complete reliable indicators given that existing eHealth readiness assessment models have not been effective due to a general lack of standard indicators for measuring assessment factors. The study also contributes to the growing research on the adoption of information technology/systems in health-care environment using the Technology–Organization–Environment framework.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical investigation of maintenance performance (MP) management practices from the sugar industry in India.

Empirical data for this study were collected through field visits, interviews and published reports. Statistical methods including correlation, multiple regression and cluster analysis are utilized to accomplish the objective of the study.

Explanation with multiple regression analysis showed that the sugar industry MP is significantly and positively related to maintenance approach (MA), continuous improvement (CI), financial approach and spare part management (SPM). Cluster analysis showed that sugar industries focusing on MA, CI and policy development and organization are having higher MP. The cluster analysis also pointed out that there is a substantial variation in MP due to the type of ownership (private and cooperative) while no variation has been observed due to installed capacity (low and high).

The generalization of the results obtained in this work for the sugar industry can be possible through a larger sample size.

The study contributes to the better understanding of maintenance measures in the sugar industry and provides insights on the role of maintenance managerial practices in enhancing the MP.

The findings provide empirical evidence that maintenance practices across the sugar industry are important to improve MP.