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Doctors' labour and medicines are special necessities for human survival and evolution. Since China launched the healthcare reform, the theoretical circles' discussions have not yet clarified the respective special properties of doctors' labour and medicines as goods and the internal relations between doctors' labour and medicines at the level of the theoretical basis.

Health is a prerequisite for people's all-round development, a precondition for economic and social development and the people's common aspiration. The all-round moderately prosperous society could not be achieved without people's all-round health.

The authors believe the socialist relation between doctors' labour and medicines with Chinese characteristics should be one that is people-oriented, and the corporatization of hospitals or the capitalization of doctors' labour should be avoided.

In this paper, the authors explore the particularity of doctors' labour, particularity of medicine production, circulation, consumption and the internal relations between doctors' labour and medicines by using the analytical approach of Marxist political economy while considering the special roles of doctor's labour and medicines in the reproduction of labour power and put forward the theoretical basis for the segregation of doctor's labour and medicines.

The purpose of this paper is to discover how Hungarian manufacturing companies interpret technology and human resources as driving forces and barriers in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation.

The authors conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with corporate leaders and applied qualitative content analysis using Atlas.ti software.

The authors formulated a new definition of Industry 4.0 which emphasises the role of human factors. The authors identified driving forces (efficiency with speed/information flow/precision) and barriers (technology compatibility, human fears and lack of digital skills) in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation and developed the DIGI-TEcH performance management dimensions.

Comparison with other countries is limited. Given the exploratory and qualitative nature, further quantitative research would be needed to generalise results. Finally, only manufacturing companies are examined.

It provides empirical evidence to practitioners to understand concerns about technology and human resource in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation. In addition, corporate performance management can be extended by the developed DIGI-TEcH dimensions.

This paper reveals key evidence for the uptake of technology and human factors in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation and their impacts on corporate operation and performance. It also provides an insight into a specific country context, which can be a useful benchmark for other Central and Eastern European countries.

The aviation industry has seen consistent growth over the past few decades. To maintain its sustainability and competitiveness, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of the industry, including materials, processes and resources; manufacturing and production; lifetime services; reuse; end-of-life; and recycling. One important component of aircraft engines, integral rotors known as Blisks, are made of high-value metallic alloys that require complex and resource-intensive manufacturing processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the ecological and economical impacts generated through Blisk production and thereby identify significant ‘hot-spots’.

This paper focuses on the methodology and approach for conducting a full-scale Blisk life cycle assessment (LCA) based on ISO 14040/44. Unlike previous papers in the European Aerospace Science Network series, which focused on the first two stages of LCA, this publication delves into the “life cycle impact assessment” and “interpretation” stages, providing an overview of the life cycle inventory modeling, impact category selection and presenting preliminary LCA results for the Blisk manufacturing process chain.

The result shows that the milled titanium Blisk has a lower CO₂ footprint than the milled nickel Blisk, which is less than half of the global warming potential (GWP) of the milled nickel Blisk. A main contributor to GWP arises from raw material production. However, no recycling scenarios were included in the analysis, which will be the topic of further investigations.

The originality of this work lies in the detailed ecological assessment of the manufacturing for complex engine components and the derivation of hot spots as well as potential improvements in terms of eco-footprint reduction throughout the products cradle-to-gate cycle. The LCA results serve as a basis for future approaches of process chain optimisation, use of “greener” materials and individual process improvements.

Cross-docking is a supply chain distribution and logistics strategy for which less-than-truckload shipments are consolidated into full-truckload shipments. Goods are stored up to a maximum of 24 hours in a cross-docking terminal. In this chapter, we build on the literature review by Ladier and Alpan (2016), who reviewed cross-docking research and conducted interviews with cross-docking managers to find research gaps and provide recommendations for future research. We conduct a systematic literature review, following the framework by Ladier and Alpan (2016), on cross-docking literature from 2015 up to 2020. We focus on papers that consider the intersection of research and industry, e.g., case studies or studies presenting real-world data. We investigate whether the research has changed according to the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016). Additionally, we examine the adoption of Industry 4.0 practices in cross-docking research, e.g., related to features of the physical internet, the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems in cross-docking methodologies or case studies. We conclude that only small adaptations have been done based on the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016), but we see growing attention for Industry 4.0 concepts in cross-docking, especially for physical internet hubs.

The first step toward developing an automated construction workers performance monitoring system is to initially establish a complete and competent activity recognition solution, which is still lacking. This study aims to propose a novel approach of using labor physiological data collected through wearable sensors as means of remote and automatic activity recognition.

A pilot study is conducted against three pre-fabrication stone construction workers throughout three full working shifts to test the ability of automatically recognizing the type of activities they perform in-site through their lively measured physiological signals (i.e. blood volume pulse, respiration rate, heart rate, galvanic skin response and skin temperature). The physiological data are broadcasted from wearable sensors to a tablet application developed for this particular purpose, and are therefore used to train and assess the performance of various machine-learning classifiers.

A promising result of up to 88% accuracy level for activity recognition was achieved by using an artificial neural network classifier. Nonetheless, special care needs to be taken for some activities that evoke similar physiological patterns. It is expected that blending this method with other currently developed camera-based or kinetic-based methods would yield higher activity recognition accuracy levels.

The proposed method complements previously proposed labor tracking methods that focused on monitoring labor trajectories and postures, by using additional rich source of information from labors physiology, for real-time and remote activity recognition. Ultimately, this paves for an automated and comprehensive solution with which construction managers could monitor, control and collect rich real-time data about workers performance remotely.

An aggregate production function has been used in macroeconomic analysis for a long time, even though it seems that it is conceptually confusing and problematic. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the measurement problem related to the heterogenous capital input that exists in macroeconomics is also relevant to microeconomic market situations.

The author constructed a microeconomic market model to address both the problems of the measurement of the physical capital and of substitutability between labor and capital in the short run using two types of technologies: labor neutral and labor reducing. The author proposed that labor and physical capital inputs are complementary in the short run and can become substitutes only in the long run when the technology advances.

The author found that even if the technology improves at a fast rate over time, there are then diminishing returns of profits to technology and an upper limit to profits. Moreover, the author showed that under the labor-reducing technology, labor class earns more initially as technology improves, but their incomes start declining after some threshold level of passage of time.

The author cautioned the applied researcher that the estimated labor and capital coefficients of generalized Cobb–Douglas and constant elasticity of substitution of types of production functions could not be interpreted as partial elasticities of labor and capital if in reality the data come from fixed-proportions types of processes.

With Industry 4.0 and the extensive rise of smart technologies, we are seeing remarkable transformations in work practices and workplaces. Scholars report the phenomenal progress of smart technologies. At the same time, we can hear the rhetoric emphasising their potential threats. This study focusses on how and where intelligent machines are leveraged in the workplace, how humans co-working with intelligent machines are affected and what they believe can be done to mitigate the risks of the increased use of intelligent machines.

We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 respondents working in various leadership capacities associated with intelligent machines and technologies. Using NVivo, we coded and churned out the themes from the qualitative data collected.

This study shows how intelligent machines are leveraged across different industries, ranging from chatbots, intelligent sensors, cognitive systems and computer vision to the replica of the entire human being. They are used end-to-end in the value chain, increasing productivity, complementing human workers’ skillsets and augmenting decisions made by human workers. Human workers experience a blend of positive and negative emotions whilst co-working with intelligent machines, which influences their job satisfaction level. Organisations adopt several anticipatory strategies, like transforming into a learning organisation, identifying futuristic technologies and upskilling their human workers, regularly conducting social learning events and designing accelerated career paths to embrace intelligent technologies.

This study seeks to understand the emotional and practical implications of the use of intelligent machines by humans and how both entities can integrate and complement each other. These insights can help organisations and employees understand what future workplaces and practices will look like and how to remain relevant in this transformation.

This paper explores the interaction and impact of political disruptions on textile supply chain performance in Pakistan. A qualitative approach is adopted to explore the linkages and relationships between political disruptions and supply chain disruptions and performance. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at 25 different textile manufacturing firms. This study confirmed the prevalence of severe and variegated impacts of political disruptions on the textile supply chain. Supply chain disruption is found to be a key mediating factor that directly and indirectly affect supply chain performance through an increased production and delivery lead-time, transportation delays, interruptions of raw material supplies to plants and distributors and the restricted access to workplaces for suppliers and workers. The linkages are represented through vicious circles that illustrate the interactions and inter-relationships between disrupted supply chain and performance. This study provides empirical evidence to help government to formulate pertinent labour laws and industrial policy to mitigate political disruptions and minimise deleterious effects of supply chain disruption on production and distribution networks whilst respecting and protecting the democratic rights of people.

The entire world is now witnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is indeed altering the lives of the many in both developing and developed countries. Massive digital transformations are affecting the economies of those countries and are bringing with them many promised merits, as well as many challenges to face. This paper aims to examine the relationship between digital transformation (as a one facet of the fourth revolution and AI trends) on one side, and economic development, labor productivity and employment on the other side.

The paper analyzes different indices of digital transformation, and then uses the Digital Evolution Index (DEI) to study those relationships in a group of developing countries using feasible generalized least squares method (FGLS).

The results show a positive relationship between the digital transformation index and economic development, labor productivity and job employment. Females seem to gain more from digital transformation compared to males, as suggested by the positive relation with the first and the insignificant relation with the latter. The relationship with vulnerable employment is not significant; more evidence is still needed to judge whether digital transformation will have an impact upon the vulnerable employees in the economy.

The paper focused on the impact of digital transformation upon total aggregate employment. Future research is still needed to examine the impact upon the structure of the labor market and the shift of occupations.

The paper aims to add to in the literature regarding the relationship between digital transformation, economic development, employment and productivity in the developing world. The implications of those relationships are of significant importance to policymakers regarding how much support should be given to encourage the digital transformation. At the same time, it shall also indicate how much social support policies are required – if any – to lessen the negative impact of digital transformation on the vulnerable groups inside the country. Another contribution is using a single composite index for digital transformation that is comparable across the chosen set of developing countries, instead of using single indices each capturing a different dimension of digital transformation.

As an advanced manufacturing method, additive manufacturing (AM) technology provides new possibilities for efficient production and design of parts. However, with the continuous expansion of the application of AM materials, subtractive processing has become one of the necessary steps to improve the accuracy and performance of parts. In this paper, the processing process of AM materials is discussed in depth, and the surface integrity problem caused by it is discussed.

Firstly, we listed and analyzed the characterization parameters of metal surface integrity and its influence on the performance of parts and then introduced the application of integrated processing of metal adding and subtracting materials and the influence of different processing forms on the surface integrity of parts. The surface of the trial-cut material is detected and analyzed, and the surface of the integrated processing of adding and subtracting materials is compared with that of the pure processing of reducing materials, so that the corresponding conclusions are obtained.

In this process, we also found some surface integrity problems, such as knife marks, residual stress and thermal effects. These problems may have a potential negative impact on the performance of the final parts. In processing, we can try to use other integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, try to combine various integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, or consider exploring more efficient AM technology to improve processing efficiency. We can also consider adopting production process optimization measures to reduce the processing cost of adding and subtracting materials.

With the gradual improvement of the requirements for the surface quality of parts in the production process and the in-depth implementation of sustainable manufacturing, the demand for integrated processing of metal addition and subtraction materials is likely to continue to grow in the future. By deeply understanding and studying the problems of material reduction and surface integrity of AM materials, we can better meet the challenges in the manufacturing process and improve the quality and performance of parts. This research is very important for promoting the development of manufacturing technology and achieving success in practical application.