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This study explores the importance of and vulnerabilities in deploying physical access control (PAC) devices in a typical university setting.

The study adopts face-to-face and telephone interviews. This study uses a semi-structured interview guide to solicit the views of 25 interviewees on the subject under consideration. Qualitative responses to the interview are thematically analyzed using NVivo 11 Pro analysis application software.

The findings reveal five importance and seven vulnerabilities in the deployment of PAC devices in the institution. Key among the importance of deploying the devices are “prevent unwanted premise access or intrusions,” “prevent disruptions to university/staff operations on campus” and “protect students and staff from outside intruders.” Key among the identified vulnerabilities are “tailgating”, “delay in emergent cases” and “power outage may affect its usage.”

This study offers insight into a rare area of study, especially in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Furthermore, the study contributes to the state-of-the-art importance and vulnerabilities in deploying PAC devices in daily human activities. The study is valuable in that it has the potential to establish a foundation for future studies that may delve into investigating issues associated with the deployment of PAC devices.

Multinational business deliver value via multiple sites with similar operational capacities. The age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) delivers significant opportunities for the deployment of digital tools for business optimization. Therefore, this study aims to study the Industry 4.0 implementation for multinationals.

The key objective of this research is multi-site systems integration using a reproducible, modular and standardized “Cyber Physical System (CPS) as-a-Service”.

A best practice reference architecture is adopted to guide the design and delivery of a pioneering CPS multi-site deployment. The CPS deployed is a cloud-based platform adopted to enable all manufacturing areas within a multinational energy and petrochemical company. A methodology is developed to quantify the system environmental and sustainability benefits focusing on reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy consumption. These results demonstrate the benefits of standardization, replication and digital enablement for multinational businesses.

The research illustrates the ability to design a single system, reproducible for multiple sites. This research also illustrates the beneficial impact of system reuse due to reduced environmental impact from lower CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. The paper assists organizations in deploying complex systems while addressing multinational systems implementation constraints and standardization.

The purpose of this paper is to survey existing information security policy (ISP) management research to scrutinise the extent to which manual and computerised support has been suggested, and the way in which the suggested support has been brought about.

The results are based on a literature review of ISP management research published between 1990 and 2017.

Existing research has focused mostly on manual support for managing ISPs. Very few papers have considered computerised support. The entire complexity of the ISP management process has received little attention. Existing research has not focused much on the interaction between the different ISP management phases. Few research methods have been used extensively and intervention-oriented research is rare.

Future research should to a larger extent address the interaction between the ISP management phases, apply more intervention research to develop computerised support for ISP management, investigate to what extent computerised support can enhance integration of ISP management phases and reduce the complexity of such a management process.

The limited focus on computerised support for ISP management affects the kind of advice and artefacts the research community can offer to practitioners.

Today, there are no literature reviews on to what extent computerised support the ISP management process. Findings on how the complexity of ISP management has been addressed and the research methods used extend beyond the existing knowledge base, allowing for a critical discussion of existing research and future research needs.

This paper aims to classify journal papers in the context of hybrid quality function deployment QFD and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods published during 2004–2021.

A conceptual classification scheme is presented to analyze the hybrid QFD-MCDM methods. Then some recommendations are given to introduce directions for future research.

The results show that among all related areas, the manufacturing application has the most frequency of published papers regarding hybrid QFD-MCDM methods. Moreover, using uncertainty to establish a hybrid QFD-MCDM the relevant papers have been considered during the time interval 2004–2021.

There are various shortcomings in conventional QFD which limit its efficiency and potential applications. Since 2004, when MCDM methods were frequently adopted in the quality management context, increasing attention has been drawn from both practical and academic perspectives. Recently, the integration of MCDM techniques into the QFD model has played an important role in designing new products and services, supplier selection, green manufacturing systems and sustainability topics. Hence, this survey reviewed hybrid QFD-MCDM methods during 2004–2021.

This study investigates the effect of total quality management (TQM) on customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction and company reputation.

The study results rely on a structured survey conducted among an extensive sample of Finnish SMEs. In addition to the examination of the relationship between TQM and company performance in terms of customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction and company reputation, the study takes a view on the possible effects of the industry, the company size and the certified quality system.

The results reveal that two TQM dimensions, namely Customer Focus and Product Management, were related to companies' customer satisfaction, whereas four TQM dimensions, namely Management/leadership, Customer Focus, Personnel Management and Risk Management, were related to personnel satisfaction. None of the TQM dimensions were related to company reputation. The control variables – the industry, the company size and the certified quality system – were not found to affect customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction or company reputation.

Most previous studies have been based on traditional TQM classification and have not shown the effects of the latest TQM-related dimensions. Compared to previous studies, this work integrates risk management, digitization, system deployment efficiency and stakeholder management into TQM, which has not been implemented in any previous study. The roles of hard and soft TQM factors have been carefully considered in this study; thus, the study does not place too much emphasis on either direction but provides a balanced picture of the performance of the management systems studied. Although there are studies on the effects of TQM on personnel satisfaction, customer satisfaction and reputation, they are based on a much narrower definition of TQM than that in this study. The business environment is constantly changing, but only a few studies have been conducted to extend the TQM approach. This has led to duplication of studies, and the effects of performance-relevant procedures have not been extensively studied in the past as part of TQM. Therefore, the concept of this study brings significant added value to TQM research and returns the TQM concept to the overall level while considering the requirements of the ISO 9001: 2015 and EFQM 2019 quality standards. The study also considers the effects of ISO 9001 certification and EFQM requirements.

The aim of this paper is to identify some of the challenges that need to be addressed to accelerate the deployment and adoption of smart health technologies for ubiquitous healthcare access. The paper also explores how internet of things (IoT) and big data technologies can be combined with smart health to provide better healthcare solutions.

The authors reviewed the literature to identify the challenges which have slowed down the deployment and adoption of smart health.

The authors discussed how IoT and big data technologies can be integrated with smart health to address some of the challenges to improve health-care availability, access and costs.

The results of this paper will help health-care designers, professionals and researchers design better health-care information systems.

This paper aims to provide top-level design and basic platform for intelligent application in China high-speed railway.

Based on the analysis for the future development trends of world railway, combined with the actual development needs in China high-speed railway, The definition and scientific connotation of intelligent high-speed railway (IHSR) are given at first, and then the system architecture of IHSR are outlined, including 1 basic platform, 3 business sectors, 10 business fields, and 18 innovative applications. At last, a basic platform with cloud edge integration for IHSR is designed.

The rationality, feasibility and implementability of the system architecture of IHSR have been verified on and applied to the Beijing–Zhangjiakou high-speed railway, providing important support for the construction and operation of the world’s first IHSR.

This paper systematically gives the definition and connotation of the IHSR and put forward the system architecture of IHSR for first time. It will play the most important role in the design, construction and operation of IHSR.

This paper investigated the organizational adoption of big data analytics (BDA) in the context of supply chain planning (SCP) to conceptualize how resources are orchestrated for organizational BDA adoption and to elucidate how resources and capabilities intervene with the resource management process during BDA adoption.

This research elaborated on the resource orchestration theory and technology innovation adoption literature to shed light on BDA adoption with multiple case studies.

A framework for the resource orchestration process in BDA adoption is presented. The authors associated the development and deployment of relevant individual, technological and organizational resources and capabilities with the phases of organizational BDA adoption and implementation. The authors highlighted that organizational BDA adoption can be initiated before consolidating the full resource portfolio. Resource acquisition, capability development and internalization of competences can take place alongside BDA adoption through structured processes and governance mechanisms.

A relevant discussion identifying the capability gap and provides insight into potential paths of organizational BDA adoption is presented.

The authors call for attention from policymakers and academics to reflect on the changes in the expected capabilities of supply chain planners to facilitate industry-wide BDA transition.

This study opens the black box of organizational BDA adoption by emphasizing and scrutinizing the role of resource management actions.

The application of smart contract can greatly reduce transaction costs and improve transaction efficiency. The existing smart contract are expensive, single application scenario and inefficient. This paper aims to propose a new smart contract model to solve these problems.

By investigating the research history, models and platforms, this paper summarizes the shortcomings of existing smart contracts. Based on the content and architecture of traditional contract, a smart contract model with wider application scope is designed.

In this paper, several models are used to describe the operation mechanism of smart contracts. To facilitate computer execution, a decomposition method is proposed, which divides smart contracts into several sub-contracts. Then, the advantages and deployment methods of smart contract are discussed. On this basis, a specific example is given to illustrate how the application of smart contract will change our life.

Smart contract is gradually applied to more fields. In this paper, the structure and operation mechanism of smart contract system in reality are given, which will be beneficial to the application of smart contract to more complex systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically how information and communication technologies (ICT) can contribute to reduction of CO₂ emissions in road freight transport and to identify opportunities for further improvements.

This research adopts a multiple case study approach with three leading UK grocery retailers as exemplars of fast-moving consumer goods retailers, conducted using multiple data collection techniques including interviews, system demonstrations, onsite observations and the use of archive information.

ICT solutions have a direct positive impact on CO₂ emissions reduction but opportunities to further reduce CO₂ emissions are perceived as lying beyond retailers’ own distribution networks. These opportunities are not fully utilised due to the complexities of collaborative ICT provisions and retailers’ reluctance to share information with competitors.

A limitation of the study is that it is exploratory and only three cases were examined. Even though these three retailers represent over 60 per cent of the UK grocery retail sector, other retailers may deploy significantly different ICT applications.

The research provides an overarching insight for businesses on how to leverage the existing and emerging information technologies for environmental and economic benefits.

While sustainability issues have received increasing attention recently, the role of ICT in freight transport for CO₂ emissions reduction has not been investigated in depth and its impact is largely unknown. This research advances understanding about how ICT contributes CO₂ emissions reductions and provides a framework for further investigation.