• Title/Summary/Keyword: distributed manufacturing systems

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Development and application of ex-solution nanocatalyst (용출 현상 기반 나노촉매의 개발 및 응용)

  • Kim, Jun Hyuk;Kim, Jun Kyu;Jung, WooChul
    • Ceramist
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    • v.23 no.2
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    • pp.200-210
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    • 2020
  • Supported catalysts are at the heart of manufacturing essential chemical, agricultural and pharmaceutical products. While the longevity of such systems is critically hinged on the durability of metal nanoparticles, the conventional deposition/dispersion techniques are difficult to enhance the stability of the metal nanoparticles due to the lack of control over the interaction between metal-support. Regarding this matter, ex-solution has begun to be recognized as one of the most promising methodologies to develop thermally and chemically robust nanoparticles. By dissolving desired catalysts as a cation form into a parent oxide, fine and uniformly distributed metal nano-catalysts can be subsequently grown in situ under reductive heat treatment, which is referred to ex-solution. Over the several years, ex-solved analog has resulted in tremendous progress in the chemical-electrochemical applications due to the exceptional robustness coupled with ease synthesis. Herein, we describe the ex-solution process in detail which therein introducing the unique characteristics of ex-solved particles that distinguish them from conventionally dispersed nanoparticles. We then go through the history of science regarding the ex-solution phenomena and summarize several major research achievements which embrace the ex-solved nanoparticles to markedly promote the catalytic performances. In conclusion, we address the remaining challenges and the future perspectives of this rapidly growing field.

Pig production in Africa: current status, challenges, prospects and opportunities

  • Akinyele O. K. Adesehinwa;Bamidele A. Boladuro;Adetola S. Dunmade;Ayodeji B. Idowu;John C. Moreki;Ann M. Wachira
    • Animal Bioscience
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    • v.37 no.4_spc
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    • pp.730-741
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    • 2024
  • Pig production is one of the viable enterprises of the livestock sub-sector of agriculture. It contributes significantly to the economy and animal protein supply to enhance food security in Africa and globally. This article explored the present status of pig production in Africa, the challenges, prospects and potentials. The pig population of Africa represents 4.6% of the global pig population. They are widely distributed across Africa except in Northern Africa where pig production is not popular due to religio-cultural reasons. They are mostly reared in rural parts of Africa by smallholder farmers, informing why majority of the pig population in most parts of Africa are indigenous breeds and their crosses. Pig plays important roles in the sustenance of livelihood in the rural communities and have cultural and social significance. The pig production system in Africa is predominantly traditional, but rapidly growing and transforming into the modern system. The annual pork production in Africa has grown from less than a million tonnes in year 2000 to over 2 million tonnes in 2021. Incidence of disease outbreak, especially African swine fever is one of the main constraints affecting pig production in Africa. Others are lack of skills and technical know-how, high ambient temperature, limited access to high-quality breeds, high cost of feed ingredients and veterinary inputs, unfriendly government policies, religious and cultural bias, inadequate processing facilities as well as under-developed value-chain. The projected human population of 2.5 billion in Africa by 2050, increasing urbanization and decreasing farming population are pointers to the need for increased food production. The production systems of pigs in Africa requires developmental research, improvements in housing, feed production and manufacturing, animal health, processing, capacity building and pig friendly policies for improved productivity and facilitation of export.

Development of Multi-agent Based Deadlock-Free AGV Simulator for Material Handling System (자재 취급 시스템을 위한 다중 에이전트 기반의 교착상태에 자유로운 AGV 시뮬레이터 개발)

  • Lee, Jae-Yong;Seo, Yoon-Ho
    • Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.91-103
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    • 2008
  • In order to simulate the behavior of automated manufacturing systems, the performance of material handling systems should be measured dynamically. Multi-Agent technology could be well adapted for the development of simulator for distributed and intelligent manufacture systems. A multi-agent system is composed of one coordination agent and multiple application agents. Issues in AGVS simulator can be classified by the set-up and operating problems. Decisions on the number of vehicles, bi- or uni-directional guide-path, etc. are fallen into the set-up problem category, while deadlock tree algorithm and conflict resolution are in operating problem. In this paper, a multi-agent based deadlock-free simulator for automated guided vehicle system(AGVS) are proposed through the use of multi-agent technologies and the development of deadlock-free algorithm. In this AGVS simulator proposed, well-known Floyd algorithm is used to create AGVS Guide path, through which AGVS move. Also, AGVs avoid vehicle conflict and deadlock using check path algorithm. And Moving vehicle agents are operated in real-time control by coordination agent. AGV position is dynamically calculated based on the concept of rolling time horizon. Simulator receives and presents operating information of vehicle in AGVS Gaunt chart. The performance of the proposed algorithm and developed simulator based on multi-agent are validated through set of experiments.

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An Empirical Study on the Determinants of Supply Chain Management Systems Success from Vendor's Perspective (참여자관점에서 공급사슬관리 시스템의 성공에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 실증연구)

  • Kang, Sung-Bae;Moon, Tae-Soo;Chung, Yoon
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.139-166
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    • 2010
  • The supply chain management (SCM) systems have emerged as strong managerial tools for manufacturing firms in enhancing competitive strength. Despite of large investments in the SCM systems, many companies are not fully realizing the promised benefits from the systems. A review of literature on adoption, implementation and success factor of IOS (inter-organization systems), EDI (electronic data interchange) systems, shows that this issue has been examined from multiple theoretic perspectives. And many researchers have attempted to identify the factors which influence the success of system implementation. However, the existing studies have two drawbacks in revealing the determinants of systems implementation success. First, previous researches raise questions as to the appropriateness of research subjects selected. Most SCM systems are operating in the form of private industrial networks, where the participants of the systems consist of two distinct groups: focus companies and vendors. The focus companies are the primary actors in developing and operating the systems, while vendors are passive participants which are connected to the system in order to supply raw materials and parts to the focus companies. Under the circumstance, there are three ways in selecting the research subjects; focus companies only, vendors only, or two parties grouped together. It is hard to find researches that use the focus companies exclusively as the subjects probably due to the insufficient sample size for statistic analysis. Most researches have been conducted using the data collected from both groups. We argue that the SCM success factors cannot be correctly indentified in this case. The focus companies and the vendors are in different positions in many areas regarding the system implementation: firm size, managerial resources, bargaining power, organizational maturity, and etc. There are no obvious reasons to believe that the success factors of the two groups are identical. Grouping the two groups also raises questions on measuring the system success. The benefits from utilizing the systems may not be commonly distributed to the two groups. One group's benefits might be realized at the expenses of the other group considering the situation where vendors participating in SCM systems are under continuous pressures from the focus companies with respect to prices, quality, and delivery time. Therefore, by combining the system outcomes of both groups we cannot measure the system benefits obtained by each group correctly. Second, the measures of system success adopted in the previous researches have shortcoming in measuring the SCM success. User satisfaction, system utilization, and user attitudes toward the systems are most commonly used success measures in the existing studies. These measures have been developed as proxy variables in the studies of decision support systems (DSS) where the contribution of the systems to the organization performance is very difficult to measure. Unlike the DSS, the SCM systems have more specific goals, such as cost saving, inventory reduction, quality improvement, rapid time, and higher customer service. We maintain that more specific measures can be developed instead of proxy variables in order to measure the system benefits correctly. The purpose of this study is to find the determinants of SCM systems success in the perspective of vendor companies. In developing the research model, we have focused on selecting the success factors appropriate for the vendors through reviewing past researches and on developing more accurate success measures. The variables can be classified into following: technological, organizational, and environmental factors on the basis of TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework. The model consists of three independent variables (competition intensity, top management support, and information system maturity), one mediating variable (collaboration), one moderating variable (government support), and a dependent variable (system success). The systems success measures have been developed to reflect the operational benefits of the SCM systems; improvement in planning and analysis capabilities, faster throughput, cost reduction, task integration, and improved product and customer service. The model has been validated using the survey data collected from 122 vendors participating in the SCM systems in Korea. To test for mediation, one should estimate the hierarchical regression analysis on the collaboration. And moderating effect analysis should estimate the moderated multiple regression, examines the effect of the government support. The result shows that information system maturity and top management support are the most important determinants of SCM system success. Supply chain technologies that standardize data formats and enhance information sharing may be adopted by supply chain leader organization because of the influence of focal company in the private industrial networks in order to streamline transactions and improve inter-organization communication. Specially, the need to develop and sustain an information system maturity will provide the focus and purpose to successfully overcome information system obstacles and resistance to innovation diffusion within the supply chain network organization. The support of top management will help focus efforts toward the realization of inter-organizational benefits and lend credibility to functional managers responsible for its implementation. The active involvement, vision, and direction of high level executives provide the impetus needed to sustain the implementation of SCM. The quality of collaboration relationships also is positively related to outcome variable. Collaboration variable is found to have a mediation effect between on influencing factors and implementation success. Higher levels of inter-organizational collaboration behaviors such as shared planning and flexibility in coordinating activities were found to be strongly linked to the vendors trust in the supply chain network. Government support moderates the effect of the IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support on collaboration and implementation success of SCM. In general, the vendor companies face substantially greater risks in SCM implementation than the larger companies do because of severe constraints on financial and human resources and limited education on SCM systems. Besides resources, Vendors generally lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal SCM expertise. For these reasons, government supports may establish requirements for firms doing business with the government or provide incentives to adopt, implementation SCM or practices. Government support provides significant improvements in implementation success of SCM when IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support and collaboration are low. The environmental characteristic of competition intensity has no direct effect on vendor perspective of SCM system success. But, vendors facing above average competition intensity will have a greater need for changing technology. This suggests that companies trying to implement SCM systems should set up compatible supply chain networks and a high-quality collaboration relationship for implementation and performance.

The Impact of Introducing Factor in the ERP Systems on Management Performance-Mediating Effects of Internal Performance (ERP도입요인이 경영성과에 미치는 영향 - 내부적 성과의 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Sang-Myeong;Seok, Kee-Joon
    • Journal of Digital Convergence
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    • v.10 no.5
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    • pp.155-166
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    • 2012
  • The rapid development of information technology and emergence of the internet have created a borderless business environment and intensified market competition. Riding on the globalization trend, companies have been gradually leveraging information technology in order to shorten their manufacturing processes, enhance productivity with lower costs and prompt delivery to meet the customers' needs. To achieve these targets and maintain competitive advantage, companies have been introducing enterprise resource planning (ERP). This study distributed and collects the questionnaire which is suitable for the research goals during 25 days from march 12th, 2012, to April 6th, 2012. Totally 226 employees answer the questionnaires by the method of direct visiting interview. The results are as follows; In the relationship between management performance and ERP-introducing factors, the moderating effect of internal performance has significant influence by statistical analysis. Our findings suggest that a better understanding of the contribution of ERP systems to business performance and introducing ERP system.

Computer Vision-based Continuous Large-scale Site Monitoring System through Edge Computing and Small-Object Detection

  • Kim, Yeonjoo;Kim, Siyeon;Hwang, Sungjoo;Hong, Seok Hwan
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2022.06a
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    • pp.1243-1244
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    • 2022
  • In recent years, the growing interest in off-site construction has led to factories scaling up their manufacturing and production processes in the construction sector. Consequently, continuous large-scale site monitoring in low-variability environments, such as prefabricated components production plants (precast concrete production), has gained increasing importance. Although many studies on computer vision-based site monitoring have been conducted, challenges for deploying this technology for large-scale field applications still remain. One of the issues is collecting and transmitting vast amounts of video data. Continuous site monitoring systems are based on real-time video data collection and analysis, which requires excessive computational resources and network traffic. In addition, it is difficult to integrate various object information with different sizes and scales into a single scene. Various sizes and types of objects (e.g., workers, heavy equipment, and materials) exist in a plant production environment, and these objects should be detected simultaneously for effective site monitoring. However, with the existing object detection algorithms, it is difficult to simultaneously detect objects with significant differences in size because collecting and training massive amounts of object image data with various scales is necessary. This study thus developed a large-scale site monitoring system using edge computing and a small-object detection system to solve these problems. Edge computing is a distributed information technology architecture wherein the image or video data is processed near the originating source, not on a centralized server or cloud. By inferring information from the AI computing module equipped with CCTVs and communicating only the processed information with the server, it is possible to reduce excessive network traffic. Small-object detection is an innovative method to detect different-sized objects by cropping the raw image and setting the appropriate number of rows and columns for image splitting based on the target object size. This enables the detection of small objects from cropped and magnified images. The detected small objects can then be expressed in the original image. In the inference process, this study used the YOLO-v5 algorithm, known for its fast processing speed and widely used for real-time object detection. This method could effectively detect large and even small objects that were difficult to detect with the existing object detection algorithms. When the large-scale site monitoring system was tested, it performed well in detecting small objects, such as workers in a large-scale view of construction sites, which were inaccurately detected by the existing algorithms. Our next goal is to incorporate various safety monitoring and risk analysis algorithms into this system, such as collision risk estimation, based on the time-to-collision concept, enabling the optimization of safety routes by accumulating workers' paths and inferring the risky areas based on workers' trajectory patterns. Through such developments, this continuous large-scale site monitoring system can guide a construction plant's safety management system more effectively.

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The Effects of Transformational Leadership on Helping Behavior and Deviant Behavior - Focuse on the moderating effect of value congruence - (변혁적 리더십이 조직원의 도움행동과 일탈행동에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구 - 가치일치성의 조절효과를 중심으로 -)

  • Jin, Jae-Keun;Chang, Sug-In
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.38 no.2
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    • pp.183-208
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    • 2019
  • The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the transformational leadership on helping behaviors and deviant behaviors of organizational members and to verify the control effect of value consistency and to suggest a process for effective business management and human resource management. For this purpose, questionnaires were distributed to employees working in office management, area marketing, and manufacturing industries in Seoul, Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces, and the final 334 copies were used for empirical analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS 18.0, and reliability analysis, factor analysis for validity, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were conducted to verify the research hypothesis. The results of the empirical analysis based on the questionnaire based on the object are as follows. First, charisma of transformational leadership showed negative impact on helping behavior, and intellectual stimulation of transformational leadership and individual care showed positive influence on helping behavior. Second, charisma of transformational leadership showed negative influence on deviant behavior, whereas intellectual stimulation of transformational leadership and sub - constitutional factor of individual care did not show significant influence on deviant behavior. Third, as a result of confirming the moderating role of transformational leadership and helping behavior on the level of value consistency, it showed moderating effects on charisma and individual consideration of transformational leadership. Through this study, we proved the effectiveness of transformative leadership which increases the helping behaviors of the members and reduces the deviant behavior. Based on this, we proposed the necessity of developing managers' transformational leadership improvement program to enhance the sustainability of the organization. And we confirmed the partial influence relationship on the adjustment effect of value consistency. In addition, negative influence of charisma suggests a significant point in the management process design.

Experimental Study on Structural Behavior of Precast PSC Curved Girder Bridge (프리캐스트 PSC 곡선 거더교의 구조거동에 대한 실험적 연구)

  • Kim, Sung Jae;Kim, Sung Bae;Uhm, Ki Ha;Kim, Jang Ho Jay
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.34 no.6
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    • pp.1731-1741
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    • 2014
  • Recently, many overpasses, highway, and advanced transit systems have been constructed to distribute the traffic congestion, thus small size of curved bridges with small curvature such as ramp structures have been increasing. Many of early curved bridges had been constructed by using straight beams with curved slabs, but curved steel beams have replaced them due to the cost, aesthetic and the advantage in building the section form and manipulating the curvature of beams, thereby large portion of curved bridges were applied with steel box girders. However, steel box girder bridges needs comparatively high initial costs and continuous maintenance such as repainting, which is the one of the reason for increasing the cost. Moreover, I-type steel plate girder which is being studied by many researchers recently, seem to have problems in stability due to the low torsional stiffness, resulting from the section characteristics with thin plate used for web and open section forms. Therefore, in recent studies, researchers have proposed curved precast PSC girders with low cost and could secured safety which could replace the curved steel girder type bridges. Hence, this study developed a Smart Mold system to manufacture efficient curved precast PSC girders. And by using this mold system a 40 m 2-girder bridge was constructed for a static flexural test, to evaluate the safety and performance under ultimate load. At the manufacturing stage, each single girder showed problems in the stability due to the torsional moment, but after the girders were connected by cross beams and decks, the bridge successfully distributed the stress, thereby the stability was confirmed. The static loading test results show that the initial crack was observed at 1,400 kN when the design load was 450 kN, and the load at the allowable deflection by code was 1,800 kN, which shows that the safety and usability of the curved precast PSC bridge manufactured by Smart Mold system is secured.