HOW ARE PRODUCT-SERVICE COMBINED OFFERS PROVIDED IN GERMANY AND ITALY？ ANALYSIS WITH COMPANY SIZES AND COUNTRIES

A new business concept that offers products and services in a different way of traditional product-sales businesses is getting more attention especially in manufacturing industries. This paper investigates how this new business by means of integration of products and services is achieved in Germany and Italy. In addition, it analyzes the differences according to the company sizes. The results include that this type of business is in many cases motivated by their focus on customers and often consists of physical products and their maintenance. The Italian companies, as opposed to the German ones, often design their physical products specifically for this type of offers. From the analysis based on the size difference, small companies are found to achieve specific design for this type of offers while owning physical products. There do not seem to be any established methods or tools developed to support the development of such offers and within such methods/tools there would be room for more adaptation in form of physical product design.     

Robust output regulation problem with prescribed performance for nonlinear strict feedback systems

This paper investigates the problem of robust output regulation control with prospected transient property for strict feedback systems. By employing the internal model principle,the robust output regulation problem with a prospected property can be transformed to a robust stabilization problem with a new output constraint. Then, by constructing the speed function and adopting barrier Lyapunov function technique, the dynamic feedback controller can be designed not only to drive error output of th...     

Self-configuring scheduling scheme for IPv6 traffic with multiple QoS classes

This paper proposes a new queuing model and adaptive scheduling scheme which realizes multi-class QoS mechanism under DiffServ architecture. The queuing model is composed of two parallel output subqueues, each output sub-queue adopts random drop algorithm by setting different buffer threshold for different class traffic, so it can provide multi-class QoS. The new proposed scheduling scheme which adaptively changes the parameter A can guarantee the performance target of high class traffic, in the mean time, improve the QoS of low classes traffic.     

Robust H∞ output feedback controller design for uncertain discrete-time switched systems via switched Lyapunov functions

The H∞ output feedback control problem for uncertain discrete-time switched systems is reasearched. A new characterization of stability and H∞ performance for the switched system under arbitrary switching is obtained by using switched Lyapunov function.Then,based on the characterization,a linear matrix inequality (LMI)approach is developed to design a switched output feedback controller which guarantees the stability and H∞ performance of the closed-loop system.A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed method.     

Special issue editorial on mass customization and sustainable value systems

Today,new products or services must be designed to satisfy ever changing consumer demand by companies to remain competitive. Mass customization,personalized services,and integration of information and decision processes are needed to produce an increasingly diverse range of products and services.At the same time efficiency as well as flexibility of design and production processes need to be improved.Successful companies align and coordinate efforts with suppliers and clients across the value chain to achieve and sustain     

Products recommendations using emotional information

Kutani-ware is a famous traditional craft which is so significant not only from the economic perspective, but also from the cultural viewpoint. It had a prosperous time in the last decades; however it has been shrinking recently due to the changes of lifestyle or the appearance of more functional products. Compared with the function, the brand image and style of products have become much more important in purchasing; moreover, technology is no longer the sole driving force in the development of products. As the spread of marketing appealing to consumers’ emotion, many methods treating human’s feeling have been developed and applied in many fields. Since human’s emotion has both linear and non-linear characteristics, and it is changing by every moment, a method which fits better is essential. This paper develops a new evaluation model by comparing statistical, fuzzy and pseudo-fuzzy approaches based-on an emotional evaluation database to find a better approach for recommendation of products.     

Outsourcing or Not? The OEMrs Better Collecting Mode under Cap-and-Trade Regulation

Many original equipment manufacturers(OEMs)carry out collecting operations by themselves or a third party.Most of the existing research papers in the literature consider the collecting mode selection problem from an economic perspective.However,in practice,the firm's collecting decisions can be affected by the carbon policies at present.This paper aims to bridge the gap in research on remanufacturing supply chain by taking the effects of cap-and-trade regulation into consideration.Stackelberg models are established to study the quantity and price decisions under different collecting modes.We find that the OEM reaps more profits in the OEM collecting mode than the third-party collecting mode when collection cost is large.Otherwise,the third party has lower collection cost,and the third-party collecting mode may make the OEM more profitable.From an environmental perspective,with high collection cost,the third party collecting mode can reduce the carbon emissions unless the cost of new products and the emissions intensity are small.In addition,when the collection cost is low but the quantity of remanufacturing products is restricted by that of new products,the third party collecting mode may increase the carbon emissions.In addition,the implementation of cap-and-trade regulation can always reduce carbon emissions,and it may increase the OEM's profits if consumers preference for remanufactured products is small.     

A RISK-AVERSE NEWSVENDOR MODEL WITH LIMITED CAPACITY AND OUTSOURCING UNDER THE CVAR CRITERION

For seasonal products,the retailers usually launch various marketing efforts,like advertising and promotion,to promote them in a selling season.While facing large demand from the customers,one should take the capacity constraint and outsourcing into consideration.Considering the shorten life cycles of most products,in this paper we adopt the traditional newsvendor model to investigate the optimal marketing effort along with optimal order quantity.We address the risk aversion issue and characterize the influence of the sellers’ risk propensity with CVaR criterion,and we develop an effective algorithm to obtain the optimal strategy.The impact of sellers’ risk propensity on the performance of the system is illustrated via numerical examples.The innovation of this paper is threefold.First,the optimal joint strategy of the marketing effort and order quantity is investigated and an efficient algorithm to find the optimal strategy is developed.Second,the capacity constraint option and an outsourcing strategy are studied jointly for excess products.Finally,the risk propensity of the seller and its influence are investigated by using the CVaR criterion,through which we obtain some new managerial insights.     

New adaptive quasi-sliding mode control for nonlinear discrete-time systems

A new adaptive quasi-sliding mode control algorithm is developed for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems, which is especially useful for nonlinear systems with vaguely known dynamics. This design is model-free, and is based directly on pseudo-partial-derivatives derived on-line from the input and output information of the system using an improved recursive projection type of identification algorithm. The theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the adaptive quasi-sliding mode control system is stable and convergent.     

Consistency analysis of accelerated degradation mechanism based on gray theory

A fundamental premise of an accelerated testing is that the failure mechanism under elevated and normal stress levels should remain the same. Thus, verification of the consistency of failure mechanisms is essential during an accelerated testing. A new consistency analysis method based on the gray theory is pro- posed for complex products. First of all, existing consistency ana- lysis methods are reviewed with a focus on the comparison of the differences among them. Then, the proposed consistency ana- lysis method is introduced. Two effective gray prediction models, gray dynamic model and new information and equal dimensional （NIED） model, are adapted in the proposed method. The process to determine the dimension of NIED model is also discussed, and a decision rule is expanded. Based on that, the procedure of ap- plying the new consistent analysis method is developed. Finally, a case study of the consistency analysis of a reliability enhancement testing is conducted to demonstrate and validate the proposed method.     

A NEW APPROACH ON IDENTIFICATION OF BOUNDARY PARAMETER FOR A TWODIMENSIONAL DIFFUSION SYSTEM

This paper presents a new approach of the boundary parameter identification of adiffusion system.The system model is governed by a two-dimensional parabolic problem,which involves an unknown boundary parameter.Identifiability of the boundary parameterand the new approach are discussed briefly,which show that the new approach can overcomenot only the ill-posedness of the nonlinear output least square method but also the difficultyof numerical computation of the nonlinear output least square estimate due to the existenceof the local minima of the performance functional,Finally,some numerical examples aregiven.     

A design for environment methodology for evaluation and improvement of derivative consumer electronic product development

Increasing environmental awareness and stringent environmental regulations have motivated many companies to incorporate ecodesign into product development.To assist companies to address the challenge,this research presents a design for environment(DfE) methodology to evaluate and improve derivative consumer electronic product development using a back-propagation neural network(BPNN) model and a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution(TOPSIS) method.Based on use of a BPNN,the life cycle assessment(LCA) models are developed to estimate quantities of hazardous chemical substances and energy consumption for a derivative consumer electronic product throughout the product life cycle.A performance evaluation and improvement model for DfE is then devised based on the TOPSIS method to analyze the ecodesign performance and provide concrete improvement strategies.With the aforementioned analysis of environmental performance,an enterprise can profoundly understand and significantly enhance the relative DfE performance of a new product compared to the similar competitive products.Finally,we apply an optical mouse development project as a case to elaborate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.These analytical results can let us understand the DfE performance ranking and acquire the maximum reduced quantity of each DfE criterion for each module of a new product.Meanwhile,to enhance the green competitiveness of the new product,we recommend that the engineers should decrease the area of the circuit board of the new product.In addition,the material of the USB cable for the new product should be switched from the PVC material to the PE material.     

Minimum geometric power distortionless response beamforming against heavy-tailed noise of unknown statistics

A minimum geometric power distortionless response beamforming approach against impulsive noise(including all αstable noise) of unknown statistics is proposed.Due to that definite logarithmic moments require no priori knowledge of impulsive noise,this new beamformer substitutes the logarithmic moments for the second-order moments and iteratively minimizes the geometric power of the beamformer's output snapshots,subjected to a linear constraint.Therefore,the proposed beamformer can provide significantly highe...     

Novel antenna selection algorithm based on Tanimoto similarity

A new antenna selection algorithm for multiple input multiple output （MIMO） wireless systems is proposed. The modified Tanimoto coefficient is used to compare the similarity of the rows/columns of the channel matrix. Based on the calculated similarity, the proposed algorithm chooses the antenna subset, which has the maximum product of dissimilarity and Frobenius norm. The proposed algorithm requires low computational complexity as to the optimal selection but with comparative outage capacity and average signal to noise ratio （SNR） performance. It can improve both the outage capacity and the average SNR as compared to random selection. The simulation results are shown to validate our algorithm.     

Applying Frameworks for Cognitive Services in IIoT

The technology,which enables creating new types of products,processes and services(i.e.,things),which outcomes alter traditional competition and industry boundaries and create new lasting value.The digitalization process uses digital technologies to provide the possibilities of new revenue and value-producing,i.e.,it changes business models and offers new value propositions.This change is ongoing.The most important ten strategic technology trends in 2019 include Edge computing,Blockchain,event and data-driven strategies,Digital Twins,and the maintenance of transparency(i.e.,traceability),Intelligent Apps and Analytics(Gartner 2018).In this paper,we experiment with the capabilities of intelligent applications to match the industrial business needs.This paper aims to bring insights closer to business objectives.Digitalization’s technological advantages can be achieved through data-driven strategies and wherein cognitive services are integrated into IoT(Internet of Things)and big data.We experiment with the Industrial IoT(IIoT)business models and value propositions to match the intelligent insights of cognitive solutions to business objectives.The IIoTs support and demand transparency and thus also data-driven objective insights,and because cognitive solutions can enhance insights on a product,a process or service and therefore provide measurable business objectives.Functional indicators enable interconnected smart things to collaborate.     

Robust fault detection filter and its application in MEMS-based INS/GPS

Since any disturbance and fault may lead to significant performance degradation in practical dynamical systems,it is essential for a system to be robust to disturbances but sensitive to faults.For this purpose,this paper proposes a robust fault-detection filter for linear discrete time-varying systems.The algorithm uses H∞ estimator to minimize the worst possible amplification from disturbances to estimate errors,and H_ index to maximize the minimum effect of faults on the residual output of the filter.This approach is applied to the MEMS-based INS/GPS.And simulation results show that the new algorithm can reduce the effect of unknown disturbances and has a high sensitivity to faults.     

SYNTHESIZED EXPECTED BAYESIAN METHOD OF PARAMETRIC ESTIMATE

This paper develops a new method of parametric estimate, which is named as "synthesized expected Bayesian method". When samples of products are tested and no failure events occur, the definition of expected Bayesian estimate is introduced and the estimates of failure probability and failure rate are provided. After some failure information is introduced by making an extra-test, a synthesized expected Bayesian method is defined and used to estimate failure probability, failure rate and some other parameters in exponential distribution and Weibull distribution of populations. Finally, calculations are performed according to practical problems, which show that the synthesized expected Bayesian method is feasible and easy to operate.     

Fuzzy AHP Analysis of Influence Factors of TBT on Mechanical and Electronic Products

In recent years, technical barriers to trade （TBT） are limiting the export of the mechanical and electronic products in China. Considering the practical export situation of China＇s mechanical and electronic products, we form the fuzzy matrix of factors influencing the export of mechanical and electronic products according to the concept of the triangular fuzzy number. Then we use fuzzy analytic hierarchy process （AHP） to analyze and rate all the factors. We also put forward suggestions on how to keep away and surpass the technical barriers to trade in Chinese mechanical and electronic enterprises.     

TWO-STAGE ORDERING DECISION FOR A SHORT-LIFE-CYCLE PRODUCT

1. Introduction Recent years have seen scores of retail and manufacturing companies exploring innovative ordering or production modes in an effort to improve their operations and ultimately the bottom lines. So, more and more scholars and managers have investigated stochastic inventory problems. Uncertain demand is the cause of higher inventory costs for short-life-cycle products, such as style fashions, perishable products, and even IT-type products. For short-life-cycle products, most schol…     

Intelligent coordinated control of power-plant main steam pressure and power output

An intelligent coordinated control strategy has been proposed and successfully applied to a 300MW boiler-turbine unit i. e. Unit 1 of Yuanbaoshan power plant in China. Load following operation of coal-fired boiler-turbine unit in the power plant leads to changes in operating points which result in nonlinear variations of the plant variables and parameters. For the variation of operating condition and slowly varying dynamics, an intelligent control scheme has been developed by combining fuzzy self-tuning with adaptive control and auto-tuning techniques. As there exist strong couplings between control loops of main steam pressure and power output in the unit, a new design for static decoupler aimed at decoupling for setpoints and unmeasured pulverized coal disturbance of the system at the same time is presented. Satisfactory industrial application results show that such a control system has enhanced adaptability and robustness to the complex process, and better control performance and high economic benefi