Fernando Deschamps

Past, present and future of Industry 4.0 - a systematic literature review and research agenda proposal

Over the last few years, the fourth industrial revolution has attracted more and more attentions all around the world. In the current literature, there is still a lack of efforts to systematically review the state of the art of this new industrial revolution wave. The aim of this study is to address this gap by investigating the academic progresses in Industry 4.0. A systematic literature review was carried out to analyse the academic articles within the Industry 4.0 topic that were published online until the end of June 2016. In this paper, the obtained results from both the general data analysis of included papers (e.g. relevant journals, their subject areas and categories, conferences, keywords) and the specific data analysis corresponding to four research sub-questions are illustrated and discussed. These results not only summarise the current research activities (e.g. main research directions, applied standards, employed software and hardware), but also indicate existing deficiencies and potential research directions through proposing a research agenda. Findings of this review can be used as the basis for future research in Industry 4.0 and related topics.

Assessing the maturity of a research area: bibliometric review and proposed framework

In recent years, many disciplines have begun to adopt more systematic and standardized approaches to evaluate the impact and development of a research area with a stronger emphasis on quantitative techniques. In particular, identifying and analyzing the published literature have become important exercises for many disciplines and methods such as systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis have become more regularly used to obtain a deeper understanding of a research area. One concept that is of particular interest is the maturity, or level of development, of a research area. While this concept has been mentioned in many works, it has not yet been formalized, resulting in a lack of consensus concerning the definition of research area maturity and analysis techniques to assess maturity. Therefore, most assessments of research area maturity consider only a subset of the possible criteria with significant differences in the metrics and analyses used among different disciplines. Due to the inconsistencies in the definition and assessment of this concept, a comprehensive synthesis of this literature area is needed. This paper presents the results of a study to identify and analyze the literature, define the maturity of a research area, and synthesize the criteria for assessing maturity. The results are used to develop a generalized maturity assessment framework that establishes a comprehensive set of criteria, which can be adapted for use across a variety of research areas.

The impact of the fourth industrial revolution: a cross-country/region comparison

The fourth industrial revolution stimulates the advances of science and technology, in which the Internet of Things (IoT) and its supporting technologies serve as backbones for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and smart machines are used as the promoters to optimize production chains. Such advancement goes beyond the organizational and territorial boundaries, comprising agility, intelligence, and networking. This scenario triggers governmental efforts that aim at defining guidelines and standards. The speed and complexity of the transition to the new digitalization era in a globalized environment, however, does not yet allow a common and coordinated understanding of the impacts of the actions undertaken in different countries and regions. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to bridge this gap through a systematic literature review that identifies the most influential public policies and evaluates their existing differences. This cross-country/region comparison provides a worldwide panorama of public policies’ durations, main objectives, available funding, areas for action, focused manufacturing sectors, and prioritized technologies. Findings of this review can be used as the basis to analyse the position of a country against the existing challenges imposed towards its own industrial infrastructure and also to coordinate its public policies.

Identification of guidelines for Hoshin Kanri initiatives

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a set of guidelines to be used for diagnosing and (re)designing organizational systems based on Hoshin Kanri – a management framework that is recognized for building the link between strategy and business execution. Design/methodology/approach A two-step approach was used in this research work. A systematic literature review (SLR) was used to find relevant references related to Hoshin Kanri that could serve as sources for recommendations. After completing the SLR, content analysis was used to define the recommendations and analyze them, deriving a set of guidelines. Findings A collection of recurring topics was identified through content analysis. These topics can be interpreted as central aspects for Hoshin Kanri application. Topics were eventually categorized and one guideline was developed for each one of the categories, which resulted in a total of 23 guidelines. Guidelines were grouped in two dimensions (context and process) and also according to their central aspect (organizational culture, capabilities, focus, alignment, integration and review). Originality/value Although Hoshin Kanri has been widely applied in Japan and also in large companies over the past 50 years, it is not as widely explored in research papers as other frameworks. Literature often focuses on Hoshin Kanri only as a process and not as an organization-wide holistic system. There are few empirical studies about its conceptual assumptions and practical implications and no systematization of the main aspects that ensure the effective application of Hoshin Kanri in a universal manner.

Guidelines for Hoshin Kanri implementation: development and discussion

Abstract: Hoshin Kanri is a strategic management framework originally conceived in Japan and recognised for developing a deployment process that integrates business strategy and operations execution. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest regarding Hoshin Kanri implementation among western managers, who usually face cultural challenges towards its use. This leads to the necessity of systematising a set of universally applicable guiding principles or guidelines, for Hoshin Kanri initiatives. This paper presents the results of an in-depth assessment of Hoshin Kanri guidelines carried out through a systematic process of experts? interviews. It uses as its starting point a model of the guidelines that was previously developed through a systematic literature review. The revising and refining of the guidelines is carried out by discussing their conceptual foundations and 20 guidelines are presented that may aid in the implementation of Hoshin Kanri in dfferent types of organisations.

Production Scheduling Process Assessment According to an Enterprise Engineering Perspective

Abstract The production scheduling process lies on the core of the day-to-day operation of an industrial organization. Although much attention has been given to the different methods used to generate a production schedule, its understanding as an enterprise process that is limited by resources and restricted by diverse factors, such as time, has not been extensively explored yet. This work presents an enterprise engineering approach to assess the production scheduling process based on a set of enterprise engineering guidelines and a set of recommendations from the production scheduling literature. The approach is composed of an analysis framework and an assessment procedure and results of its application to a case study in a cosmetics manufacturer are presented.

Cálculo do Tempo de Execução de Códigos no Pior Caso (WCET) em Aplicações de Tempo Real: Um Estudo de Caso

O WCET vem sendo estudado ha poucos anos por pesquisadores da area de sistemas de tempo real para tentar melhorar ou minimizar os defeitos ocorridos em aplicacoes de tempo real. Uma vez que, o WCET aprofunda-se a nivel de hardware e software, fazendo calculos em aplicacoes de baixo nivel. Logo, este trabalho tem como principais objetivos, dar uma visao geral sobre o que seria WCET, apresentar as principais tecnicas para se fazer o calculo da analise de fluxo, apresentar os componentes da analise estatica e contribuir para disseminacao do assunto.