R. Macchiaroli

State of the art of additive manufacturing: Review for tolerances, mechanical resistance and production costs

Abstract The new technology named additive manufacturing (AM) is gaining significance in the industrial sector due to its capacity to define new improvements in the design, production and logistical issues related to a specific product. This new area in industrial engineering is becoming operative but is still not easily applicable to all types of production systems. Many research and practical contributions have been developed in the last few years, but a unique answer for a possibility to be applied to the industrial sector has not yet been derived. This paper aims to analyse existing research literature on AM application in the industrial sector and tries to determine the open issues related to this theme. Here the themes on the mechanical and chemical characteristics of the materials produced with AM and the management theme are examined.

Application of a business process model (BPM) method for a warehouse RFID system implementation

In recent years, the importance of the RFId technology within the operations management environment has become more evident. In particular, the RFId technology is recognised as an accelerator of the change towards a more efficient way to manage operations in an industrial context. The aim of this paper is to present a case study for the application of a pre-existing model (based on the Business Process Modelling method) for the technical, economic and financial evaluation of an RFId technology application in the area of industrial logistics for a bike manufacturer. The paper will face this issue preliminarily analysing the RFId utilization in the industrial context, afterwards analysing the existing literature on the BPM use for the evaluation of the applicability of RFId to the industrial context and lastly illustrating the case study and the results of the application of the BPM to the specific firm. The results demonstrate the improvement that it is possible to achieve in terms of financial returns and in terms of bikes worked in the warehouse per year.

Project management for small wind turbines: An experimental survey on activities, lead times and risks

In the last years, among the several available renewable Distributed Energy Resources (DER), a growing attention has been paid to small wind turbines (i.e., < 200 kWp). In particular, during the last years the Italian market has been growing up very rapidly (since only 7–10 years ago it simply was not existing while nowadays the total installed power has reached 8 MWp). In such a new market often operations related to commissioning and installing a small wind turbine have to be faced and validated for the first time. The objective of this paper is to summarize the experience of the authors in the application of traditional project management tools in this field to facilitate investors, project managers and stakeholders facing this market for the first time and to offer them a reference timeline in order to plan all financial and field activities