Yongxin Liao

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.

Semantic annotation for knowledge explicitation in a product lifecycle management context

Investigating some existing surveys about semantic annotation researches.Collecting and classifying semantic annotation researches based on Zachman framework.Analysing those collected literatures, especially from formalization aspect.Identifying the existing drawbacks and pointing out the possible research directions. Nowadays, the need for systems interoperability in or across enterprises has become more and more ubiquitous. Many research works have been carried out in the fields of information exchange, transformation, discovery and reuse. One of the main challenges in these researches is to overcome the semantic heterogeneity between enterprise applications along the life cycle of a product. As a possible solution to assist the semantic interoperability, the semantic annotation has gained many attentions and widely used in different domains. We collect a number of literature that applied semantic annotations on different objects, and classify them according to the subject being described in an enterprise architecture framework. A detailed survey, especially from the formalization aspect, is presented to identify the existing drawbacks and to point out the possible research directions.

Semantic annotation model definition for systems interoperability

Semantic annotation is one of the useful solutions to enrich targets (systems, models, meta-models, etc.) information. There are some papers which use semantic enrichment for different purposes (integration, composition, sharing and reuse, etc.) in several domains, but none of them provides a complete process of how to use semantic annotations. This paper identifies three main components of semantic annotation, proposes for it a formal definition and presents a survey of current semantic annotation methods. At the end, we present a simple case study to explain how our semantic annotation proposition can be applied. The survey presented in this paper will be the basis of our future research on models, semantics and architecture for enterprises systems interoperability during the product lifecycle.

Semantic annotations for semantic interoperability in a product lifecycle management context

The interoperability among a variety of systems, in or across manufacturing enterprises, has been widely accepted as one of the important factors that affect the efficiency of production. Many research works, related to the interoperability at different levels, have been carried out to tackle the information exchange, transformation, discovery and reuse. One of the main challenges in these research works is to overcome the semantic heterogeneity in the exchanged information between enterprise applications along the life cycle of a product. As a possible solution to support the semantic interoperability issue, semantic annotations have gained more and more attention. This paper identifies several existing drawbacks and proposes a formal semantic annotation approach to support the semantic enrichment of models in a product lifecycle management context.

Formal Semantic Annotations for Models Interoperability in a PLM Environment

Nowadays, the need for system interoperability in or across enterprises has become more and more ubiquitous. Lots of research works have been carried out in the information exchange, transformation, discovery and reuse. One of the main challenges in these researches is to overcome the semantic heterogeneity between enterprise applications along the lifecycle of a product. As a possible solution to assist the semantic interoperability, semantic annotation has gained more and more attentions and is widely used in different domains. In this paper, based on the investigation of the context and the related works, we identify some existing drawbacks and propose a formal semantic annotation approach to support the semantics enrichment of models in a PLM environment.

Semantic Enrichment of Models to Assist Knowledge Management in a PLM Environment

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has been considered as an essential concept for improving the product competitive ability in manufacturing enterprises. The PLM solution aims at providing a shared platform for facilitating the management of the knowledge related to any product development process in or across enterprises. However, facing with different standards, enterprise systems and stakeholders, enterprises still need to deal with interoperability issues between those collaborative information systems, encompassing their capability to find the right information during the whole Product Life Cycle (PLC). The objective of this paper is to cope with the major issue of semantic interoperability, by proposing a formalization of semantic annotations and a prototype for facilitating a coherent, complete and contextualized interoperability of knowledge between all enterprise systems and related stakeholders. An example of the instantiation of our method within a real application scenario in manufacturing domain is presented to demonstrate its applicability and use, both at the engineering and the exploitation phases.

A notification-oriented solution for data-intensive enterprise information systems – A cloud manufacturing case

ABSTRACT The application of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has brought a series of new challenges to the traditional Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). More and more networked manufacturing entities are combined with data sensing, collection, transmission, and actuation capabilities. EIS are now facing large amounts of heterogeneous data. To address this issue, this paper proposes a notification-oriented solution for the data-intensive EIS within a distributed, collaborative, and heterogeneous environment. The solution is then applied in terms of model to a cloud-based smart factory prototype. This work indicates the suitability of the proposition and discusses the existing drawbacks and perspectives that include the manual modelling process and the application on a prototype.

An Overview of Attributes Characterization for Interoperability Assessment from the Public Administration Perspective

The government interoperability frameworks GIFs are mainly centered on technical perspective neglecting important actual issues in Public Administration PA as the performance of their services and process as well its strategic, legal and politic positioning. This wide spectrum of organizational knowledge demands specific interoperability assessment IA methods based on a preliminary step of identifying and organizing adequate attributes that allow a wider view on the PA domain regarding interoperability requirements. This paper proposes a knowledge discovering and extraction method from PA and IA literature, presenting a rationality through a conceptual model in order to identify and organize attributes that will be used as input for an IA model. A preliminary set of attributes is presented, as well as a future approach of how to deal with these attributes using AHP Analytic Hierarchy Process in order to evaluate them with experts through a specific structure suited to the IA process itself.

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.

A classification and summarization method for analysis of research activities in an academic faculty

Nowadays, more and more scientific research activities are carried out in different laboratories and universities, which not only play an important role in the development of science and technology, but also show a significant inference on education. The improvement of the research capability of an academic faculty can directly impact the quality of education, bring innovations to Industrial Engineering curriculum proposals, and guarantee the subjects are up to date. The investigation of the existing issues in the current research activities is usually considered as the primary and challenging step. As the output of research activities, academic articles are often considered as a kind of evidence-based resources for the investigation. Despite some methodological efforts have been made by existing article review methods, less attention has been paid to discover the implicit academic relationships among the academic staffs and to investigate their research expertise. The objective of this study is to address this existing drawback through the proposition of an Academic Information Classification and Summarization method. A case study is carried out in the Industrial and System Engineering Graduate Program (PPGEPS), PUCPR, Brazil. The result not only highlights the advantages that can be obtained from this proposition from the education perspective related to Industrial Engineering, but also can be used as evidence to balance and compare an academic staff’s research expertise and his/her teaching disciplines.