Applying the BTS coaching structure to support multiprofessional teams to design service chains

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is a new paradigm to achieve flexible and agile network services by decoupling network functions from proprietary hardware and running them on generic hardware as virtual network functions (VNFs). In the NFV network, a network service can be modeled as a sequence of VNFs, called a service chain. Given a connection request (e.g., origin, destination, and a sequence of required functions), we have to solve both the service chaining and function placement problems to find an appropriate service path that optimizes the objective (e.g., minimization of the total path delay) while satisfying the service chain requirements. In this article, focusing on the similarity between the service chaining problem and the shortest path tour problem (SPTP) and developing the novel network model called augmented network, we formulate capacitated SPTP-based integer linear programs (ILPs) for the service chaining and function placement. Through numerical results obtained by the existing solver, we show the proposed ILP for the service chaining can support 1.22–1.90 times as large-scale systems as the existing ILP. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that the proposed ILP for both the service chaining and function placement can shorten the total delay by 15.8% compared with that only for the service chaining. For further scalability, we propose a shortest-path-based heuristic algorithm to solve the ILPs and show the heuristic for service chaining and function placement can calculate the optimal solution with high accuracy in strongly polynomial time.

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is a new paradigm to achieve flexible and agile network services by decoupling network functions from proprietary hardware and running them on generic hardware as virtual network functions (VNFs). In the NFV network, a certain network service can be modeled as a sequence of VNFs, called a service chain. Given a connection request (origin node, destination node, and service chain requirement, which is a sequence of functions), the service chaining problem aims to find an appropriate service path, which starts from the origin and ends with the destination while executing the VNFs at the intermediate nodes in the required order. Some existing work noticed that the service chaining problem was similar to the shortest path tour problem (SPTP). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that exactly formulates the service chaining problem as an SPTP-based integer linear program (ILP). Through numerical results, we show the SPTP-based ILP can support 1.30-1.77 times larger scale systems than the existing ILP.

Network functions virtualization (NFV) realizes diverse and flexible network services by executing network functions on generic hardware as virtual network functions (VNFs). A certain network service is regarded as a sequence of VNFs, called service chain. The service chaining (SC) problem aims at finding an appropriate service path from an origin node to a destination node while executing the VNFs at the intermediate nodes in the required order under resource constraints on nodes and links. The SC problem belongs to the complexity class NP-hard. In our previous work, we modeled the SC problem as an integer linear program (ILP) based on the capacitated shortest path tour problem (CSPTP) where the CSPTP is an extended version of the SPTP with the node and link capacity constraints. We also developed the Lagrangian heuristics to achieve the balance between optimality and computational complexity. In this paper, we further propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework with the graph neural network (GNN) to realize the CSPTP-based SC adaptive to changes in service demand and/or network topology. Numerical results show that (1) the proposed framework achieves almost the same optimality as the ILP for the CSPTP-based SC and (2) it also works well without retraining even when the service demand changes or the network is partly damaged.

Several studies have concluded that about 10% of the users of the health care and social services use most services and produce about 80% of the costs of care. However, this client group and their needs for services, which are often complex and multisectoral, are poorly characterized. The new Act on Organizing Health and Social Care Services in Finland obliges the health and social care regions to identify the client groups who need integrated services and to define the multisectoral service chains and packages for these clients. The assumption is that an individual client's personal service path can be planned and enacted by utilizing the pre-defined service chains and packages. This study aimed at studying the definition, development and enactment of the service chains and packages. The study was based on a survey which was carried out in the 22 health and social care regions in spring 2023 for analyzing 1) to which client groups the service chains and packages are defined, 2) what needs there are in the background of defining service chains and packages, 3) what kind of goals are defined for the service chains and packages, 4) what the current developmental state of the service chains and packages is and how they manage to cross the sectoral and disciplinary boundaries, and 5) what successes and challenges there are in defining, developing and enacting the service chains and packages. The survey was the first part of a study which focuses on the development and enactment of service chains and packages in the health and social care regions. The survey results showed that most of the development activities were in the definition phase. The survey gives perspective and background knowledge to the second part of the study which focuses on one specific client group, the children with neuropsychiatric symptoms, and on the definition and enactment of their service chains and packages within three regions.

After a recent merger, the in vitro diagnostic equipment trade company in Brazil, study object, faces difficulties for its logistics flow. The work proposes the application of the DMAIC tools, contained in the context of the six sigma, and Value Stream Mapping (VSM) under the lean philosophy perspective in order to identify the focus of waste that can be improved, corroborating with lean thinking. Unlike the common application of VSM, used in manufacturing processes, this study has its application in a service chain. From the Methodology point of view, the case study uses a qualitative approach, having as strategy the bibliographics with a descriptive and explanatory objective. Additionally, it is delineated based on the DMAIC cycle to establish the industrial overview and method of conducting the process study, and consequently, the influence on the management by the guidelines and their impact on the management of the work routine. Thus, the VSM application is presented to control the flow of distributed inventory parts with the current and future process state maps. Finally, the analyzes show the results obtained with the reduction of the waste, from the centralization of the company's inventory.

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In order to deal with the explosive growth of mobile data traffic, a novel design of network architecture will be adopted in 5G. Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are the key technologies for network transformation, which will drive the innovation of mobile communication network architecture. The deployment of Virtualized Network Function (VNF) in service chain is a critical issue in network virtualization. To overcome the ignorance of VNF sequence constraints in service chain and the characteristics of mobile business in existing literatures, an adaptive deployment method of VNF based on Viterbi algorithm is proposed. With real-time perception of the resources change of underlying nodes, the topology structure will be adjusted dynamically. Hidden Markov model is used to describe the topology information of available nodes with resources constraints in underlying network, and the service path with shortest delay is selected based on Viterbi algorithm in candidate service node. Experimental results show that the process time of service chain can be lower compared with existing algorithm. In addition, the acceptance rates of service chain requests and cost efficiency of underlying resources are also raised.

Network functions virtualization (NFV) can flexibly deploy diverse network services by liberating network functions from traditional network appliances and executing them as virtual network functions (VNFs) on generic hardware. A certain network service can be represented by a service chain, which consists of VNFs in required order. The service chaining problem is finding a suitable service path from the origin to the destination such that the VNFs are executed at the intermediate nodes in the required order under the resource constraints, which belongs to the complexity class NP-hard. In our previous work, considering the similarity between the service chaining problem and the shortest path tour problem (SPTP), we formulated the service chaining as the capacitated SPTP (CSPTP) based ILP, where CSPTP is an extended version of the SPTP with the node and link capacity constraints. In this paper, to address both computational complexity and optimality of resource allocation, we propose Lagrangian heuristics to solve the CSPTP-based ILP especially for the online service chaining. Through simulation results, we show that the proposed algorithm almost achieves the optimal resource allocation with much smaller execution time compared with the existing solver, CPLEX.

Uncertainty within supply chains increases the risk of not meeting objectives. Warehouses can absorb some of these uncertainties, by accumulating inventory. This accumulation has led many to consider warehouses as a source of waste in supply chains. Hence, there is limited research that seeks improving intrinsic warehouse efficiency; particularly in the context of Lean concepts and Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Since, warehouses seek to absorb uncertainty in supply chain by holding inventory; this uncertainty absorption may introduce variability to warehousing function itself. Therefore a methodology is required, which can capture the embodied dynamic within warehousing function. This paper reflects Lean concepts and, in particular, VSM to warehousing context and introduces some methods and guidelines to assure the proper application of VSM in what is an uncertain and dynamic system. In this paper, warehousing function is formulated based on some abstract processes which vary on their output status. This formulation facilitates identifying value-adding activities as one of the most substantial steps, yet confusing in application of VSM in warehousing context. The suggested methods enable fundamental statistical/mathematical analysis, which leverage VSM to a more dynamic evaluation tool. Application of the introduced approach will facilitate the decision making process for warehouse systems evaluation and improvement. The resultant methodology is applied to a factual case and this serves to demonstrate its practical application. It is worth mentioning that the findings applications, which can be termed ‘dynamic VSM’, are not limited to warehouses but can also be applied to any dynamic environment with non-deterministic processes.

China has initially formed a medical instruments innovation, research and development system. There is an urgent need to build a national data platform and information system to integrate and analyze the information of demonstration and promotion, application evaluation and scientific and technological project achievements of domestic innovative medical instruments, so as to provide assistance for the improvement of the quality of medical instruments and the competitiveness of enterprises in China. This paper mainly introduces the work and progress of innovative medical instruments data platform and information system from the perspective of service computing and service-oriented system design, so as to strengthen the service integration and collaborative innovation of innovative medical instruments industry chain, supply chain, service chain, innovation chain and talent chain. The construction of domestic medical instruments service ecosystem is a systematic innovation project. This paper puts forward some thoughts and suggestions on the construction of domestic medical instruments service ecosystem.

In comparison to other industries, construction sector encompasses a distinct, complex, and a competitive environment. It enriches the community with improvements when individuals with diverse perspectives, abilities, and degrees of construction expertise collaborate with each other. In this highly competitive multiparty context, conflicts have been labeled as one of the key constraints that prevent the `success of construction projects. Conflict is a fact that everyone must deal with on a regular basis. Construction projects are therefore not an exception. It entails different types of conflicts. To handle these different types of conflicts, construction professionals use different conflict handling styles. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate design team leaders’ preference of conflict handling styles and its impact on team spirit of the members of the design team during the post contract stage of building construction projects in Sri Lanka. To collect data, an e-based, closed-ended questionnaire was used incorporating the conflict handling styles introduced in Rahim's Dual Concern theory. The questionnaire was answered by 56 professionals who have the experience of working in the design team during the post contract stage. The study was limited to the building construction projects in Sri Lanka. To analyze the gathered data, descriptive statistics such as mean, percentage, count correlation co-efficient etc. were used. The study has revealed that during the post contract stage, the design team leaders use all five conflict handling styles of Rahim’s Dual concern theory: integrating style, obliging style, dominating style, avoiding style, and compromising style in different frequencies to handle conflicts among design team professionals. The design team professionals often use compromising style and rarely use integrating style, obliging style, dominating style, and avoiding style to handle conflicts among the design team professionals during the post contract stage respectively. Furthermore, the study indicates that these styles bring different levels of impact to the team spirit of design team professionals during the post contract stage of building construction projects in Sri Lanka. The team spirit of design team members is shown to be strongly affected by the compromising style. In contrast, the other four conflict handling styles, integrating style, obligating style, dominating style, and avoiding style, were identified to moderately impact team spirit. Moreover, findings revealed that all these five conflicts handling styles show a strong relationship with the team spirit of design team members during the post-contract stage of building construction projects in Sri Lanka. The research findings may assist construction industry design team leaders and other stakeholders to manage conflicts in a more efficient way and provide an insight to the way to handle conflicts to improve the team spirit of the design team during the post-contract stage of building construction projects in Sri Lanka. KEYWORDS: Conflicts, Conflict Handling Styles, Building Projects, Design team, Construction industry, Post contract stage.

In this paper, we investigate the service capacity of a software-defined network with network function virtualization and service chaining. To obtain and achieve the service capacity, we formulate a mixed integer linear programming problem to jointly optimize the placement of virtual machines and the steering of network flows. In addition, we propose the greedy linear programming relaxation algorithm for efficiently obtaining solutions in three phases based on auxiliary linear programming problems and augmented service paths. We justify the usage of the proposed approach by analytical results and simulation results.

In this paper, we investigate the service capacity of SDN-based cellular networks with service chaining and network function virtualization. Due to service chaining requirements, the service capacity is different from the well-known maximum-flow-minimum-cut capacity. To maximize the service capacity, we take a novel approach of traffic engineering. In particular, we formulate and solve a linear optimization problem to obtain optimal service paths for flows and an optimal bandwidth allocation for virtual machines. We also include numerical results that justify the usage of the proposed approach.

With the continuous expansion of the construction scale and business requirement of dispatching and control cloud, it is actually a service invoke a service chain with multiple services in service invocation. And two or more dispatching and control cloud sites may be involved at the same time in the service chain invocation. In view of the characteristics of dispatching and control cloud service chain invocation, a path planning technology for dispatching and control cloud service chain invocation is proposed in this paper. Each service load in the process of service chain invocation is taken into account, and the feasible service paths are comprehensively judged to realize the wide-area global planning of service invocation paths.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find hidden waste and non-value-added activities during the whole process of M company, and then optimize production processes, shorten the production cycle, improve production efficiency, and ultimately achieve just-in-time production mode which response to customer demand rapidly. Design/methodology/approach: In order to identify and eliminate such kind of nonvalue added waste, the authors draw a current value stream map and a future value stream map of the SM6 series products in one electric-equipment-manufacturing enterprise. By analyzing the value stream mapping of the whole process of SM6 series products, the authors find hidden wastes and non-value-added activities, and then the authors use industrial engineering ECRS principle and 5W2H principle” to adjust and make new production plan model, including the analysis and evaluation of the production process, production line layout and other aspects, then, the authors optimize the working process and set up a new production process. Findings and Originality/value: By using Kanban and other lean concepts and techniques, the authors finally achieved pull mode of production (just-in-time production), and shorten production cycle, reduce inventory of semi-finished product and end product, eliminate excess production, and save labor cost, realize the 5S management mode effectively. Practical implications: The successful application of pull mode of production in the SM6 series products has set an example in implementing lean activities for the company’s other product series and most other manufacturing enterprise, Social implications: it also has a significance guiding for value stream mapping and lean thinking to be practiced in Chinese manufacturing enterprise and other industries.