Digital On-demand Research Articles

Virtual warehousing through digitalized inventory and on-demand manufacturing: A case study

Novel digital on-demand manufacturing technologies provide a significant opportunity to support development of virtual warehousing and in turn improve supply chain performance. However, the implementation of virtual warehouse comes with a set of challenges, especially where the objective is to virtually warehouse standard or legacy parts that have been developed and verified initially for conventional (non-digital) manufacturing. In this paper, we explore the key elements required for successful implementation of a virtual warehouse for legacy parts based on a combination of part digitalization, on-demand manufacturing, and part validation. Our proposed framework for adoption of virtual warehouse includes development of a digital inventory which includes supply chain and manufacturability data, identification, and selection of suitable parts for on-demand manufacturing, selection of on-demand manufacturing technology, fit-for-purpose validation of the parts. Our framework is exemplified through a case study, and we conclude that the building of an effective virtual warehouse requires several enablers, including availability of digital data about technical and supply chain characteristics of parts, but also a suitable part identification tool. This part identification tool needs to be flexible to include comparison with reference parts already produced by different on-demand manufacturing technologies.

Affective platform urbanism: Changing habits of digital on-demand consumption

This paper develops geographic debates on platform urbanism by exploring the overlooked consumption practices that digital on-demand platforms have generated. Extending recent work on the affectivity of platforms which explain how specific bodily experiences are ‘engineered’ into the design of platforms, the paper argues that the onflow of urban life can complicate these logics. In the context of on-demand food delivery platforms, the paper moves beyond the explanatory logic of convenience to provide a richer understanding of how digital on-demand food delivery platforms might be changing everyday habits in the city for people in different circumstances. Through analysis of qualitative interviews with consumers who use digital on-demand food delivery platforms in Melbourne, Australia, the paper investigates how such platforms are ongoingly evaluated by urban inhabitants. Through a micropolitical lens that views bodies in terms of their changing indeterminate capacities, the paper explains how on-demand food platforms can both enhance and deplete bodily capacities in time, and that this changeability is contingent on diverse circumstances of urban dwelling. The political value of this perspective is to acknowledge a more diffuse set of power relations at play and to enhance our sense of the multiple subjectivities that emerge through ongoing immersion in digital worlds.

Fire safety and inkjet printed wallcovering materials

The session is a follow-up of 2014 presentation on development of fire-retardant wallcoverings. The initial research had indicated that printing with water-based and eco-solvent inks of different types had no measurable impact on the fire-retardancy properties of media. Risks identified were associated with new styles of wallpaper installations and a certain confusion resulting from the multiplicity of measuring methods and fire retardancy standards. Mr. Fouquet and his team explored ways to deliver a compliant media meeting at the same time the visual and haptic expectations of designers and artists. A multi-layer treatment (frontside) and the impregnation of paper backside are added to enhance the fire-retardancy performance. Another parameter to consider is a reduction of the paper weight. This may has some impact on the aesthetic and is thus to be handled with care. With wallcovering shifting to digital on-demand manufacturing, questions on installation safety and compliance with fire regulations have to be reconsidered. Sihl advocate the impregnation of front-side and back-side of wallpapers in order to provide users with an increased safety level without compromise on the aesthetic value. It is a balancing act. We hope that industry will share our concerns and join us with safer and healthier products for the greater benefit of users.

Fire Safety and Inkjet Printed Wallcovering Materials

As wallcovering shifts to digital on-demand manufacturing, questions on safety and fire regulations have to be reconsidered. In a world of changing rules, where multiple actors intervene, it becomes important to conduct and extend research to predict fire resistance and behavior of materials once printed and finished. Sihl research aims to provide first insights and draw attention to the next manufacturing advances to be documented in the future.

Factory Tour of Mimaki Engineering Co. Ltd.

Mimaki Engineering Co. Ltd., founded in the city of Tomi, Nagano Prefecture in 1975 and listed on the JASDAQ Stock Exchange in 2007, is an up-and-coming company. At first, the company developed and manufactured the special order item like the electrical equipment unit, the chip mounter, and the automatic transfer line system, etc., which were the “Engineering” still remaining in the name of the company. The Company’s first ever original product was a pen plotter which made the best use of the servo technologies cultivated in earlier experiences in producing custom-made products. This then led to the development of cutting plotters that utilize cutters instead of pens. Knowledge gained on the needs and characteristics of the Company’s mainstay market seems to have opened the door to the later commercial success of the company. The product that has most influenced the direction of the company has been the large-size ink jet printer put on the market in 1996. The company, in order to meet the needs of sign graphics (the company’s mainstay market), has added new inks and technologies for large-sized printing to the fundamental ink jet technologies introduced by Epson, and in so doing has grown into a leading company in the field. Moreover, the Company has steadily prepared to advance into the field of industrial products with printing and cutting technologies applied to plastic plates, etc. and also into the textile and apparel field, in which printing is done on fabric. These technologies all provide main stay products for digital on-demand production, an innovative production method.

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

754 Many thanks to Dipesh Chakrabarty, Geoff Eley, Dana Luciano, Nasser Hussain, Roger Rouse, Adam Thurschwell, and Martha Umphrey for their meticulous engagements, as well as to audiences at Amherst, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, American Political Science Association, American Studies Association, and Cleveland State. Special nostalgic thanks to Virginia Chang, my original collaborator in the Obesity and Poverty conference (2002). 1. See David Harvey, “The Body as Accumulation Strategy,” Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 97–116. To call Harvey polemical is not to devalue his profound contributions to understanding the productive destructiveness of capital; in his work, a polemic is a call for precision, not a way of drowning it out. Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)