Benefits Of Flexibility Research Articles

Benefits of Node Architecture Flexibility and Hitless Re-Grooming in Transport Networks

This paper proposes dimensioning models for transport network nodes taking into consideration the multiplexing/grooming architecture. The models are suitable for multi-period planning and assume node architectures with different levels of flexibility. Fixed architectures are based on muxponder modules whereas flexible architectures comprise an electrical cross connect (EXC). Within the flexible architectures, non-blocking EXC and partial non-blocking EXCs architectures are considered. Importantly, the models also support hitless re-grooming in flexible architectures. Using the developed models, we analyze the impact of node architecture flexibility in the number of line interfaces required, and assess the potential savings attained by exploiting hitless re-grooming. Results show that enhanced flexibility produces more savings when the client traffic bit rate is much smaller than the line bit rate. Moreover, hitless traffic re-grooming can assist in mitigating the impact of flexibility limitations that arise when deploying smaller sized EXCs.

Optimal Timing of Inventory Decisions with Price Uncertainty

What is the optimal time for a firm to buy inventory to sell in a product market in which the selling price and demand are random and their forecasts improve with time? What is the value of order timing flexibility to the firm? What lead times would a supplier see? To answer these questions, we develop a continuous time inventory model where demand and price are realized at the horizon date T, and the stocking decision can be made at any time in the interval [0,T] given progressively more accurate forecasts of price and demand and a time dependent purchasing cost. We show that the optimal timing of inventory ordering decision follows a simple threshold policy in the price variable with a possible option of non-purchasing, and is independent of the demand. Given this policy structure, we evaluate the benefits of timing flexibility using the best pre-committed order timing policy as the benchmark. We find that the time flexible ordering policy is particularly valuable in the high price volatility or low margin environments. Higher price volatility leads to a greater postponement in the purchasing decisions. In addition, decreasing profit margins lead to a higher lead time variability.

Benefits of flexibility from smart electrified transportation and heating in the future UK electricity system

This paper presents an advanced stochastic analytical framework to quantify the benefits of smart electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps (HPs) on the carbon emission and the integration cost of renewable energy sources (RES) in the future UK electricity system. The typical operating patterns of EVs/HPs as well as the potential flexibility to perform demand shifting and frequency response are sourced from recent UK trials. A comprehensive range of case studies across several future UK scenarios suggest that smart EVs/HPs could deliver measurable carbon reductions by enabling a more efficient operation of the electricity system, while at the same time making the integration of electrified transport and heating demand significantly less carbon intensive. The second set of case studies establish that smart EVs/HPs have significant potential to support cost-efficient RES integration by reducing: (a) RES balancing cost, (b) cost of required back-up generation capacity, and (c) cost of additional low-carbon capacity required to offset lower fuel efficiency and curtailed RES output while achieving the same emission target. Frequency response provision from EVs/HPs could significantly enhance both the carbon benefit and the RES integration benefit of smart EVs/HPs.

Vibration isolation by exploring bio-inspired structural nonlinearity

Inspired by the limb structures of animals/insects in motion vibration control, a bio-inspired limb-like structure (LLS) is systematically studied for understanding and exploring its advantageous nonlinear function in passive vibration isolation. The bio-inspired system consists of asymmetric articulations (of different rod lengths) with inside vertical and horizontal springs (as animal muscle) of different linear stiffness. Mathematical modeling and analysis of the proposed LLS reveal that, (a) the system has very beneficial nonlinear stiffness which can provide flexible quasi-zero, zero and/or negative stiffness, and these nonlinear stiffness properties are adjustable or designable with structure parameters; (b) the asymmetric rod-length ratio and spring-stiffness ratio present very beneficial factors for tuning system equivalent stiffness; (c) the system loading capacity is also adjustable with the structure parameters which presents another flexible benefit in application. Experiments and comparisons with existing quasi-zero-stiffness isolators validate the advantageous features above, and some discussions are also given about how to select structural parameters for practical applications. The results would provide an innovative bio-inspired solution to passive vibration control in various engineering practice.

The Role of Industrial Clustering and Manufacturing Flexibility in Achieving High Innovation Capability and Operational Performance in Indonesian Manufacturing SMEs

This study aims to examine the effects of industrial clustering and manufacturing flexibility on innovation capability and operational performance. This study follow a survey method to collect data pertaining to the phenomena of industrial clustering, manufacturing flexibility, innovation capability, and operational performance by utilizing a single respondent design. A total of 124 Indonesian manufacturing SMEs are taken to test the proposed theoretical model by utilizing covariance-based structural equations modeling approach. It was found that both industrial clustering and manufacturing flexibility was positively associated with operational performance and innovation capability as well. In addition, innovation capability may account for the effects of industrial clustering and manufacturing flexibility on operational performance. This implies that manufacturing SMEs have to reorient their production and operation perspectives, including agglomerate with other similar or related SMEs to develop and utilize their own resources. The SMEs also need to possess some degree of manufacturing flexibility in respond to the uncertain environment and market changes. In addition, the SMEs should put a greater emphasize to use industrial cluster and manufacturing flexibility benefits to generate innovation capability to achieve high performance.

Both Dedicated and Flexible Motion Detection Benefit From Interocular Integration

Both Dedicated and Flexible Motion Detection Benefit From Interocular Integration

Rethink fronthaul for soft RAN

In this article we discuss the design of a new fronthaul interface for future 5G networks. The major shortcomings of current fronthaul solutions are first analyzed, and then a new fronthaul interface called next-generation fronthaul interface (NGFI) is proposed. The design principles for NGFI are presented, including decoupling the fronthaul bandwidth from the number of antennas, decoupling cell and user equipment processing, and focusing on high-performancegain collaborative technologies. NGFI aims to better support key 5G technologies, in particular cloud RAN, network functions virtualization, and large-scale antenna systems. NGFI claims the advantages of reduced bandwidth as well as improved transmission efficiency by exploiting the tidal wave effect on mobile network traffic. The transmission of NGFI is based on Ethernet to enjoy the benefits of flexibility and reliability. The major impact, challenges, and potential solutions of Ethernet-based fronthaul networks are also analyzed. Jitter, latency, and time and frequency synchronization are the major issues to overcome.

Visualizing spatiotemporal trajectories of mobile social media users using space–time cube

The implementation of social network applications on mobile platforms has significantly elevated the activity of mobile social networking. Mobile social networking offers a channel for recording an individual’s spatiotemporal behaviors when location-detecting capabilities of devices are enabled. It also facilitates the study of time geography on an individual level, which has previously suffered from a scarcity of georeferenced movement data. In this paper, we report on the use of georeferenced tweets to display and analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of daily user trajectories. For georeferenced tweets having both location information in longitude and latitude values and recorded creation time, we apply a space–time cube approach for visualization. Compared to the traditional methodologies for time geography studies such as the travel diary-based approach, the analytics using social media data present challenges broadly associated with those of Big Data, including the characteristics of high velocity, large volume, and heterogeneity. For this study, a batch processing system has been developed for extracting spatiotemporal information from each tweet and then creating trajectories of each individual mobile Twitter user. Using social media data in time geographic research has the benefits of study area flexibility, continuous observation and non-involvement with contributors. For example, during every 30-minute cycle, we collected tweets created by about 50,000 Twitter users living in a geographic region covering New York City to Washington, DC. Each tweet can indicate the exact location of its creator when the tweet was posted. Thus, the linked tweets show a Twitter users’ movement trajectory in space and time. This study explores using data intensive computing for processing Twitter data to generate spatiotemporal information that can recreate the space–time trajectories of their creators.

SGAM: strategy‐proof group buying‐based auction mechanism for virtual machine allocation in clouds

SummaryWe study the cloud resource auction problem where users can bid for resource bundle containing heterogeneous types of virtual machines, and providers allocate virtual machines to their users through group price model. Compared with fixed price model, which is not always the best approach for trading resources as its economically inefficient and inflexible nature, the group price model possess the better flexibility and monetary benefits for auction participants (e.g., cloud providers and users). The proposed auction mechanism strategy‐proof group buying‐based auction mechanism, which formulates the problem of virtual machine allocation in clouds as a combinatorial auction problem, and holds some important property such as individual rationality, ex‐post budget balance, and truthfulness, meanwhile guaranteeing efficiency in both the provider's revenue and system efficiency. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed mechanism yields the allocation efficiency and computational tractability compared with the mechanism with fixed price model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From the enclave to the city: the economic benefits of immigrant flexibility

While much attention has been paid to the entrepreneurial “base” of the ethnic economy, the enclave is primarily composed of thousands of hourly employees working in small co-ethnic or multi-ethnic immigrant firms. The US economy benefits from over 10 billion dollars in taxed income and wages from immigrants whose social security numbers do not match up with their employee tax identification numbers. Multiple mismatches and misinformation about immigrants (from an economic, cultural, and political standpoint) demonstrate the need to understand the unique potential of immigrant communities in facilitating urban growth. Koreatown in Los Angeles, an ethnic enclave economy that is also a central business district for many immigrant workers, is one emergent example of new types of flexibility around citizenship status and semi-formal jobs as they are negotiated on a daily basis in the neighbourhood. Previous studies of the ethnic enclave have maintained that there is a singular importance to the co-ethnic network (Korean to Korean, or Cuban to Cuban, for example), and yet this traditional characterisation of the ethnic enclave does not hold true in most urban ethnic enclaves, which include multiple ethnic groups working side by side. Interviews with Korean and Latino workers demonstrate the ways in which people (including undocumented individuals) contribute to the local economy, and informally communicate in neighbourhoods and cities to build a broader social and economic network outside of enclave boundaries.

Process Flexibility: A Distribution-Free Bound on the Performance of k-Chain

Process flexibility has been widely applied in many industries as a competitive strategy to improve responsiveness to demand uncertainty. An important flexibility concept is the long chain proposed by Jordan and Graves (1995) [Jordan WC, Graves SC (1995) Principles on the benefits of manufacturing process flexibility. Management Sci. 41(4):577–594.]. The effectiveness of the long chain has been investigated via numerical as well as theoretical analysis for specific probability distributions of the random demand. In this paper, we obtain in closed form a distribution-free bound on the ratio of the expected sales of the long chain relative to that of full flexibility. Our bound depends only on the mean and standard deviation of the random demand, but compares very well with the ratio that uses complete information of the demand distribution. This suggests the robustness of the performance of the long chain under different distributions. We also prove a similar result for k-chain, a more general flexibility structure. We further tighten the bounds by incorporating more distributional information of the random demand.

P‐62: Silicone Adhesive Providing Protection, Waterproofing and Reworkability for Precision Assembly of Electronic Devices

The performance of a unique silicone hot‐melt bonding solution for device fabrications is described. Inherent attributes of traditional silicones including water repellency, chemical resistance and durability are augmented with automated precision hot‐melt delivery. Other properties include instant room‐temperature adhesion to provide ingress and impact protection while allowing manufacturers the benefit of reworkability and design flexibility.

Adaptive control for evaluation of flexibility benefits in microgrid systems

Aggregating groups of loads and generators at the same location with centralized control is known as the concept of microgrids. However, if those flexible producers and consumers do not have the ability to balance the variability and uncertainty of RES (renewable energy sources) production within them, from the system perspective they are seen as a source of imbalances and potential problems in maintaining the equilibrium of production and consumption. The papers main goal is to quantify the ability of microgrid components to provide flexibility. This flexibility is analysed from two perspectives, defining two operating principles of each microgrid: independently from the distribution grid and connected, interacting and responding to signals from the upstream system. Following on this, the paper presents two relevant cases.In the first part a deterministic model is developed based on MILP (Mixed Integer Linear programming) simulating the microgrid operation over one year period. This model is used to determine the optimal microgrid configuration with respect to the amount of unused energy, thus defining role and capability of different pieces of equipment and their size (RES (renewable energy sources) wind and solar, HS (heat storage), μCHP (micro combined heat and power plants) and EHP (electric heat pumps)).The second part of this paper further expands the model with MPC (Model Predictive Control) approach in order to capture the behaviour of microgrid interaction with the distribution grid, modelling uncertainties of forecasting RES production by stochastic programming. The model is capable to evaluate both the impact of variable energy production and consumption and the impact of energy balancing tariffs depending on the amount of balancing energy needed for the microgrid operation.

Warm Mix Asphalt For Australian Airports

Abstract Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) is a viable alternate to Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) for airport surfacing in Australia. Limited experience with this technology at Australian airports has prevented its acceptance by airport owners and their designers. WMA does have a significant track record in Europe and the USA, where it has been demonstrated to provide significant environmental, safety, quality and construction flexibility benefits. Differences in available binders and the Australian tendency for thinner asphalt layers and less capable materials makes direct extrapolation of experience from Europe and the USA inappropriate. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the comparative performance of WMA (by foamed bitumen technology) to HMA as an airport surface layer. Comparison between HMA and WMA has been made during a number of projects at Australian airports since 2012. A formal trial was performed at a military airfield as part of a broader project in 2013. A combination of production verification, quality assurance and mix performance tests were used to make comparisons. Subject to ongoing monitoring and performance testing of the military airfield WMA trial section, WMA is now verified as a viable alternate surfacing material for Australian airport runways.

A Comparison between Self Myofascial Release and Static Stretching for Flexibility and Exercise Adherence

Because there is limited research on the long term effectiveness of self myofascial release (SMR) or foam rolling, static stretching (SS) remains the standard protocol used by clinicians and fitness professionals for increasing flexibility. No previous study has compared exercise adherence between SS and SMR. Since exercise adherence is low for home based flexibility programs, SMR should be investigated as a possible alternative independent exercise modality. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness and patient adherence between SMR and SS home based protocols. METHODS: Nineteen healthy volunteers (half with initial scores at or below the 20th percentile for the modified-sit-and-reach test) were divided into two groups (SMR and SS). Each group was instructed to perform 15 stretches (SMR or SS respectively) three times per week for four weeks. Subjects self-monitored their stretching and recorded the number of completed and partial sessions. Pre- and Post- flexibility measurements and Modified Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire 2 (BREQ-2) were recorded. An independent t-test was used to compare the total number of sessions completed by each group. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to identify changes in flexibility and Pre-and Post- BREQ-2 survey responses. RESULTS: A significant timepoint difference (pre-to-post) was identified for the modified-sit-and-reach measurements (F1, 17 = 6.32, P < 0.05) but there was no difference between groups. No significant difference in number of sessions was found between groups (t = -1.593, P = 0.130). There were no changes (pre-to-post) or differences (SS to SMR) for BREQ-2 scores. CONCLUSION: The SS and the SMR groups saw similar improvements in flexibility after one month of self-monitored flexibility training. This study is the first to show that participants asked to perform SMR were equally as adherent as the SS group to their respective protocols. We found that there was no change in motivation (BREQ-2 score) in either group over the month of training. SMR is as effective and adhered to as well as SS but offers no additional flexibility benefits or adherence improvements compared to SS. Based on this study, clinicians should consider SMR an equivalent alternative to SS in otherwise healthy patients.

Improving the Lifecycle Performance of Engineering Projects with Flexible Strategies: Example of On‐Shore LNG Production Design

ABSTRACTThis paper presents an innovative flexibility analysis as a practical, effective procedure to improve the expected value of large‐scale, capital‐intensive projects when there is market uncertainty. Its novelty lies in its approach and scope. Its approach develops understanding of the drivers of the value of flexibility, so as to build acceptance among decision‐makers. Its scope explicitly considers the combined effects of uncertainty, economies of scale, learning, and geographic distribution. It demonstrates how these factors combine to impact the benefits of flexibility in the early stages of design and project evaluation in the context of uncertainty. It makes this point through a specific example: the long‐term deployment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) technology to supply the transportation market. It contrasts the base case fixed design (a big centralized production facility) with flexible modular designs that phase capacity additions over time and space. The proposed flexibility method compares design alternatives based on several indicators of economic lifecycle performance (Net Present Value (NPV), Initial Capex, etc.). Results indicate that flexible modular deployment strategies can significantly improve the economic performance of large, expensive projects. As sensitivity analyses show, the improvements can be significant over a wide range of analytical assumptions. An important insight is that higher learning rates increase the benefits of flexibility, counteracting the effects of economies of scale. Overall, the study shows that flexibility in engineering design of major production facilities such as LNG plants has multiple, supporting advantages due to uncertainty, learning, and location.

A Brief Survey Paper on Multi-Legged Robots

&lt;p&gt;This paper presents a brief survey on multi-legged robots and their applications in agriculture such as for harvesting. Multi-legged robots have the benefit of more flexibility and adapt to different rough terrain in a better way. They also have very important applications in fulfilling the dangerous tasks such as mine detecting.&lt;/p&gt;

Advance Demand Information in a Multiproduct System

In this paper we examine the impact of different types of advance demand information on firm profit and on the benefits of resource flexibility. Specifically, we consider a firm that must choose capacities of resources that will be used to satisfy stochastic demand for multiple products, where demands follow a multivariate normal distribution. Prior to the capacity decision, the firm receives information revealing either the total volume of demand across products or the mix of demand between products. We examine two different scenarios: a dedicated resource setting with product-specific resources and a common resource scenario with one flexible resource. For both scenarios we derive the distribution of the (possibly imperfect) volume or mix demand signal, as well as the conditional distributions of demand given the particular signal. We explore the impact of either type of information on optimal capacities and profit. We find that commonality and volume information are strategic complements—so that it is more valuable to obtain volume information in settings with a common resource. On the other hand, commonality and mix information are strategic substitutes. Moreover, we find that mix and volume information themselves are complements in systems with dedicated resources. Having either type of information is valuable in reducing uncertainty for each individual product demand, but having both of them together provides information on two different dimensions, allowing for a much greater reduction in demand uncertainty. In systems with a common resource, however, the two types of information are substitutes. Because volume information is well aligned with commonality (both focus on total demand), such information already provides much of the value that can be obtained—having mix information adds limited additional value.

Collaboration and Multitasking in Networks: Architectures, Bottlenecks, and Capacity

Motivated by the trend toward more collaboration in work flows, we study networks where some activities require the simultaneous processing by multiple types of multitasking human resources. Collaboration imposes constraints on the capacity of the process because multitasking resources have to be simultaneously at the right place. We introduce the notions of collaboration architecture and unavoidable bottleneck idleness to study the maximal throughput or capacity of such networks. Collaboration and multitasking introduce synchronization requirements that may inflict unavoidable idleness of the bottleneck resources: even when the network is continuously busy (processing at capacity), bottleneck resources can never be fully utilized. The conventional approach that equates network capacity with bottleneck capacity is then incorrect because the network capacity is below that of the bottlenecks. In fact, the gap between the two can grow linearly with the number of collaborative activities. Our main result is that networks with nested collaboration architectures have no unavoidable bottleneck idleness. Then, regardless of the processing times of the various activities, the standard bottleneck procedure correctly identifies the network capacity. We also prove necessity in the sense that, for any nonnested architecture, there are values of processing times for which unavoidable idleness persists. The fundamental trade-off between collaboration and capacity does not disappear in multiserver networks and has important ramifications to service-system staffing. Yet, even in multiserver networks, a nested collaboration architecture still guarantees that the bottleneck capacity is achievable. Finally, simultaneous collaboration, as a process constraint, may limit the benefits of flexibility. We study the interplay of flexibility and unavoidable idleness and offer remedies derived from collaboration architectures.

An Optimal Pulse System Design by Multichannel Sensors Fusion.

Pulse diagnosis, recognized as an important branch of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), has a long history for health diagnosis. Certain features in the pulse are known to be related with the physiological status, which have been identified as biomarkers. In recent years, an electronic equipment is designed to obtain the valuable information inside pulse. Single-point pulse acquisition platform has the benefit of low cost and flexibility, but is time consuming in operation and not standardized in pulse location. The pulse system with a single-type sensor is easy to implement, but is limited in extracting sufficient pulse information. This paper proposes a novel system with optimal design that is special for pulse diagnosis. We combine a pressure sensor with a photoelectric sensor array to make a multichannel sensor fusion structure. Then, the optimal pulse signal processing methods and sensor fusion strategy are introduced for the feature extraction. Finally, the developed optimal pulse system and methods are tested on pulse database acquired from the healthy subjects and the patients known to be afflicted with diabetes. The experimental results indicate that the classification accuracy is increased significantly under the optimal design and also demonstrate that the developed pulse system with multichannel sensors fusion is more effective than the previous pulse acquisition platforms.