Service Engineering Research Articles

A Methodology for the Design and Engineering of Smart Product Service Systems: An Application in the Manufacturing Sector

The combination of servitization and digitalization is increasingly changing the economy and society at the global level towards sustainability goals. Companies are shifting their business models, typically oriented to selling products, towards providing bundles of products and services and integrating them with technologies enabling data collection and analysis, resulting in the so-called smart Product Service Systems (PSS). Different approaches and techniques have been put forth to design PSS and, more recently, smart PSS, but they continue to primarily concentrate on establishing value propositions and ignore the question of what sort of operational data can be gathered and used to deliver the PSS solution. Therefore, manufacturing companies willing to expand their portfolio with new advanced services nowadays still face multiple challenges. To address this gap, this study proposes the Service Engineering Methodology for the engineering of smart PSS (SEEM-Smart), which takes into account the trade-off between customer satisfaction and internal efficiency with a focus on data gathering and information flow. The methodology is then applied in a real-world setting. The case study shows the application of the SEEM-Smart for engineering a new data-driven service offering enabled by a cloud-based platform supporting the service provision.

Building Toward a Disaster Resilient Health System: A Study of Hospital Resilience.

This research evaluated the resilience of 6 tertiary and rural health facilities within a single Australian Health Service, using the World Health Organization (WHO) Hospital Safety Index (HSI). This adaptation of the HSI was compared with existing national accreditation and facility design Standards to assess disaster preparedness and identify opportunities for improvement. This cross-sectional descriptive study surveyed 6 hospitals that provide 24/7 emergency department and acute inpatient services. HSI assessments, comprising 151 previously validated criteria, were conducted by Health Service engineers and facility managers before being externally reviewed by independent disaster management professionals. All facilities were found to be highly disaster resilient, with each recording high HSI scores. Variances in structure, architectural safety, continuity of critical services supply, and emergency plans were consistently identified. Power and water supply vulnerabilities are common to previously reported vulnerabilities in health facilities of developing countries. Clinical, engineering, and disaster management professionals assessed 6 Australian hospitals using the WHO HSI with each facility scoring highly, genuine vulnerabilities and practical opportunities for improvement were identified. This application of the WHO HSI, intended for use primarily in developing countries and disaster-affected regions, complimented and extended the existing Australian national health service accreditation and facility design Standards. These results support the expansion of existing assessment tools used to assess Australian health facility disaster preparedness and resilience.

Product-Service Systems for Circular Supply Chain Management: A Functional Approach

Growing environmental concerns, as well as market competitiveness, are inciting manufacturers to optimize the performance of their products throughout their entire lifecycle. To address these objectives, manufacturing, field service engineering and customer support should be aligned and should strive towards the same end-goal. While several studies have revolved around this context, the product-service system (PSS) approach has emerged as a promising way of meeting manufacturer, customer and environmental requirements alike. Nevertheless, most of these studies revolve around the design and development of a PSS, whilst a minimal amount of research has targeted its impact from the supply chain perspective, leaving aside inventory management. Consequently, the following study utilizes functional hierarchy modeling (FHM) and the PSS concept matrix to propose solutions that make it possible to meet customer requirements and improve the environmental performance and associated costs at the same time. An application at a medical equipment manufacturer brings forward the positive effects suggested by the research and reduces the aforementioned gaps. In detail, the results show a smaller variability in the supply of spare parts combined with optimized maintenance planning, which translates into lesser costs to the manufacturer, a prolonged product life cycle and a reduced environmental impact.

Estimation of human error probabilities in marine safety services: The case of lifeboat and davits inspection

Shipboard Operation Human Reliability Analysis (SOHRA) method is recognized as a practical tool to predict human error probability (HEP) of operators engaging marine operations. Identifying the generic task types (GTTs) and marine specific error producing conditions (m-EPCs), the tool successfully derives HEP value distribution of critical operations in maritime environment. However, the real-time applications of SOHRA to prioritize and implement the suitable recovery actions have still open for development due to the limited time and expertise at pre-operation stage. This paper adapts SOHRA into lifeboat and davits inspection process as a critical marine safety service. Considering the tasks conducted by marine safety service engineers in routine and remote support modes, the GTTs and m-EPCs are assigned to estimate HEP values. In this context, a remote assistance system, is alternatively extended to involve standardization, camera tracking, and advisory support to enhance human reliability through inspection stages. The findings spotlight the deviation in HEP between routine ( 8.26E + 00) and remote support (4.04E-01) modes. A set of recovery actions (i.e. instructional materials) to remedy the HEP values in routine mode are suggested while it is not required at the remote mode assistance. The application illustrates that remote supporting to the marine service might reasonably reduce service engineers’ error rates. Consequently, the study is expected to enhance SOHRA applications in inspection period, particularly added value to marine service engineers in duty. The further studies on the proposed remote assistance concept as new generation solution will contribute to the service quality of marine safety companies.

A conceptual framework for integrated Designers Risk Assessments - a case study of an Insulated Concrete Formwork framed project

Designers’ Risk Assessments (DRA)s are essential to the successful implementation of projects and contractor’s work methods. The Construction Design and Management (CDM) Regulations 2015 in the UK demands that all parties who specify or recommend a component or elements on a building project are responsible for their designs and specifications. As more buildings are moving from traditional forms of construction to various forms of hybrid construction, designers contributing to the project will need to provide DRAs that are associated with their designs and specifications. Traditionally, the input of the architect, structural and services engineers would suffice for this process. However, as projects are incorporating more off-site production and on-site assembly, design responsibilities are getting more fragmented and designers will need to will need to propose risk assessments that manage the safe implementation of their designs at the points of production (off or on-site). Furthermore, Principal Designers who have the duty to coordinate all DRAs will need incorporate these into a wholistic document that will ensure that all risks (off site, in transit and on-site) are properly assessed for elimination, reduction, information and control at the final point of project implementation on site. An illustrative case study approach based on a project being delivered as a hybrid of insulated concrete formwork, beam and block suspended ground flooring, precast concrete first and second floors/ staircases and timber truss roofing was used to study and propose a conceptual framework that seeks to inform research/practice and engender wider debate relevant to integrated DRA formulation.

The effect of indoor soundscape on sexual wellbeing during the COVID-19 lockdown in London: a thematic analysis of remote workers' experiences

BackgroundDespite sexual wellbeing representing a potential component of the overall wellbeing of individuals, its relationship to indoor soundscape has not been investigated. The aim of this study was to identify acoustic-related variables linked to sexual wellbeing during the COVID-19 lockdown; the mechanisms through which those variables exert an influence; and the components of an ideal indoor soundscape for sexual wellbeing. MethodsWe did a thematic analysis of answers to an online survey conducted on Jan 18–19, 2021, via the Prolific participant platform. The survey was completed by 464 adult individuals working at home in London during the third national COVID-19 lockdown (Jan 6 to March 8, 2021). This study focused on two optional open-ended questions concerning (1) effects of the acoustic environment on sexual activity and (2) characteristics of an ideal soundscape for best experiencing sexual intercourse. The formation of codes and themes followed a combination of inductive and deductive approaches. Findings345 responses were collected for question 1 (134 [39%] men, 210 [61%] women, one [<1%] other) and 310 responses for question 2 (124 [40%] men, 185 [60%] women, one [<1%] other), with a respondent age range of 18–65 years. The thematic analysis produced four themes: contextual features, characteristics of the acoustic environment, soundscape interpretation, and coping strategies. With regard to the acoustic environment, the main variables were related to the type of sound, sound dominance, and temporal patterns. Among the participants who provided relevant answers (n=239), 132 (55%) considered the acoustic environment irrelevant while being focused on the sexual activity, 72 (30%) reported negative or mixed effects, and 35 (15%) described only positive effects. Indoor soundscape resulted in privacy concerns, distraction, disruption, or support to sexual wellbeing. Soundscape interpretation triggered coping strategies (eg, adjusting windows or playing music) and behavioural changes (eg, lowering voice level), which in turn limited or increased sexual freedom, and affected or promoted sexual wellbeing. The ideal soundscape was described by three themes related to the availability of privacy and control, quietness, and pleasant sounds. InterpretationAlthough this study is qualitative in nature and no causal link can be established, it highlights the influence the acoustic environment at home had on sexual wellbeing during lockdown. FundingChartered Institution of Building Services Engineers.

Mixed Initiative Approach for Reliable Tagging of Maintenance Records with Machine Learning

Free-form text-based maintenance and service records related to industrial assets capture the observations and actions of service engineers and are a crucial resource for assessing system-level asset health. To facilitate tracking of historical asset health issues, these records are categorized using tags from a predefined taxonomy, which is mostly a manual and time-consuming process. Given that these records can offer valuable information in troubleshooting maintenance issues, automating this process through deep learning (DL) based natural language processing (NLP) models can offer significant operational and maintenance (O&amp;M) cost reductions. However, these data-based models are not expected to be fully accurate, requiring human experts to regularly review all predictions by DL models to verify or correct them, which is also an highly inefficient and costly process. On the other hand, new records that have novel or ambiguous context can be more appropriately resolved by a human expert. The objective of the work described in this paper is to create an interpretable mechanism that can assess reliability of individual predictions from DL-based maintenance record classifiers and help design a mixed initiative system. This system aims to identify scenarios where predictions are reliable enough for automated decision versus where human intervention is needed due to poor reliability. Additionally, this system aides decision support by providing exemplars from training set that can enhance the human tagger’s productivity and quality. Given a set of tagged records, it also has the capability to identify instances where the originally assigned tags are likely to be inaccurate/noisy. We illustrate these outcomes through tagging of maintenance records from the aviation domain, leading to improvements over only human-based or only DL-based tag assignments.

"한국어-스페인어 기계 번역 성능 분석 연구 - 구글 번역기와 네이버 파파고를 중심으로"

This article performs performance evaluation and error analysis of the Korean-Spanish translation service engine. Unlike previous studies, the research is conducted by diversifying the types of texts to be studied and dividing them into texts with and without official translations. The translation services for study are Google Translate and Naver Papago. The translation engine performance evaluation uses BLEU score, which is one of the types of automatic evaluation, and as a result, both translation services showed relatively low evaluation scores. Also, in the case of error analysis, it is divided into four types: words, grammar, sentences, and typos. As a result of the error evaluation, word-related errors were seen the most, and the word substitution phenomenon was particularly prominent. In the case of word errors, it is characteristic that grammatical errors have a great influence on the meaning transfer of the translation, whereas there are often cases where it does not have a great influence on the meaning transfer of the translation. This study is significant in that it suggested the future direction of the development of Korean-Spanish machine translation through the evaluation of the Korean-Spanish translation service.

Oil and gas boomtowns and occupations: What types of jobs are created?

Innovation in hydraulic fracturing methods and micro-seismic technology, along with higher energy prices until 2014, led to oil and gas booms in various U.S. shale plays. While this appears to be a positive event for the country, it is unclear whether and how local communities benefit in the long-term from unconventional gas development. This paper evaluates the impact of oil and gas development on occupation-specific job growth in resource-intensive economies using a unique dataset with annual county employment at the 2- and 5-digit 2010 Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) code combined with education, experience, and training requirements from the O*NET database. Using a first-difference methodology, we find that oil and gas booms have a significant positive impact on occupational job growth in derrick, rotary drill, and service unit operators, truck drivers, secretaries, and engineers, with human capital requirements ranging from less than a high school diploma to at least a bachelor's degree. While occupations associated with oil and gas development and their human capital requirements vary, the results suggest that many of these occupations require workers to have vocational and technical training in addition to a high school diploma, thereby indicating greater demand for workers with intermediate skills in affected areas. Changes in human capital composition resulting from oil and gas development could have significant impacts on a region's ability to respond to energy busts and affect its economic resilience.

Application of the InTIME Methodology for the Transition of Office Buildings to Low Carbon—A Case Study

The COP21 Paris Agreement requires urgent abatement of 80% of the current fossil-based energy consumption to keep global warming below dangerous levels. Heating loads in commercial buildings can be reduced by retrofitting the building envelope, upgrading the efficiency of heating equipment, implementing energy management strategies, substituting renewable energy sources, and influencing energy-saving behavior. However, achieving the downshift of gas or coal heat is a wicked problem. The Interdisciplinary Transition Innovation Management and Engineering (InTIME) methodology was applied to address the wicked problem of district heating of campus buildings of the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand. The carbon downshift scenario requires a reduction in coal purchase by 80% from the first year through the engineering of adaptive measures for facility operators and occupants. Accordingly, a successful downshift of fossil-fuel energy would depend on the effective adaptation of the office workers. Adaptation plans to facilitate demand participation and sustained worker productivity could be designed once the actual heating behaviour is known. The contribution of this work is a novel fossil fuel abatement concept: the Targeted Heating Energy—Assessment and Intervention Design (THE-AID), which focuses on the assessment of the heating behavioural patterns of office workers. Building services engineers can use the THE-AID concept to develop adaptation plans through intervention design and resource facilitation focused on building occupants. THE-AID projects could achieve significant emissions reduction in the near term at a low cost and increase resilience to heat supply disruptions.

Cover crops and soil ecosystem engineers

AbstractEarthworms are key to the engineering of soil ecosystem services. However, how cover crops (CCs) influence these ecosystem engineers has not been widely discussed. This paper reviews (a) CC effects on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity, and related soil ecosystems services and (b) factors affecting CC effects on earthworms. A review of existing literature (through 29 May 2022) found 22 CC studies on earthworm abundance and 10 on earthworm biomass, but studies on earthworm diversity were few. Cover crops increased earthworm abundance in 13 of 22 studies, increased biomass in five of 10 and had no effect in the rest of studies compared with no CCs. The change (Δ increase) was 11 to 535 earthworms m–2 and 11 to 44 g of earthworm biomass m–2. Cover crop effects on earthworm diversity are mixed. Earthworm abundance was more responsive to CCs than soil C and physical properties, suggesting earthworm abundance should be included as a sensitive measurement in soil health status. Cover crops with low C/N under no‐till or reduced‐till systems promote earthworm abundance relative to CCs with high C/N under conventionally tilled systems. Cover crop mixtures do not increase earthworm abundance more than monocultures. Earthworm abundance generally increases with increasing precipitation (r = 0.45; p = .025) and temperature (r = 0.36; p = .10). Overall, CCs increase earthworm abundance but have mixed effects on earthworm biomass and diversity, although more data from different CC management scenarios and climates are needed for more robust conclusions.

The current understanding of precision medicine and personalised medicine in selected research disciplines: study protocol of a systematic concept analysis

IntroductionThe terms ‘precision medicine’ and ‘personalised medicine’ have become key terms in health-related research and in science-related public communication. However, the application of these two concepts and their interpretation in...

Use of roller pump in venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation as an emergency rescue procedure.

A 41 years old male patient, having acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) due to viral pneumonia, was put on venovenous (VV) extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). After 3 h of initiation, the ECMO pump malfunctioned. The patient was initially managed on a hand crank for 5 h. However, as another machine would be available after 12–24 h, we decided to use a roller pump with a conventional cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) circuit. We successfully manage this crisis with this technique without any complications. This technique can be lifesaving in catastrophic situations such as ECMO console or pump failures when there are neither backup machines nor service engineers available.

Toward a Practical Digital Twin Platform Tailored to the Requirements of Industrial Energy Systems

Digitalization and concepts such as digital twins (DT) are expected to have huge potential to improve efficiency in industry, in particular, in the energy sector. Although the number and maturity of DT concepts is increasing, there is still no standardized framework available for the implementation of DTs for industrial energy systems (IES). On the one hand, most proposals focus on the conceptual side of components and leave most implementation details unaddressed. Specific implementations, on the other hand, rarely follow recognized reference architectures and standards. Furthermore, most related work on DTs is done in manufacturing, which differs from DTs in energy systems in various aspects, regarding, for example, multiple time-scales, strong nonlinearities and uncertainties. In the present work, we identify the most important requirements for DTs of IES. We propose a DT platform based on the five-dimensional DT modeling concept with a low level of abstraction that is tailored to the identified requirements. We address current technical implementation barriers and provide practical solutions for them. Our work should pave the way to standardized DT platforms and the efficient encapsulation of DT service engineering by domain experts. Thus, DTs could be easy to implement in various IES-related use cases, host any desired models and services, and help get the most out of the individual applications. This ultimately helps bridge the interdisciplinary gap between the latest research on DTs in the domain of computer science and industrial automation and the actual implementation and value creation in the traditional energy sector.

SSE: Security Service Engines to Accelerate Enclave Performance in Secure Multicore Processors

Secure processor technologies leveraging enclaves as their architectural security primitive are frequently deployed in cloud environments. However, enclave-based systems incur performance penalties due to architectural limitations arising from costly enclave exits incurred to interact with system-level software. Exitless calling aims to improve enclave-based performance by spawning additional responder threads alongside the enclave to execute system calls on its behalf, obviating costly enclave exits. However, exitless calling must operate the responder threads as truly asynchronous to the enclave for security isolation guarantees. The self governed timers induce polling stalls that lead to performance loss when enclave and responder threads saturate the available cores in the system. This paper aims to address the polling challenge in exitless by introducing Security Service Engines (SSE) to offload responder threads on dedicated hardware resources. The evaluation shows that for a highly interactive workload, SSE-equipped secure multicores achieve performance scaling that is at par with a baseline system with no security primitives.

Psychosocial Well-Being Determinants and Occupants’ Happiness in a Green Neighbourhood/Community

Psychosocial well-being and happiness are better in green neighbourhoods due to access to nature and green spaces. Hence, this study focusses on investigating how psychosocial well-being determinants (PWDs) affect occupants’ happiness in a green residential community. This article identifies the psychosocial-well-being domain, ascertains PWDs in the green neighbourhood, and analyses the effects of these PWDs on occupants’-happiness. The research method includes a qualitative and systematic subjective approach. Data were collected using triangulation—deductive extractions from literature to familiarize authors with the phenomenon under investigation, interview guides and focused group discussion on expert opinions, and observation guide to elicit information on the identified PWDs in a green community. The researchers had interactions with fifty (50) professionals, architects, builders, material engineers, service engineers, estate surveyors, urban and regional planners, property developers, medical doctors, psychologists, environmentalists, biologists, chemists, art historians, environmental health practitioners, and occupants. From the interviews, discussion, and deduction, psychosocial well-being determinants in a green neighbourhood include personal happiness and demography, lifestyle, community structure, local economy, activities, the built environment, natural environment, and global ecosystem. The data result suggested that other environmental factors influenced PWDs. Consequently, PWDs in the community affect occupants’ well-being and happiness in a green home/neighbourhood or community.

Critical Obstacles in the Implementation of Value Management of Construction Projects

At present, the construction industry in China has problems such as low production efficiency, low technical efficiency, low management efficiency of the construction project, delayed delivery, budget overruns, and unreasonable risk allocation. Value management can address these issues by enhancing the value of construction projects in China, reducing construction costs, and ensuring significant investment returns. This study uses literature analysis to identify the critical obstacles to adopting value management and uses questionnaires and surveys, structural equation modeling, and factor analysis to prioritize the critical obstacles to adopting value management. What is more, the main contribution of this research is to identify the critical obstacles to the adoption of value management, which provides a new perspective for related research and has specific positive significance for practice summary and reform direction. The research was limited to the region of Tianjin and its surrounding cities. The critical survey respondents for this study are architects, quantity surveyors, contractors, civil engineers, and service engineers with rich experience in construction management. The research results show that the key obstacles to implementing value management in the construction industry in China are mainly divided into four categories: Environmental Factors; Stakeholder and Management Factors; Technological Factors; Information Factors. In addition, the researchers found that the level of the adoption of value management in the construction industry in China is deficient. Value management was not used in most of the organizations surveyed, and project teams did not practice its concept.

Digital Tools Integration and Human Resources Development for Smart Factories

Promoting digital transformation (DX) and realizing smart factories have become critical for manufacturing companies to meet increasing demands such as short-term delivery, quality assurance, and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as well as to improve productivity and quality of work (QoW). To this end, digital tools should be provided for practical application in the preparation of the environments in which the companies can learn and study how to use digital technologies and tools by trial and error, while developing human resources for utilizing them for their own problem solving. In this paper, we describe the activities we used to develop various digital tools in the fields of manufacturing, robotics, and service engineering. We integrated these into a cyber physical system (CPS) developed for our model factory and offered a course for the company workers to learn these digital technologies. We also planned to develop our activities in collaboration with companies, universities, and other research institutes.

Rapid Development of a Data Visualization Service in an Emergency Response

We present the design and development of a data visualization service (RAMPVIS) in response to the urgent need to support epidemiological modeling workflows during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing a set of demanding requirements and several practical challenges, our small team of volunteers had to rely on existing knowledge and components of services computing, while thinking on our feet in configuring services composition and adopting suitable approaches to services engineering. Through developing the RAMPVIS service, we have gained useful experience of ensuring conformation to services computing standards, enabling rapid development and early deployment, and facilitating effective and efficient maintenance and operation with limited resources. This experience can be valuable to the ongoing effort for combating the COVID-19 pandemic, and provides a blueprint for visualization service development when future needs for visual analytics arise during emergency response.

Bringing together the whats and hows in the service innovation literature: An integrative framework

AbstractThe concept of service has gone through both evolutionary and revolutionary changes, but this has had little effect on the way reviews portray service innovation research. Our paper is the first to investigate whether and how different conceptualizations of service influence the formation of perspectives on studying and practicing service innovation. Combining an exploratory content analysis with a thorough examination of 886 articles on service innovation published from 1981 to 2019, we suggest a novel integrative framework for the multiple perspectives on service innovation. We outline new service development, service engineering, service infusion, service design, service reconfiguration and service integration as autonomous, yet interconnected, perspectives, each with its own research focus, logic and vocabulary. This integrative framework can assist with defining research questions and designing innovation studies, as well as selecting approaches to managing innovation. We also argue that the main obstacles to the progress of service innovation research are lexical cross‐contamination, parallelism in approaches, the gravity of the new service development perspective and the legacy of new product development. To overcome these challenges, we encourage a more distinct pluralism of perspectives and demonstrate possibilities for meaningful conversations across them.