Predicting remaining useful life (RUL) becomes significant to implement prognostics and health management of industrial systems. The relevant studies have contributed to creating RUL prediction models and validating their acceptable performance; however, they are confined to drive reasonable preventive maintenance strategies derived from and connected with such predictive models. This paper proposes a data-driven preventive maintenance method that predicts RUL of industrial systems and determines the optimal replacement time intervals to lead to cost minimization in preventive maintenance. The proposed method comprises: (1) generating RUL prediction models through learning historical process data by using machine learning techniques including random forest and extreme gradient boosting, and (2) applying the system failure time derived from the RUL prediction models to the Weibull distribution-based minimum-repair block replacement model for finding the cost-optimal block replacement time. The paper includes a case study to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method using an open dataset, wherein sensor data are generated and recorded from turbofan engine systems.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are being faced with rapid changes in their business environments due to evolution of technologies and innovation in societal eco-systems. Particularly, dynamic interactions between such environments and enterprise activities have become significant, so technology planning, which is a process of identifying appropriate directions regarding product and technology development, has received much attention to cope with such dynamics proactively. However, SMEs typically have limits in performing independent, strategical and systematical technology planning activities due to the lack of human, material and financial resources. This paper proposes the development of a product roadmapping method so that SMEs carry out efficient technology planning activities with interconnections of external business environments. The present work provides product roadmap templates that directly accommodate the influence of business environments on the product’s system and its associated super/sub-systems with the use of external environment analysis techniques including TRIZ methodology, PEST and 5Forces analysis. These templates are useful to efficiently forecast the directions of product’s development and evolution, which arise from changes in external environments. Consequently, the present work enables SMEs to flexibly cope with the era of the next R&D generation, which pursues value creation through mutual interconnection between business environments and technology development.

The systematic management of technology infrastructure increasingly becomes critical as it represents the driving power for creating competitive advantage of nations and enterprises. In this sense, public facility and equipment, which is one major asset of technology infrastructure, should be managed effectively, systematically and efficiently to increase its overall equipment effectiveness. However, the manual and off-line communication was the unique way to communicate between the suppliers who provide facilities in the public sector and the customers who utilize the facilities in the industrial sector. This communication way caused invisibility of available usage time and increase of idle time, thereby decreasing the equipment effectiveness. This paper presents an web-based scheduling system that enables real-time collaboration and information sharing for increasing the equipment effectiveness. The designed system performs scheduling, facility management, order management and customer relationship management in an on-line platform, and carries out the processing and storing of relevant information in an integrated database. The paper includes a development approach to identify business process models and standardized system models by using object-modeling technique. The deliverable of the present work will contribute to increasing the equipment effectiveness by enhancing visibility, transparency and predictability by means of the integration with a legacy Enterprise Resource Planning.

Enforced environmental regulations call for extending the domain of manufacturers’ responsibility to the entire product life cycle. To comply with the environmental regulations, manufacturers have constructed reverse logistics networks to re-collect their leftover waste for recycling consumed resources. However, the operational activities associated with storage, loading and transportation processes within the networks inevitably impose environmental burdens. Particularly, the transportation process largely influences environmental performance due to perpetual uses of transportation vehicles. Therefore, there is a need to develop an environmentally- conscious transportation model that can efficiently manage the uses of transportation vehicles. Additionally, it is vital to analyze its significances of environmental performance to compare quantitatively it with existing models. This paper proposes a transportation model for improving environmental performance in a reverse logistics network. This paper also presents a case study to perform its comparative analysis using Life Cycle Assessment that evaluates potential environmental impacts of a product system.

Workers in logistics centers also are exposed to serious musculoskeletal disorders the same as workers in general manufacturing due to operating forklifts and other labor duties. The frequency of these work related injuries decreases, workers' job satisfaction In addition, it causes many employees questioning a job change, which is regarded as the primary factor which drops the productivity. In this paper, we conducted a survey ti perceive the correlation between work related injuries in the fields of distribution centers and job satisfaction. Furthermore we made statistical analysis with our findings. The results of our analysis showed that the frequency of work related injuries due to workers' repetitive loading and unloading work is the primary factor which lowers job satisfaction. In order to improve aforementioned problem we propose first of all loading and unloading on pallet basis, second of all automation and computerization of logistics systems, and third of all ensurinf sufficient break time.

Logistics company strives for satisfaction of customer service. the internal clients of corporation, the engineers of driver enhance their thinking about customer orientation by education of important about customer services. the study reached the conclusion that result which analyzed the important fact of enhancing customer orientation strategy by AHP show an ability of dealing with customer improves customer orientation strategy. because the desire of customer is various, it is difficult to have standard of dealing thought, the program of improvement of dealing ability should be developed and trained to improve customer orientation.

A field study was conducted to compare growth, feed utilization and nutrient excretions by feeding extruded pellet (EP) and moist pellet (MP). Slow growing flounder were used as the experimental animal to find out a prominent result in terms of growth and feed utilization. Weight gain of fish fed the experimental diets for 8 weeks reached 105.3 g for EP and 107.1 g for MP, while fresh feed intake was 98.7 g for EP and 279.4 g for MP. Feed conversion ratio was 0.94 and 2.61 for EP and MP, respectively which was 0.77 and 0.94 when corrected on dry matter basis. Even though protein efficiency ratio (2.26 vs 2.21), specific growth rate (0.69% vs 0.70%), daily weight gain (2.06 g vs 2.10 g) and mortality (4.0% vs 4.1%) were similar between EP and MP, protein retention efficiency of fish fed EP was superior (53.3%) to that of fish fed MP (39.6%). Protein intake of fish for 8 weeks was similar from 52.3 g for EP to 53.3 g for MP, while protein gain was higher in fish fed EP (27.9 g) than in fish fed MP (21.1 g). Protein excretion by feeding EP and MP reached 232 g and 300 g, respectively per kg gain, suggesting that protein loads could be greatly reduced in practical culture system through the use of EP. Phosphorus (P) intake was much lower in fish fed EP (1.63 g) than in fish fed MP (2.18 g), while retention of P was higher in fish fed EP (0.88 g) than in fish fed MP (0.78 g), showing the retention efficiency of 54.0% and 35.9%, respectively. Fish fed EP excreted 7.1 g of P per kg gain which was much lower than that of fish fed MP (13.1 g). The present results clearly showed that EP feeding for flounder is not only productive but also environmentally friendly.

Many logistics enterprises have made efforts to achieve low costly and high efficient logistics network. The cross-docking system can be a good solution for them. However, it requires tight schedule and all-night operation inevitably for realization of ideal cross-docking. These causes the difficulty of the attainment of daily delivery target and the leave of delivery service persons. In this paper, we develop the line-haul and shuttle service compromised cross-docking model in order to solve the problems practically. We apply the storage process with the cross-docking system and the direct cross-docking between line-haul and shuttle services. The simulation model validates the shorter delivery time by the developed model than the present model.

RFID system the key technology of ubiquitous era, has been emphasized in logistics. Logistic enterprises are required to apply RFID systems considering their investment costs, actual effectiveness, operational satisfaction and so on. For such a purpose, many applicable methods of RFID system have been developed A method that RFID tags are directly attached to products or pallets is utilized in most cases. However, this method requires expensive investment cost, frequent replacement of damaged tags for the small and medium (SM) third party logistics. In this paper, we analyze statistically the current status and requirements of SM third party logistics. Based on their requirements, we propose the realtime warehousing-delivery management by the method to attach a RFID tag to each warehouse rack, together with the economy analysis index in order to evaluate economical efficiency. Consequently, this method is expected to reduce Investment cost and to improve operational effectiveness and satisfaction.