Duncan Mcfarlane

University of Cambridge | Cam · Department of Engineering

Traditional machine learning-based visual inspection systems require extensive data collection and repetitive model training to improve accuracy. These systems typically require expensive camera, computing equipment and significant machine learning ex- pertise, which can substantially burden small and medium-sized enterprises. This study explores l...

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are a key software tool used by manufacturers to plan, coordinate and monitor operations. Due to the high integration cost, customisation required, and the impact on operations, choosing an appropriate MES is vital. This study aims to assist in selecting MES by evaluating data and key functions of existing comm...

Small and medium enterprise (SME) manufacturers are impeded from participating in sustainability initiatives using new technologies due to the high cost and the lack of clarity on where to start. The integration of low-cost digital solutions has enabled SME manufacturers to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies to support operations. However, using low-c...

Integration involves the systematic linking of system components, functions and solutions. For digital systems comprising low-cost components, integration enables the sharing of resources and allows them to benefit from each others functionalities. However, in general integrating low-cost systems can be difficult, since data is heterogeneous and di...

Purpose Advancements in responsive manufacturing have been supporting companies over the last few decades. However, manufacturers now operate in a context of continuous uncertainty. This research paper explores a mechanism where companies can “elastically” provision and deprovision their production capacity, to enable them in coping with repeated d...

Demonstrators, testbeds and learning factories enable researchers to investigate important manufacturing challenges and to trial solutions without disrupting industrial production facilities. In this way, solutions and systems can be developed close to a ‘production-ready’ state prior to industrial deployment. This paper reviews demonstrators and t...

There are many well-known systematic approaches to design digital systems used in manufacturing. However, there are only few approaches that specifically deal with ow-cost components. Such components may not provide the same level of completeness as more expensive industrial alternatives and may need to be combined with other components to become c...

With the accelerated penetration of cloud computing and Internet-of-Things (IoTs) in contexts such as smart factories, digital manufacturing has been introduced to improve the effectiveness of manufacturing by taking advantage of massive amount of digital information. One of the digital manufacturing pathways is collecting data from IoT services an...

As part of the fourth industrial revolution, logistics processes are augmented with connected information systems to improve their reliability and sustainability. Above all, customers can analyse process data obtained from the networked logistics operations to reduce costs and increase margins. The logistics of managing liquid goods is particularly...

Resilience to supply chain disruptions and to changing product volumes and specifications are currently major challenges for the manufacturing sector. To maintain quality and productivity, manufacturers need to be able to respond to disruption using a coordinated set of strategies across different levels of the business, from changes on the shop fl...

Currently, flight delays are common and they propagate from an originating flight to connecting flights, leading to large disruptions in the overall schedule. These disruptions cause massive economic losses, affect airlines reputations, waste passengers time and money, and directly impact the environment. This study adopts a network science approac...

The industrial application of digital technologies in manufacturing can result in an increased efficiency of processes and an opportunity to integrate production, logistics and maintenance functions. However, increasingly interconnected manufacturing information means progressively more complex systems. Therefore, there is an ever growing need to p...

Financial resource limitations and lack of technological awareness are two of the most common barriers to digitalisation in Small-and-Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In response to these challenges, recent research has focused on digital solution areas that can be deployed at a low cost in companies. In this article, we focus on how these solution...

In recent years, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has been a recurrent theme in the literature on Lean Six Sigma (LSS), given the synergies that can arise from their combination. However, their joint implementation presents several challenges. In this article, a systematic literature review (SLR) of research on I4.0 and LSS integration was performed. This revie...

In recent years, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has been a recurrent theme in the literature on Lean Six Sigma (LSS), given the synergies that can arise from their combination. However, their joint implementation presents several challenges. In this article, a systematic literature review (SLR) of research on I4.0 and LSS integration was performed. This revie...

Adopting low-cost (shoestring) digital solutions in organisations should be followed by assessing the business and digitalisation impact. Evaluating the impact of low-cost (shoestring) digital solutions on improving business and digitisation benefits becomes essential for small organisations. This paper introduces an impact assessment model for dig...

Digitalisation is transforming the way industries operate worldwide, and the logistics sector is no exception; however, multiple barriers prevent logistics companies, especially those that are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), from taking advantage of digital technologies. This article focuses on the barrier corresponding to the lack of te...

Nowadays, flight delays are quite notorious and propagate from an originating flight to connecting flights, which lead to big disruptions in the overall schedule. These disruptions cause huge economic losses, affect the reputation of airlines, lead to a wastage of time and money of passengers, and have a direct environmental impact. This paper pres...

Digital developments undertaken as part of the academic research projects can be slow to be trialed and adopted industrially. These delays may be the result of lack of suitable early prototypes or insufficient industrial workforce engagement among other challenges. Here, these challenges are considered in the context of a research project that deve...

As a stepping stone to Industry 4.0, integrating information systems leads to enhanced functionalities, since data can be accessed by another system, and time savings during the development because capabilities can be shared among systems. However, data is generally distributed over heterogeneous information systems and there is a lack of standardi...

Air transportation systems are exposed to disruptions, which have significant impact on operations. Airlines operate tight schedules to maximise resource utilisation, however, the lack of sufficient buffers often result in propagating delays. Thus, understanding how likely it is to experience delays, why they keep happening and what is their impact...

This paper examines the design of low-cost digital solutions for manufacturing. A set of criteria are established that consider the limited designer experience and limited time budget that accompany a low-cost project. Alternatives are assessed and a design approach is proposed that addresses these criteria using a set of identified features. Devel...

For the next generation of production systems, companies require new architectures for designing highly connected systems to increase the efficiency and capabilities of their value chains. Reference architectures help to effectively derive systems architectures. Over the last decades, numerous reference architectures for digital manufacturing have...

Digital solutions have the potential to drastically transform manufacturing operations, but smaller manufacturing businesses (SMEs) have been reluctant to adopt digital solutions due to perceived investment and upskilling costs. The Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project was thus established to facilitate the process of digital solution adop...

The rate of adoption of digital solutions in manufacturing environments remains low despite the benefits these can bring. This is particularly acute among industrial small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who typically do not have the confidence to adopt new technologies and for which cost and a lack of skills remain key barriers. Most digital soluti...

This paper is concerned with examining and prioritising the specific requirements SME manufacturers have for digital solutions and approaches for developing such solutions based on low-cost technologies and processes. In particular, this paper proposes an end-to-end conceptual framework for addressing the key barriers and opportunities for digitali...

Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used to enhance production systems and meet the requirements of a rapidly evolving manufacturing environment. Compared to larger companies, however, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack in terms of resources, available data and skills, which impedes the potential adoption of analytics solutions. This...

The digitalisation of the manufacturing industry is perceived to be critical for achieving future productivity gains. As a result, programmes such as Industry 4.0 (I4.0) have received a huge amount of attention. A series of authors have identified a gap in digitalisation research in the area of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs...

Motivated by recent claims on the potential value of integration in warehouse management, this study evaluates the benefits arising from integrating the planning of order picking and packing processes in e-commerce warehouses. A set of research questions are proposed for exploring various benefits under different operational conditions and an exper...

This editorial introduces this Special Issue on advances in research on digital interoperability and trans-formation in logistics and supply chain management. Eleven high-quality and original research works from both researchers and practitioners in the area have been selected to compose this Special Issue.This editorial first introduces the scient...

In the framework of the SOHOMA 2020 special session “SOHOMA 10th-year anniversary”, this paper aims to make a review of the evolution of one important concept studied in the SOHOMA community, namely the Intelligent Product concept. This paper is not review of Intelligent Products - there are several of these already - but rather examines the histor...

Agent-based systems have been widely used to develop industrial control systems when they are required to address issues such as flexibility, scalability and portability. The most common approach to develop such control systems is with agents embedded in a platform that provides software libraries and runtime services that ease the development proc...

In the order fulfilment and retail industry, the provision of fast and low cost delivery services has received significant focus over the last decade. What is often neglected is other factors that contribute to a customer’s overall experience like customisation and flexibility of deliveries, especially in cases when a customer’s needs and plans cha...

Supply chains are increasingly global, complex and multi-tiered. Consequently, companies often struggle to maintain complete visibility of their supply network. This poses a problem as visibility of the network structure is required for tasks like effectively managing supply chain risk. In this paper, we discuss automated supply chain mapping as a...

The challenge being addressed in this paper is how best to prepare production for the potential disruptive events in order to minimise the impact of these unexpected disturbances. In particular, the paper is focusing on two particular approaches to disruption preparation. The first examines the optimal location and quantity of inventory or “work-in...

One of the key findings in a number of recent studies has been that small and medium sized manufacturers (SMEs) have been slow in adopting digital solutions within their organisations. Cost is understood to be one of the key barriers to adoption. Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring is an approach to increasing the digital capabilities of SMEs via...

This paper establishes a reference set of those low cost digital solutions needed by small and medium sized manufacturers – SMEs – and proposes a method for determining development priorities using input from reference groups of SMEs. The paper describes the approach taken to identifying and classifying common digital solutions used in manufacturin...

Multi-agent systems have been an effective choice for designing control systems that are flexible and agile. However, few attention has been given to the evaluation of the architectures of such systems. This becomes critical with the emerging requirements in complex domains such as digital network infrastructures. In this paper, we propose an appro...

Digital manufacturing is focussed on leveraging the availability of digital information to improve the effectiveness of manufacturing activities. One of the digitalisation pathways for manufacturing is monitoring, which can be challenging due to the high costs of industrial monitoring solutions and the difficulty in justifying their return on inves...

Although predictive machine learning for supply chain data analytics has recently been reported as a significant area of investigation due to the rising popularity of the AI paradigm in industry, there is a distinct lack of case studies that showcase its application from a practical point of view. In this paper, we discuss the application of data a...

The daily orders received by e-commerce warehouses have the feature of large variations with short lead times. The efficiency of order processing significantly depends on the way both the order picking and packing processes are managed. This is because, in practice, congestion or idleness could occur in packing zones while handing over between pick...

Data quality tags are a means of informing decision makers about the quality of the data they use from information systems. Unfortunately, data quality tags have not been successfully adopted despite their potential to assist decision makers. One reason for the non-adoption is that maintaining the tags is expensive and time-consuming: having a tag...

Off-site construction operations can be subject to downstream construction site disruptions. These disruptions - such as forecasted high wind conditions which will limit on-site crane movements for example - delay on-site construction and impact on the effectiveness of the off-site production of construction modules. In this paper we propose a new...

Customer orientation concerns the degree to which an organisation focuses on customers, recognises their desires and places meeting their needs as a first priority. As managing the needs of individual customers in supply chains become increasingly important, logistics companies have been recognising customer orientation as a critical aspect of thei...

The emergence of direct digital manufacturing creates new opportunities for the production of highly customised goods especially when it is combined with conventional manufacturing methods. Nevertheless, this combination creates a need for systems that can effectively manage and control the resulting distributed manufacturing process. In this paper...

Changes in climate conditions are expected to pose significant challenges to the food industry, as it is very likely that they will affect the production of various crops. As a consequence, decisions associated with the sourcing of food items will need to be reconsidered in the years to come. In this paper, we investigate how environmental changes...

Manufacturing companies often lack visibility of the procurement interdependencies between the suppliers within their supply network. However, knowledge of these interdependencies is useful to plan for potential operational disruptions. In this paper, we develop the Supply Network Link Predictor (SNLP) method to infer supplier interdependencies usi...

Manufacturing companies often lack visibility of the procurement interdependencies between the suppliers within their supply network. However, knowledge of these interdependencies is useful to plan for potential operational disruptions. In this paper, we develop the Supply Network Link Predictor (SNLP) method to infer supplier interdependencies usi...

Supply chains are increasingly global, complex and multi-tiered. Consequently, companies often struggle to maintain complete visibility of their upstream supply network. This poses a problem as visibility of the network is required in order to effectively manage supply chain risk. In this paper, we discuss supply chain mapping as a means of maintai...

PURPOSE With the emergence of electronic commerce, traditional warehousing companies are increasingly required to offer services to clients doing B2C commerce. This challenges both existing operations and information systems as they are often designed to support more traditional B2B commerce. As a result, it is important for warehousing companies t...

In today's business environment, the efficiency of warehouses can be critical for the efficiency of the overall supply chains they belong to. As a result, new technologies are being tested and adopted in industry to improve the performance of warehouse operations. An example technology that has recently gained interest by both academia and industry...

As the role of the customer becomes more important in modern logistics, warehouses are required to improve their response to customer orders. To meet the responsiveness expected by customers, warehouses need to shorten completion times. In this paper, we introduce an interventionist order picking strategy that aims to improve the responsiveness of...

As the role of the customer becomes more important in modern logistics, warehouses are required to improve their response to customer orders. To meet the responsiveness expected by customers, warehouses need to shorten completion times. In this paper, we introduce an interventionist order picking strategy that aims to improve the responsiveness of...

This paper presents an approach for achieving a trade-off between pull and push production control principles. A mathematical model of the operation of a production system is suggested, which incorporates different options for inventory control strategies. The model covers several types of disruptions: resource breakdown, product quality loss and d...

An increasing demand to provide customised products creates challenges for manufacturing organisations. This poses a need to understand the characteristics required for manufacturing systems to handle customisation. In this study, 3D printing technology is assessed as an enabler for customisation. Additionally, the requirements of manufacturing sys...

Warehouse Management Systems (WMSs) record where products are stored in a physical warehouse; however, when pickers misplace products the WMS becomes misaligned with the real situation. Due to the fact that the WMS is not aware of these misalignments, it can lead pickers to empty shelves or shelves with the wrong and unexpected products. This paper...

Inventory record inaccuracies are an issue in both retail and warehousing and can lead to considerable costs due to stock-outs and excess inventory. In order to ensure that inventory record inaccuracies are minimised, warehousing organisations conduct inventory checks on items in the warehouse to identify and then rectify misalignments between the...

There has been a trend of increasing levels of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment over the last few decades as the possibility for accessing repair of appliances has declined. Reducing prices of appliances has also generated a culture where the disposal and replacement with new of an appliances, is the quicker and cheaper option, compared wi...

Tighter supply chains create an increasing need for manufacturing organisations to become more flexible and more able to cope with disruptions drives the need for resilient production. Further, the interconnected nature of production environment and the complexities associated with the adoption of lean and process automation requires monitoring and...

This paper presents an approach for achieving a trade-off between pull and push production control principles. A mathematical model of the operation of a production system is suggested, which incorporates different options for inventory control strategies. The model covers several types of disruptions: resource breakdown, product quality loss and d...