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The paper is aimed to avoid the situation that historical relics are encroached, isolated and fragmented because of cities in the rapid urban process. Taking the environment around the Qinglong Temple in Xi'an city as an example and based on the characteristics of urban patterns in the history, this paper explores the spatial connection relationship between historical relics and surrounding villages as well as the connection between metro traffic and commercial bodies. At the end of the paper, the improvement strategy is put forward, namely the design concepts of “stepwise style” and “landscape style”, which can be achieved by the demand of ecological restoration and the relationship between urban axis. To be noted, the research shows, by restructuring new connection space, the city can promote the urban memory to be restored, the urban appearance to be reshaped, and the urban patterns in the history to be respected and displayed.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results on a model for manufacturing under the constraints and conditions of mass customization environment.

The proposed model is based on manufacturing features and entails the concept of modular design. That is, manufacturing features are identified and analyzed in a way that enables the generation of what is called “manufacturing core”. Manufacturing cores are semi‐finished products that have certain manufacturing features. The core can be used to manufacture a range of products after conducting certain manufacturing processes. Manufacturing cores are generated through two phases of optimization. The first phase is known as product's manufacturing features analysis which includes starting features identification. The second phase is known as manufacturing cores formation that ends with generation of manufacturing cores.

The methodology is implemented on real products (flanges) as a case study. The proposed model for mass customization is compared at make‐to‐stock and make‐to‐order policies in terms of a burden which includes the time and the cost that are required to fulfil a production order. Applying the proposed model of mass customization entails the minimum total burden required.

When the number of generic and variant features increases, an automated feature‐recognition module or sub‐system is required to facilitate the extraction of manufacturing features.

The proposed methodology is used for design of customized product through the application of integrated design for modularity and mass customization approach for production.

The proposed methodology entails development of semi‐finished products based on manufacturing features that can be used for design and manufacturing of a range of products.

Since the sixteenth century, Panama has been an important logistic node for communication between South America, North America, and Europe for trade and load transit. Panama ports move more than 700 million tons per year while Panama Canal moves 325,428,407 tons, according the statistics of 2014. Most of the maritime cargo moved through Panama is transit and transshipment cargo. Consequently, and due to the geographical position and future opportunities based on the expansion of the Panama Canal, Panama could be a strategic hub of global trade flows. This is an opportunity to develop value-added logistics services (VALS) in Panama Canal. Thus, this research aims to present a preliminary analysis of VALS industry in Panama, identifying critical variables that could enhance these services. This is a survey-based research, using interviews with the main suppliers of VALS in Panama and some of their customers. The methodology applied to analyze the data is means-end value hierarchy model (MEVHM), which was used to understand VALS industry in Panama and identify what is valuable to customers. Results showed that each VALS provider serves a mean of 20 companies, 22% of them are national clients while 78% are international clients, which recognized the geographical position as their main reason to work with logistics experts from Panama. Furthermore, 92% of them were very satisfied or satisfied with the service received. Main VALS in Panama are labeling, tagging, and packaging. In contrast, areas to be improved are customs procedures, national logistics processes, product’s traceability, competitive prices, and human resources training.

This paper aims to propose a method to determine which mass customization (MC) characteristics should be prioritized in mass-customized service design.

Looking at manufacturing MC systems and conducting a literature review, it is not possible to observe a methodological step to define customized service design as the one we propose in this work. Results show a systematic classification of MC characteristics based on MC enablers and service enablers. These enablers are related by a quality function deployment (QFD) matrix and rewritten using a reverse QFD procedure.

In the end, it was possible to determine which characteristics should be prioritized in mass-customized services.

Two case studies were performed: one with an electric power supplier and another one with a university.

It shows that despite easy customization, organization is not always interest in service features customization. The explanation in these two cases is customization cost, which compared to the benefit does not seem advantageous for the organization.

This paper creates a methodology to design a first phase in customized services in Latin American services and that is the original contribution.

The control of weld penetration in gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) is required for a “teach and playback” robot to overcome the gap variation in the welding process. This paper aims to investigate this subject.

This paper presents a robotic system based on the real‐time vision measurement. The primary objective has been to demonstrate the feasibility of using vision‐based image processing to measure the seam gap in real‐time and adjust welding current and wire‐feed rate to realize the penetration control during the robot‐welding process.

The paper finds that vision‐based measurement of the seam gap can be used in the welding robot, in real‐time, to control weld penetration. It helps the “teach and playback” robot to adjust the welding procedures according to the gap variation.

The system requires that the seam edges can be accurately identified using a correlation method.

The system is applicable to storage tank welding of a rocket.

The control algorithm based on the knowledge base has been set up for continuous GTAW. A novel visual image analysis method has been developed in the study for a welding robot.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how revelations of corporate misconduct are associated with trade credit. Specifically, it investigates how this association varies in different regions, in different types of industries and in response to companies’ subsequent charitable donations.

The authors empirically tested various hypotheses using a sample of 2,725 Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2014 based on signaling theory. Fixed effect models underpinned the methods used.

The authors found that corporate misconduct has a significant negative impact on an irresponsible company’s trade credit received and granted, and the negative impact is heterogeneous for different regions and industries. There is no evidence that charitable donations mitigate the effect on the trade credit of irresponsible companies following revelations of corporate misconduct.

The results suggest that listed companies in China should obey national and local laws and regulations if they wish to avoid the risk of significant trade credit loss. If a company’s violation of these laws and regulations is disclosed, making charitable donations is not an effective strategy for safeguarding trade credit.

This study enriches understanding on the consequences of corporate misconduct and extends the literature on trade credit. It fills a research gap by identifying the impact of corporate misconduct on trade credit.

Product variant design can only be achieved after all its constituent parts have been implemented by variant design. It is necessary to plan the sequence of part variant design reasonably. The product variant design process involves a large amount of information transfer events at the dimensional level. A reasonable product variant design process needs to make full use of the information transfer characters of parts to decrease the uncertainty of product variant design process. The existing methods of researching the product variant design process mainly focus on resource constraint and activity logic. They are deficient, however, in information transfer resolution and uncertainty management. This paper aims to address these issues.

This paper identifies the number of dimension transfer paths and the position of dimension locating within a transfer path as being the key factors affecting the information transfer role of dimension. Information transfer utility is proposed to measure the information transfer capability of dimensions and parts. Based on these, a two-stage approach of generating the sequence of part variant design based on information transfer utility is proposed.

The uncertainty of dimension constraint network is minimal during the product variant design process when parts are implemented by variant design under the sequence generated through a two-stage method based on the information transfer utilities of parts, as does the times of parameter transferring and iteration in dimension constraint network.

Part variant design under the sequence of descending information transferring utilities can decrease the difficulty of implementing product variant design validly and also increase the efficiency. This suggests an innovative method to planning the product variant design process reasonably from the perspective of informatics.

The purpose of this paper is to present a Differential Immune Clone Clustering Algorithm (DICCA) to solve image segmentation.

DICCA combines immune clone selection and differential evolution, and two populations are used in the evolutionary process. Clone reproduction and selection, differential mutation, crossover and selection are adopted to evolve two populations, which can increase population diversity and avoid local optimum. After extracting the texture features of an image and encoding them with real numbers, DICCA is used to partition these features, and the final segmentation result is obtained.

This approach is applied to segment all sorts of images into homogeneous regions, including artificial synthetic texture images, natural images and remote sensing images, and the experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

The method presented in this paper represents a new approach to solving clustering problems. The novel method applies the idea two populations are used in the evolutionary process. The proposed clustering algorithm is shown to be effective in solving image segmentation.

The hybrid control system of the nonlinear PID (NLPID) controller and improved active disturbance rejection control (IADRC) are proposed for stabilization purposes for a 6-degree freedom (DoF) quadrotor system with the existence of exogenous disturbances and system uncertainties.

IADRC units are designed for the altitude and attitude systems, while NLPID controllers are designed for the x−y position system on the quadrotor nonlinear model. The proposed controlling scheme is implemented using MATLAB/Simulink environment and is compared with the traditional PID controller and NLPID controller.

Different tests have been done, such as step reference tracking, hovering mode, trajectory tracking, exogenous disturbances and system uncertainties. The simulation results showed the demonstrated performance and stability gained by using the proposed scheme as compared with the other two controllers, even when the system was exposed to different disturbances and uncertainties.

The study proposes an NLPID-IADRC scheme to stabilize the motion of the quadrotor system while tracking a specified trajectory in the presence of exogenous disturbances and parameter uncertainties. The proposed multi-objective Output Performance Index (OPI) was used to obtain the optimum integrated time of the absolute error for each subsystem, UAV quadrotor system energy consumption and for minimizing the chattering phenomenon by adding the integrated time absolute of the control signals.