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Additive manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly evolving manufacturing process, which refers to a set of technologies that add materials layer-by-layer to create functional components. AM technologies have received an enormous attention from both academia and industry, and they are being successfully used in various applications, such as rapid prototyping, tooling, direct manufacturing and repair, among others. AM does not necessarily imply building parts, as it also refers to innovation in materials, system and part designs, novel combination of properties and interplay between systems and materials. The most exciting features of AM are related to the development of radically new systems and materials that can be used in advanced products with the aim of reducing costs, manufacturing difficulties, weight, waste and energy consumption. It is essential to develop an advanced production system that assists the user through the process, from the computer-aided design model to functional components. The challenges faced in the research and development and operational phase of producing those parts include requiring the capacity to simulate and observe the building process and, more importantly, being able to introduce the production changes in a real-time fashion. This paper aims to review the role of robotics in various AM technologies to underline its importance, followed by an introduction of a novel and intelligent system for directed energy deposition (DED) technology.

AM presents intrinsic advantages when compared to the conventional processes. Nevertheless, its industrial integration remains as a challenge due to equipment and process complexities. DED technologies are among the most sophisticated concepts that have the potential of transforming the current material processing practices.

The objective of this paper is identifying the fundamental features of an intelligent DED platform, capable of handling the science and operational aspects of the advanced AM applications. Consequently, we introduce and discuss a novel robotic AM system, designed for processing metals and alloys such as aluminium alloys, high-strength steels, stainless steels, titanium alloys, magnesium alloys, nickel-based superalloys and other metallic alloys for various applications. A few demonstrators are presented and briefly discussed, to present the usefulness of the introduced system and underlying concept. The main design objective of the presented intelligent robotic AM system is to implement a design-and-produce strategy. This means that the system should allow the user to focus on the knowledge-based tasks, e.g. the tasks of designing the part, material selection, simulating the deposition process and anticipating the metallurgical properties of the final part, as the rest would be handled automatically.

This paper reviews a few AM technologies, where robotics is a central part of the process, such as vat photopolymerization, material jetting, binder jetting, material extrusion, powder bed fusion, DED and sheet lamination. This paper aims to influence the development of robot-based AM systems for industrial applications such as part production, automotive, medical, aerospace and defence sectors.

The presented intelligent system is an original development that is designed and built by the co-authors J. Norberto Pires, Amin S. Azar and Trayana Tankova.

This study aims to explore the nature of the relationship between market orientation and business performance in the Portuguese hotel industry and to evaluate the mediating role of service quality in this relationship.

A literature analysis on market orientation, service quality and hotel business performance was conducted. The structural model was developed, and the measurement scales’ items were generated. Working data were obtained by sending a survey to Portuguese hotel managers. A purification process was conducted, and the convergent and discriminant validity, as well the reliability, of the measurement models were assessed. The structural model was tested by conducting a path analysis, as well by evaluating the coefficient of determination (R2) and the predictive relevance indicator (Q2).

Research results show that market orientation has a positive direct effect on business performance. Moreover, results indicate that market orientation effects on business performance are mediated throughout the hotels’ ability to provide service quality.

Despite the large amount of research on market orientation, research on the hospitality sector has been conducted mainly using tools developed for the manufacturing and consumer goods sectors. On the other hand, little has been done to explore the nature of the mediating effect of service quality on the relationship between market orientation and business performance in the hotel industry. Moreover, despite the contribution of the tourism industry to the Portuguese gross domestic product, research on the hotel industry is scarce.

With this work, the authors seek to advance knowledge in this field mentioned above. The purpose of this paper is to stress the role of two groups of components related to individuals’ knowledge: the intrinsic base of existing knowledge and exposure to external knowledge.

The present study examined the impact of knowledge in the business creation process. Data came from aggregated panel data at the country level taken from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor over a five-year period (2009-2013).

Results show that knowledge affects the business creation process. The research identifies the following factors as influential: detection of capabilities, entrepreneurial experience, and experience investing in other firms.

The limitations of the research relate to the data aggregation at the country level. Future research should examine disaggregated GEM data for the three economic stages at the classification level.

The perception of self-efficacy appears to be critical in understanding the planning of intentional behavior because of its influence on the formation of intentions through situational perceptions of viability.

Generally, the literature that emphasizes the role of knowledge and entrepreneurship in small firms is theoretically limited and focuses solely on the role of knowledge in the decision to start a business.

IEEE Ontologies for Robotics and Automation Working Group were divided into subgroups that were in charge of studying industrial robotics, service robotics and autonomous robotics. This paper aims to present the work in-progress developed by the autonomous robotics (AuR) subgroup. This group aims to extend the core ontology for robotics and automation to represent more specific concepts and axioms that are commonly used in autonomous robots.

For autonomous robots, various concepts for aerial robots, underwater robots and ground robots are described. Components of an autonomous system are defined, such as robotic platforms, actuators, sensors, control, state estimation, path planning, perception and decision-making.

AuR has identified the core concepts and domains needed to create an ontology for autonomous robots.

AuR targets to create a standard ontology to represent the knowledge and reasoning needed to create autonomous systems that comprise robots that can operate in the air, ground and underwater environments. The concepts in the developed ontology will endow a robot with autonomy, that is, endow robots with the ability to perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous explicit human guidance.

Creating a standard for knowledge representation and reasoning in autonomous robotics will have a significant impact on all R&A domains, such as on the knowledge transmission among agents, including autonomous robots and humans. This tends to facilitate the communication among them and also provide reasoning capabilities involving the knowledge of all elements using the ontology. This will result in improved autonomy of autonomous systems. The autonomy will have considerable impact on how robots interact with humans. As a result, the use of robots will further benefit our society. Many tedious tasks that currently can only be performed by humans will be performed by robots, which will further improve the quality of life. To the best of the authors’knowledge, AuR is the first group that adopts a systematic approach to develop ontologies consisting of specific concepts and axioms that are commonly used in autonomous robots.

Lean construction (LC) is an important strategy to improve the results of organizations in the civil construction sector. However, there are barriers that hinder the success of implementing LC. The literature presents many barriers, which makes it difficult to make a diagnosis about the presence of these barriers within an organization. However, if companies could identify the main difficulties, they would face to implement LC, they could prepare by strengthening their weaknesses. This paper aims to diagnose a small set of factors that identifies the most significant barriers that must be considered before implementing lean construction.

This study comprises an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). For this, a questionnaire was developed based on an extensive literature search on the barriers that hinder the implementation of LC. Using this questionnaire as a data collection instrument, a survey was conducted that obtained 135 responses from managers working in civil construction in Brazil. EFA was conducted using SPSS software.

This study identified seven critical factors for successful implementation of LC: degree of cooperation within the work teams, use of an adequate performance measurement system, occurrence of job delays, level of participation of those involved in the construction of decisions, degree of leadership openness, positioning in the face of news and problems in the flow of information.

The barriers to implementing LC can be different depending on the social and economic context in which companies are inserted. This work was conducted in an emerging country. Thus, it would be important that the same be applied to managers from other countries in different contexts to verify if the result found here is confirmed.

There are many works in the literature that address the barriers to LC culminating in an extensive list, whose complexity of operationalizing the identification of their presence in an organization, ends up becoming another barrier. Given the negative influence that these barriers have for the success of LC, this work sets out to convert this extensive list into a short list that is easy to understand and use.

This study aims to investigate the effect of countersunk rivet head dimensions on the fatigue performance of the riveted specimens of 2024-T3 alloy.

The relationship between rivet head dimensions and fatigue behavior was investigated by finite element method and fatigue test. The fatigue fracture of the specimens was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy.

A change of the rivet head dimensions will cause a change in the stress concentration and residual normal stress, the stress concentration near the rivet hole causes the fatigue crack source to be located on the straight section of the countersunk rivet hole and the residual normal stress can effectively restrain the initiation and expansion of fatigue cracks. The fatigue cycle will cause the rivet holes to produce different degrees of surface wear.

The fatigue life of the specimens with the height of the rivet head of 2.28 mm and 2.00 mm are similar, but the specimens with the height of the rivet head of 1.72 mm were far higher than the other specimens.

The overall objective of this chapter is measuring the effect of key economic indicators and trends on the media reputation of an emergent country. The case analyzed is that of Chile, since 1990–2015. To deal with our objective, we measured the media reputation of Chile following validated criteria by Deephouse (2000).

A regression analysis was conducted to test our hypothesis that the coefficient of media favorableness (CoMF) of a country depends on the favorable or unfavorable trend of key economic indicators of the country. The dependent variable of our model was the Chilean CoMF. Independent variables were the monthly GDP variation, the monthly unemployment rate, the monthly average of the stock exchange index, the monthly average fuel price, and the monthly average copper price (a very important commodity to Chile).

Our results demonstrate that key economic indicators have a significant positive bearing on the media reputation of an emergent country as Chile, that is, when an emergent country is doing well economically, the press with a global scope tends to improve the reputation of that country, showing a more favorable image about it. In consequence, our hypothesis is supported. In the case of an emergent and small Western country as Chile, the price of commodities appears as the most important predictive indicator of its favorable or unfavorable country reputation. Other implications are discussed in the study.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

The concept of smart city has recently become more topical in academic and policy discussions. This idea is considered a complex, non-consensual subject since its definition has not yet been agreed upon by most authors in the relevant fields. The need to identify and measure smart city indicators has also given rise to many different evaluation procedures. However, the available frameworks have yet to overcome challenges in structuring and measuring all the evaluation parameters of the cities in question. Thus, methods still need to be developed and applied that can structure criteria used to assess smart city success.

This study sought to show cognitive mapping's tangible usefulness as an expedient tool for strategic analysis, using smart cities as a complex object of study. To this end, various cognitive maps were constructed and compared using the Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA) approach.

Cognitive mapping's advantages and limitations in the strategic visualization research context are analyzed and discussed.

The authors know of no prior work reporting comparative analysis of this methodological approach in the same research context.