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Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF). SIRIUS is a climbing robot meant for any vertical surface, regardless of the angle. The robot can be outfitted with tools to perform a variety of service‐sector tasks such as façade cleaning, building and ship coating, ship welding, inspection work on tanks, and so on. It is a modular system, and the robot can be adapted to almost any surface, independent of the surface material or obstacles. The robot stays attached to the surface via suction cup feet or magnetic grippers, and moves vertically on four linear guides that are coupled in two pairs. The new kinematics of the robot allow it to walk continuously in all directions. The robot overcomes obstacles by sensing their position and generating the necessary step length in order to maximize the number of suction cups attached to the surface while walking over the obstacle.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of industry convergence and value innovation to understand the current research status; second, to provide a coherent theoretical research framework for future research.

This study adopts a two-step analysis approach by combining bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review to explore the research topic of industry convergence and value innovation. Besides, two bibliometric tools, HistCite and VOSviewer, were applied to this study.

This study found that Stefanie Bröring and Fredrik Hacklin are the top two most influential authors among all authors in the sample publications. Technological Forecasting and Social Change is one of the top-ranking journal that often publishes this topic of articles. Germany and the University of Munster are the most influential country and institutions, respectively. Besides, five core research themes were identified based on keywords co-occurrence map, theoretical lenses, factors promoting industry convergence, indicators of industry convergence, the impact of industry convergence and emerging research directions. Based on the above analysis, this paper constructed a theoretical research framework of industry convergence and value innovation.

This paper only draw data from one database – Web of Science – which cannot provide broad coverage of the research topic. Besides, the bibliometric method of this paper is based on high local citation score and high-frequency words, articles in the skirting subjects’ area may not be analyzed.

With the rapid development of technology, such as nanotechnology, radio - frequency identification (RFID), etc., the iterative upgrading of products also comes. As a result, the boundary between industries is gradually blurred, and the phenomenon of industry convergence appears. Therefore, managerial decision-makers are facing challenges of how to respond to the convergence phenomena. From the firm level, firms are facing the problem of value innovation of the existing product, new product development and core competence improvement. Industries are facing the problem of transformation and upgrading. This paper provides certain theoretical insights for both firms and industries to guide the practice accordingly.

This paper is the first to use a bibliometric method to examine the topic of industry convergence and value innovation. In addition, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of this topic and provides a comprehensive theoretical research framework for future study.

The purpose of this paper is to use a systems lens to assess the comparative performance of healthcare supply chains and provide guidance for their improvement.

A well-established and rigorous multi-method audit methodology, based on the uncertainty circle model, yields an objective assessment of value stream performance in eight Australasian public sector hospitals. Cause-effect analysis identifies the major barriers to achieving smooth, seamless flows. Potentially high-leverage remedial actions identified using systems thinking are examined with the aid of an exemplar case.

The majority of the healthcare value streams studied are underperforming compared with those in the European automotive industry. Every public hospital appears to be caught in the grip of vicious circles of system uncertainty, in large part being caused by problems of their own making. The single exception is making good progress towards seamless functional integration, which has been achieved by elevating supply chain management to a core competence; having a clearly articulated supply chain vision; adopting a systems approach; and, managing supplies with accurate information.

The small number of cases limits the generalisability of the findings at this time.

Hospital supply chain managers endeavouring to achieve smooth and seamless supply flows should attempt to elevate the status of supplies management within their organisation to that of a core competence, and should use accurate information to manage their value streams holistically as a set of interwoven processes. A four-level prism model is proposed as a useful framework for thus improving healthcare supply delivery systems.

Material flow concepts originally developed to provide objective assessments of value stream performance in commercial settings are adapted for use in a healthcare setting. The ability to identify exemplar organisations via a context-free uncertainty measure, and to use systems thinking to identify high-leverage solutions, supports the transfer of appropriate best practices even between organisations in dissimilar business and economic settings.

Company pressure for manufacturers is mounting from two angles: increasing pressure of global competition, and rapid advancements in technology such as additive manufacturing (AM) that are altering the way that goods are manufactured. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption process of AM within a manufacturing system and its business impact.

Research was conducted to collect empirical data at two manufacturing case companies in the North West England. Both cases are located in areas of industrial recovery using AM engineering innovation for value creation.

Early findings showed that the implementation of AM caused a shift in value propositions and the creation of additional value streams (VSs) for the case study companies. AM was shown to compliment and strengthen traditional manufacturing VSs rather than replacing them.

Limitations include the generalizability due to the number and location of case companies included in this research.

It is worthwhile to explore the opportunities that AM brings with the existing customer base as it has the potential to add unexplored and untapped value. However, managers need to be mindful of the capability and resources required to put the VS into practice.

Both cases resulted in skill retainment and development due to the implementation of AM. Hence, the innovation contributed to regional economic recovery and business survival.

This empirical research is one of the early field explorations focussing on the impact of AM on VS structures. Hence, this paper contributes to the area of technology enhanced manufacturing systems.

Over the past three decades, a small community of eighty-four Chilean low-income families has built and improved their home incrementally, without any technical assistance, showing an impressive performance. A six square meters bathroom on a serviced plot of land with individual connection to potable water, sewerage, electricity and access roads, worked as a starting point back in 1974. However particular their rationale may seem, the individual history of their housing process reveals some general regularities in occurrence and duration of self-build activities, as well as size and allocation of the domestic spaces. A small random sample of fifteen households was selected to tell the story and explain the whys, hows, and whens of an ever-evolving housing process. Semi-structured interviews and building surveys were both combined to reconstruct the sequence of states of each housing process, with the awareness of the characteristic imprecision of oral information transfer. Alternative states were explored by constraint programming methods and spatial qualitative reasoning. Considering the hard constraints over the site morphology and services allocation, the results of the exploration stress how extraordinary lucid and intuitive the surveyed families are when making their design decisions. The article exposes a reconstructive case study on spontaneous growth patterns underlying an unassisted, incremental self-build housing dynamics.

As is well known, architectural design pedagogy persistently demands to look outside the classroom for real-world problems to deal with, and exemplary solutions to learn from. Studio-based learning alternately takes place between indoor and outdoor environments as well as built and natural environments. Especially the use of outdoor workspaces where students may generate and test their design proposals strengthens the case for a better understanding of human habitability and environmental sustainability. Nonetheless, outdoor activities are traditionally confined to on-site information gathering, whereas design and evaluation processes are carried out indoors simply as a desk-bound activity. In these cases, the empirical evidence to back up the problem modeling and the design decisions made inside the studio classroom is missing. In mainstream architecture education, indoor and outdoor learning experiences are operationally dissociated. The intent to create real outdoor studio classrooms not only opens a new research field in learning space design, but new challenges to the studio-based learning culture. We expose a few exemplary cases from an ongoing series of trials, started in 1999 by the Department of Architecture at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, to assess the effective integration of outdoor learning environments with our local studio-based learning culture.

The model and existing practice of the construction supply chain (CSC) in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia was presented in this chapter. The policies and reports that support the practice of the CSC were examined in both countries. It was discovered from the review of literature that the UK has a more detailed report targeted at improving the CSC than Australia. However, both countries have a common factor affecting their CSC which originates from fragmentation experienced within their supply chain. Construction stakeholders in the UK and Australia believe that collaboration and integration are vital components for improving performance. The majority of the contractors in both countries embrace collaborative working for the sole purpose of risk sharing, access to innovation and response to market efficiency. However, most of the models developed for managing the CSC in the UK are built around building information modelling (BIM). Also, the reviewed studies show that supply chain management practice will be effective following the following principle: shared objectives, trust, reduction in a blame culture, joint working, enhanced communication and information-sharing. Finally, the UK has a more established framework and more CSC models compared to Australia.

As university–industry collaboration (UIC) is associated to transfer of knowledge and technology, this collaboration is an extremely important field of study for the world's economies that helps industries become more competitive. UIC will assist universities in fine-tuning universities' educational programs to match with the industrial demand. This study, thus, presents a systematic literature review related to UIC in technology development process and technology commercialization.

The Scopus database is used to extract the relevant articles. First, in presenting the articles, four scientometric analyses are used to visualize the bibliometric clusters, namely articles and journals co-citation analysis, countries collaboration analysis and keywords co-occurrence analysis. Next, a qualitative approach is used to classify the articles according to the methodology used and type of research. Finally, a research trend and keywords' evolution based on keywords are also provided.

Results of this study reveal that majority of the articles used qualitative approach and descriptive analysis to explain the knowledge flow between industries and universities. According to the research trend analysis, researchers in this field were moving from the knowledge-based economy topic (from 2010–2013) to product development (2014–2015), technology commercialization (2016–2017), open innovation (2018–2019) and then currently are focusing on the green entrepreneurship topic.

This study is expected to facilitate scholars to uncover gaps in the literature of UIC.

This study extends the use of scientometric analysis. The combination of “bibliometrix” R-package tool and VOSViewer software to perform the analysis is expected to give a new insight of doing the systematic literature review.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a robotic cleaning system for applying on the glass facade of the control tower at the Guangzhou Airport, in Guangzhou, China.

Four similar robotic cleaning systems are designed for a reversed cone‐shape glass facade at the top of the control tower. One system is composed of a robot moving along and cleaning the facade, and an automatic conveyer positioning, securing, supplying energy and water to, and recycling the dirty water from the robot. An on‐board controller enables the system to work in a remote control mode or a fully automated mode under the supervision of an operator.

This paper presents how to integrate the attaching, moving, cleaning and securing functions into one robotic system for the high rise glass facade, and focuses on the kinematics, the control and sensor system and the cleaning navigation. In particular, the real time control method of the vacuum in the cup is discussed to ensure high cleaning quality and security.

Since the cleaning system proposed in this paper is a custom‐built one, the generalization of its design idea should be tested in other applications.

The paper includes the implications for the development of automatic cleaning system for the high‐rise buildings with reversed inclining glass façade.

The robotic cleaning system described in this paper is the first fully automated cleaning machine for the reversed inclining glass facade in China. It works effectively and reliably on the control tower of the Guangzhou airport.

The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges faced by industrial firms at different phases of adoption of 3D printing (3DP), and outline how 3DP service providers can help address these challenges.

Separate interview questionnaires for 3DP users and 3DP service providers were used to conduct semi-structured interviews.

The key 3DP adoption challenges are as follows: creating a business case; difficulty in using different materials; optimising the process for specific parts; lack of “plug and play” solutions offered by equipment manufacturers; limited availability of training and educational support; poor end product quality; machine breakdowns; and high cost of maintenance and spare components. Using the theoretical lens of the technology acceptance model, results show a lack of ease of use and technological turbulence impact companies’ decisions to adopt 3DP. 3DP service providers can indeed attempt to alleviate the above challenges faced by customers through providing multiple 3DP services across different stages of adoption.

Future research should examine the role of 3DP equipment manufacturers and design and modeling software solutions providers in improving adoption and how 3DP equipment manufacturers could develop into more integrated service providers as the technology advances.

Service providers can help customers transition to 3DP and should develop a portfolio of services that fits different phases of adoption.

The paper outlines how 3DP service providers can help address customer challenges in adoption of 3DP across different stages of adoption.