scholarly journals A Practical Experience on the Amazon Alexa Integration in Smart Offices

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 734
Author(s):  
Răzvan Bogdan ◽  
Alin Tatu ◽  
Mihaela Marcella Crisan-Vida ◽  
Mircea Popa ◽  
Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar

Smart offices are dynamically evolving spaces meant to enhance employees’ efficiency, but also to create a healthy and proactive working environment. In a competitive business world, the challenge of providing a balance between the efficiency and wellbeing of employees may be supported with new technologies. This paper presents the work undertaken to build the architecture needed to integrate voice assistants into smart offices in order to support employees in their daily activities, like ambient control, attendance system and reporting, but also interacting with project management services used for planning, issue tracking, and reporting. Our research tries to understand what are the most accepted tasks to be performed with the help of voice assistants in a smart office environment, by analyzing the system based on task completion and sentiment analysis. For the experimental setup, different test cases were developed in order to interact with the office environment formed by specific devices, as well as with the project management tool tasks. The obtained results demonstrated that the interaction with the voice assistant is reasonable, especially for easy and moderate utterances.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 12173
Author(s):  
Borna Dasović ◽  
Uroš Klanšek

This paper presents the integration of mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) and project management tool (PMT) to support sustainable cost-optimal construction scheduling. An integrated structure of a high-level system for exact optimization and PMT was created. To ensure data compatibility between the optimization system and PMT and to automate the process of obtaining a cost-optimal schedule, a data transformation tool (DTT) was developed within a spreadsheet application. The suggested system can determine: (i) an optimal project schedule with associated network diagram and Gantt chart in continuous or discrete time units; (ii) optimal critical and non-critical activities, including their early start, late start, early finish, late finish along with total and free slack times; and (iii) minimum total project cost along with the allocation of direct and indirect costs. The system provides functionalities such as: (i) MINLP can be updated, and schedules can be re-optimized; (ii) the optimal schedule can be saved as a baseline to track changes; (iii) different optimization algorithms can be engaged whereby switching between them does not require model changes; (iv) PMT can be used to track task completion in the optimized schedule; (v) calendar settings can be changed; and (vi) visual reports can be generated to support efficient project management. Results of cost-optimal project scheduling are given in a conventional PMT environment, which raises the possibility that the proposed system will be more widely used in practice. Integration of MINLP and PMT allows each software to be used for what it was initially designed. Their combination leads to additional information and features of optimized construction schedules that would be significantly more difficult to achieve if used separately. Application examples are given in the paper to show the advantages of the proposed approach.


Author(s):  
Inese Barbare

In the current competitive working environment time has become the key resource therefore universities must be able to satisfy higher education needs by enabling students to obtain as many professional skills and knowledge as possible. One of the solutions is to develop online studies by organising the language courses on the internet and by supplementing in-class courses with online study materials. The goal of this work is to research the opportunities a foreign languages’ competence for professional project management in Latvia. Research materials on foreign language teaching methods and applicable IC technological aspects were gathered, and a survey was completed and its results analysed to find out the opinions and attitude towards learning online from second foreign language students and people studying independently. During the work it was discovered that applying the new technologies positively influences the students’ willingness to study the foreign language independently. Focusing on students’ motivation on autonomous study style, online studies have a potential and opportunity to be applied and developed for higher education study program expansions.


Author(s):  
Kennedy Maranga

The rise of the internet has instilled a new dimension into project management. This chapter explores literature that evaluates virtual organization management and determines the extent new technologies contributed to task completion in dispersed locations. New channels of communication offer opportunities for participation, but there are still more challenges that project managers face in a virtual team setting than on-site teams. With global organization, talent spread across time zones and dispersed through various nations can be easily tapped by organizations. With advanced technology, companies are now effectively completing tasks and are growing new revenue in expanding markets in different parts of the world that were often merely islands with little interaction as they were limited to phone, fax, mail, or personal visits. However, the introduction of the virtual world of organizations demands that the leader and players be well trained and put forth the extra effort to overcome communication barriers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Mikel Zubizarreta ◽  
Jaione Ganzarain ◽  
Jesús Cuadrado ◽  
Rafael Lizarralde

Firms must adapt to a business environment in constant flux. Economic and political factors and the constant interruption of new technologies force firms and organizations to change and to adapt, so that they are not left behind. Over recent years, the development of disruptive innovations has completely revolutionized past scenarios. These innovations break with what is already established and firms from various sectors face no choice other than to incorporate them into their project management portfolios, so as to ensure survival and business sustainability. Using MIVES methodology as its foundation, a business sustainability management model is presented in this paper for the management of disruptive innovation projects that a firm may wish to develop within a given sector. The management model is designed to facilitate disruptive innovation project management for firms within technological-industrial sectors, by assessing the sustainability of the project. The model is applied to two firms, one from the machine-tooling sector and another from the construction sector. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was performed, the results of which verified the validity and the stability of the proposed model.


Author(s):  
Petr Řehoř ◽  
Jaroslav Vrchota

Project management is one of the most important management tool in many enterprises. Agricultural enterprises with project management are able to foresee their future. Their managers are able to identify upcoming problems earlier and get ready to them in advance. Crisis is seen as a phenomenon more common than rare and it is therefore essential that the enterprises respond by reflecting the aspects and impacts of the crisis in their corporate strategy, and the managers learn to manage crises effectively. The paper deals with a single research of the management of small and medium‑sized enterprises in the Czech Republic. It is focused on the use of projects in farm management and evaluation of the significance of the crisis managers of these enterprises. Only about 15 % of enterprises manage its organization by projects. The crisis occurs in all organizations, in varying degrees and intensity. Most often agricultural enterprises are faced with a crisis caused by the change in legislation and bureaucracy. The importance of a crisis was evaluated by the managers with an average rate of 3.6 (where 5 was the highest). The questionnaire method was used for primary data collection. The limitation of the paper covers areas such the sample (34 enterprises), methodology and data.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Atanas Totlyakov ◽  
◽  
◽  

The current article are discussed the problem of significant importance of the tactile feelings in the context of the ways in which they are used in drawing creation.The basis of the study is the theoretical and practical experience gained in the conditions of creative experimentation, derived as a specific artistic practice.The relationship between visual and mental images and their comparison with the sensory field of the active touch is analyzed.There are summarized a four experimental plans: Mastering practical tactil experience and its creativity interpretation; Comparison of the tactil execution of a creative act and optical perception of drawings obtained without visual contact; Reflection of a participation of the body in the creative process; Focusing attention on feeling and their emotional coloring as interpersonal interaction in the frame of the working environment.


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