Learning from Substitutable and Complementary Relations for Graph-based Sequential Product Recommendation

Sequential product recommendation, aiming at predicting the products that a target user will interact with soon, has become a hotspot topic. Most of the sequential recommendation models focus on learning from users’ interacted product sequences in a purely data-driven manner. However, they largely overlook the knowledgeable substitutable and complementary relations between products. To address this issue, we propose a novel Substitutable and Complementary Graph-based Sequential Product Recommendation model, namely, SCG-SPRe. The innovations of SCG-SPRe lie in its two main modules: (1) The module of interactive graph neural networks jointly encodes the high-order product correlations in the substitutable graph and the complementary graph into two types of relation-specific product representations. (2) The module of kernel-enhanced transformer networks adaptively fuses multiple temporal kernels to characterize the unique temporal patterns between a candidate product to be recommended and any interacted product in a target behavior sequence. Thanks to the seamless integration of the two modules, SCG-SPRe obtains candidate-dependent user representations for different candidate products to compute the corresponding ranking scores. We conduct extensive experiments on three public datasets, demonstrating SCG-SPRe is superior to competitive sequential recommendation baselines and validating the benefits of explicitly modeling the product-product relations.

Evaluation of Determinants of Software Quality in Offshored Software Projects

Successful offshoring engagements of Indian software vendors is increasingly dependent upon the quality of the projects delivered rather than cost considerations. However, delivering quality software is reliant on effective management of various organizational, technological and people aspects. This research is to identify and evaluate the determinants of quality on software projects delivered by vendors through offshoring. Data related to recently completed projects were collected through a survey of 440 project managers from Indian vendors. Based on structural equation modeling, the authors analyze the influence determinants on specific product quality attributes. It is found that, out of six determinants, technical infrastructure and process maturity have significant influence on most of the attributes of quality in offshored IS projects from India. The authors provide a set of implications for practice and directions for further research.

Evaluation of market demand for a specific product

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the demand for mobile phones in the world at the time of the coronavirus pandemic and to predict future development up until the end of 2022. During the covid-19 pandemic, markets in all sectors were subdued due to limited production and sales. As the production of chips for electronics was one of the deeply affected areas in terms of production slowdown, along with the rapid purchase of electronics at the beginning of the pandemic, there was also a slowdown in sales. The method of describing time series and calculation using linear regression is used. In this work, it is found that the decline in demand for mobile phones was caused by a global pandemic and consumers' uncertainty in maintaining their jobs. Overall, during the covid-19 pandemic, we saw a drop in the number of mobile phone units sold by more than 40,000. Furthermore, it was found that the entire mobile phone market is clearly recovering after the coronavirus crisis.

RESULTS OF EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES OF COURT RENAISSANCE THINKERS IN THE CONNECTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION OF THE “IDEAL RULER”

The article is devoted to the coverage of the results of pedagogical initiatives of Renaissance thinkers in the context of the problem of educating the “ideal ruler”. In addition to the theoretical development of the image of the “ideal ruler” and ideas for his upbringing, humanists had the opportunity to directly participate in the upbringing of children of nobles in the XIV – XVIth centuries. Thus, the article analyzes the best practices of elite education of the Late Middle Ages according to the author’s methods of court humanists. An important aspect of monitoring the effectiveness and reality of the measures taken by humanists to form the personality of the leader is the characterization of those historical personalities and their biographies with which they were in a “teacher-pupil” relationship. The article traces the results of the educational influences of Renaissance philosophers and educators through the study of the future fate of European authorities, through prosopographic and archontological special-historical methods of scientific knowledge. The imagological approach made it possible to assert that the experience gained by humanist educators in “nurturing statesmen from diapers” had both its achievements (for example, Philip IV the Beautiful and Sigismund Augustus) and its defeats (for example, Ferdinand of Aragon and Mary Tudor). The idea of educating the ruler with their practical Renaissance embodiment in a specific product – the formed personality of a statesman, is an important component of justifying the need to educate modern leaders.

POSSIBILITIES OF INDUSTRIAL UTILIZATION OF FFF/FDM PROCESS FOR CHOSEN ELEMENT PRINTing

3D printing is a one of a new solution of manufacturing methods. This is caused by the ability of print a small part in a short time (rapid prototyping), but also because of the available materials. This is important because by using 3D printing, a specialized element is made for a specific apply. Compared with traditional production methods, such as turning and milling, 3D printing gives a wider possibility of making specific product patterns, thanks to which this method gained support and became a competitive one. Hence, the designing and manufacturing process based on it is more and more often referred as the “design-driven manufacturing”. This method gives the possibility of making personalized elements or a larger number of product variants, but also gives the possibility of manufacturing complete elements in one run. The article describes the possibilities of using 3D printing in the production of unusual elements in a uncertain situations.

Sentiment Analysis of Review Data Using Blockchain and LSTM to Improve Regulation for a Sustainable Market

E-commerce has developed greatly in recent years, as such, its regulations have become one of the most important research areas in order to implement a sustainable market. The analysis of a large amount of reviews data generated in the shopping process can be used to facilitate regulation: since the review data is short text and it is easy to extract the features through deep learning methods. Through these features, the sentiment analysis of the review data can be carried out to obtain the users’ emotional tendency for a specific product. Regulators can formulate reasonable regulation strategies based on the analysis results. However, the data has many issues such as poor reliability and easy tampering at present, which greatly affects the outcome and can lead regulators to make some unreasonable regulatory decisions according to these results. Blockchain provides the possibility of solving these problems due to its trustfulness, transparency and unmodifiable features. Based on these, the blockchain can be applied for data storage, and the Long short-term memory (LSTM) network can be employed to mine reviews data for emotional tendencies analysis. In order to improve the accuracy of the results, we designed a method to make LSTM better understand text data such as reviews containing idioms. In order to prove the effectiveness of the proposed method, different experiments were used for verification, with all results showing that the proposed method can achieve a good outcome in the sentiment analysis leading to regulators making better decisions.

Methodology for Defining the Interaction between Product Characteristics and Specific Product Complexity—Evaluated on Electrodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries

This study is about a method for evaluating specific product complexity. In this context, an efficient and scalable method for the development of a specific complexity assessment of highly complex products is presented. Furthermore, existing evaluation methods are analysed according to effort and benefit, thus showing the research gap and the need for the method to be developed. The procedure for the development of an indicator for the specific evaluation of product complexity is presented in five steps and an exemplary complexity indicator for lithium ion battery cells is developed. This index is then applied, and the complexity of commercial battery cells from the application is evaluated. Based on these evaluations, final potentials of the method are shown and a recommendation for a reduction in product complexity is provided. The developed method for complexity assessment is scalable in its effort and offers implementation into existing complexity management. The method allows quick adaptation or extension and, thus, well-founded decision making. By standardizing the evaluation and taking objectively measurable complexity characteristic values as a basis, a holistic and objective evaluation tool is shown, which can thus become a decisive success factor for manufacturers of complex products.

The Strategy of Universal-Design Thinking in Architecturally Innovative Product Development

Universal design, as an important concept in product development, has been gradually implemented in various industries and firms, but most of the applications are aimed at the incremental innovation of product design. However, considering the differentiation of product types, the design factors are varied and not precise, which makes it difficult to effectively implement the existing universal-design principles in specific product designs when facing architecturally innovative product development, which leads to an increasing amount of time and resources. This study, with an umbrella stand as an example, proposes to design a new universal-design scale by combining the attributes of the umbrella stand, the existing universal-design principles and the usability principles at the beginning of the design. Then, through interviews and user surveys, cluster analysis is used to screen the products and refine the design factors. In addition, with the Quantification Type I, the universal-design principles and design factors are matched effectively in order to obtain the weight differences of the product design factors and eliminate unsuitable design factors, in order to guide product design. Finally, the universal umbrella-stand-design case is completed for verification. The results show that the universal umbrella stand has been significantly improved in the evaluation of universal-design principles. In the future design, architecturally innovative products with inaccurate design factors can also use this process to complete the design and development of the target product, and to significantly enhance the universal-design evaluation of the product.

Supporting Decommissioning/Conversion of Offshore Structures Applying Innovative Technological Solution INSURE project

Companies that work in the decommissioning of platforms need tools to make smarter and informed business decisions, manage and analyse business data, increase the security of workers and operate under strict environmental protection regulations. INSURE aims at assessing the feasibility of a new service to support the decommissioning of offshore installations by means of technological innovation made available throughout each process’ step. In order to accomplish this, the project gathers high-impact Italian companies bringing together the best applicable technological and scientific know-how. INSURE foresees to combine these know-hows and create a novel tool at the service of the industry to promote a better and safer approach to the operations. Targets of the INSURE project are improving workers’ safety, enhancing environmental monitorings, increasing operations’ efficiency, reducing operational costs, offering a route for future sustainability. Project targets can be achieved through the realisation of an augmented virtual reality platform (AVRP) that will be operated in support of the decommissioning process where the data acquired/transmitted by a plurality of sensors will converge. A fleet control tool integrates information from sensors installed on autonomous aerial and underwater vehicles making use of the Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GSNS) and Satellite Communications (SatCom). The convergence of top-notch technologies (augmented/virtual reality, 3D, robotics, sensors, 5G and Satellite services), together with a cloud of infrastructure, enables a fast and complete access to real-time data at very high resolution. The proposal aims to bring the actual data and information access from the Internet of Things to the Internet of Knowledge paradigm. Confrontation with national and international possible end-users produced a set of user requirements guiding the design of a feasibility study for the realisation of one specific product. The study also includes the evaluation of economic, non-economic viability and possible regulatory constraints to its realisation. The INSURE feasibility study creates the intellectual background for the further step of the process: the realisation and development of a pilot project tailored for the purpose. This combined use of novel technologies represents an innovative integrated approach applied to the management of offshore structures undergoing decommissioning or reconfiguration for other purposes. In addition, it also involves the promotion of sustainable opportunities for commercial, social and educational exploitation of areas and assets (including, for example, the ambit of eco-tourism, renewable energies, carbon capture and storage).