A novel convolutional neural network for electronic component classification with diverse backgrounds

The rapid development of computer vision techniques has brought new opportunities for manufacturing industries, accelerating the intelligence of manufacturing systems in terms of product quality assurance, automatic assembly, and industrial robot control. In the electronics manufacturing industry, intensive variability in component shapes and colors, background brightness, and visual contrast between components and background results in difficulties in printed circuit board image classification. In this paper, we apply computer vision techniques to detect diverse electronic components from their background images, which is a challenging problem in electronics manufacturing industries because there are multiple types of components mounted on the same printed circuit board. Specifically, a 13-layer convolutional neural network (ECON) is proposed to detect electronic components either of a single category or of diverse categories. The proposed network consists of five Convolution-MaxPooling blocks, followed by a flattened layer and two fully connected layers. An electronic component image dataset from a real manufacturing company is applied to compare the performance between ECON, Xception, VGG16, and VGG19. In this dataset, there are 11 categories of components as well as their background images. Results show that ECON has higher accuracy in both single-category and diverse component classification than the other networks.

Capillary flow of liquids in open microchannels: overview and recent advances

Capillary flow is the spontaneous wicking of liquids in narrow spaces without the assistance of external forces. Examples of capillary flow can be found in numerous applications ranging from controlling and transporting fuel in spacecrafts to printed electronics manufacturing. Open rectangular microchannels often appear in these applications, with the lack of a top resulting in a complex free-surface morphology and evaporation. Here, we present a brief overview of this topic and discuss some recent advances.

Determinants of the Level of Participation in Green Supply Chain Management: Case of Vietnamese Electronics Manufacturing Enterprises

The study explores the main drivers that affecting the level of participation in green supply chain management of Vietnamese electronics manufacturing enterprises. The research team divided into two groups of factors, which are internal and external pressures. With primary data obtained from 544 electronics manufacturing enterprises in the Red River Delta and Southeast regions of Vietnam, the team applied two modeling software, SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 25.0. Combined with secondary data, the research team found that business type, size, environmental regulations, market pressures, and efficiency-oriented motivations all affect the level of management involvement. green supply chain. Since then, the research team has developed recommendations based on these groups of variables with the goal of promoting the participation of enterprises in the green supply chain management model.

Digital India: Opportunities and Challenges including in Context of COVID-19

Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple Government Ministries and Departments. It is an effort to weave a large number of ideas and thoughts into a single, comprehensive vision so that each of them can be implemented as part of a larger goal. Digital India is to be implemented by the entire Government with overall coordination being done by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). It provides the much needed thrust to the nine pillars of growth areas, namely Broadband Highways, Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, Public Internet Access Programme, eGovernance: Reforming Government through Technology, e-Kranti - Electronic Delivery of Services, Information for All, Electronics Manufacturing, IT for Jobs and Early Harvest Programmes. A number of digital health initiatives have also been rolled out under the programme, including in context of COVID-19 and pandemic response. A comprehensive real-time based IT platform ‘COVID India Portal’ has been launched in March 2020 in response to COVID -19 pandemic, for monitoring the situation, preparedness and management to control the COVID in the country.

The impact of business process reengineering on organizational performance during the coronavirus pandemic: moderating role of strategic thinking

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of business process reengineering on organizational performance in the Malaysian electronics manufacturing industry during the coronavirus pandemic. It also studied the moderating effect of strategic thinking on the relationship between these two concepts. Design/methodology/approach Data of 103 samples are obtained from a survey of the electronics manufacturing companies listed in the Federation of Malaysia Manufacturers’ directory. Data is analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Findings The results show that business process reengineering dimensions, i.e. top management commitment, organizational readiness for change, information technology capabilities and people management have significant positive impacts on organizational performance; whereas organizational structure and other abovementioned dimensions were found to have a much stronger impact on organizational performance whilst strategic thinking exists in the organization. Practical implications As the studied firms have been affected by the pandemic, the results will be useful for managers of the firms in the Malaysian electronics manufacturing industry by highlighting the dimensions of business process reengineering that can have a positive and significant impact on the organizational performance and by advising them to incorporate strategic thinking. Originality/value The results extend the literature on business process reengineering dimensions, which impact organizational performance by empirically testing the relationship of those dimensions on the performance, with strategic thinking as a moderating variable in Malaysian electronics manufacturing companies. From the knowledge, studying strategic thinking as a moderator in the relationship between business process reengineering and organizational performance in electronics manufacturing companies in Malaysia is unique, especially during a global crisis, i.e. the pandemic.

Standard Setting Organisations for the IoT: How To Ensure a Better Degree of Liability?

This early stage research article aims to outline an issue that, though not strictly connected to the cyber-sphere, is most likely going to affect it. Standard Setting/Developing Organisations (SSOs/SDOs) are getting more and more important in the electronics manufacturing field and also in the IP field by setting de facto mandatory rules for products to be safer but, most importantly, more efficient. Standards create trust in complex objects such as IoT devices, that are increasingly more available, especially the ones for the house. It is worth mentioning that the standards these organisations envision are not comparable to legislation but carry a significant ‘moral’ weight (soft law). However, these organisations are private in character and work on a voluntary basis. The problem lies in the creation of the standard when the essentiality of a patented innovation has to be assessed. These processes rely on the self-certification of businesses that their invention is truly essential to the development of a certain standard, which has led to a proliferation of new Standard Essential Patents (S.E.P.s). But in this case, there are no means to ensure some form of liability of these organisations when defects and shortcomings arise. It is argued that unless some form of liability is created for these organisations, IoT objects will never gain the trust of final users.

STRATEGIC VISIBILITIES: DIGITIZING THE LATINA INFORMATION WORKER

Recent examples of virtual assistant technologies designed as Latina information service workers are noteworthy objects of study for their potential to bridge analyses of Latinas’ labor history and information technology. Latinas in the United States have traditionally worked in blue-collar information technology sectors characterized by repetitive labor and low-wages, such as electronics manufacturing and customer service. Latinas information service workers, though fundamental to technoscience, have been largely invisible in histories of computing. Latina virtual assistants mark a shift in this labor history by relying on the strategic visibility of Latina identity in/as the technology interface. Our research explores Latina virtual assistants designed by Airus Media, and installed as airport workers in airports along the southwestern border of the United States. We situate the technocultural narratives present in the design and marketing of these technologies within the broader histories of invisible Latina information labor in the United States. We find continuities between the ways Latinas have historically been positioned as “ideal” information workers, and the use of Latina identity in the design of virtual assistants. We argue that the strategic visibility of Latina virtual assistants is linked to the oppressive structures of invisibility that have traditionally organized Latina information service workers.