Temperature-Inducible Precision Guided Sterile Insect Technique

Releases of sterile males are the gold standard for many insect population control programs, and precise sex sorting to remove females prior to male releases is essential to the success of these operations. To advance traditional methods for scaling the generation of sterile males, we previously described a CRISPR-mediated precision-guided sterile insect technique (pgSIT), in which Cas9 and gRNA strains are genetically crossed to generate sterile males for release. While effective at generating F1 sterile males, pgSIT requires a genetic cross between the two parental strains which requires maintenance and sexing of two strains in a factory. Therefore, to further advance pgSIT by removing this crossing step, here we describe a next-generation Temperature-Inducible pgSIT (TI-pgSIT) technology and demonstrate its proof-of-concept in Drosophila melanogaster. Importantly, we were able to develop a true-breeding strain for TI-pgSIT that eliminates the requirement for sex sorting, a feature that may help further automate production at scale.

Automation of Work Processes and Night Work

Background: Automation of production processes is not just a simple replacement of a person in production, but it should lead to the success of an organization and contribute to the sustainable development of society and the natural environment. The aim of our study was to find out whether the level of automation of production processes affects the proportion of night work hours of production workers and whether employers are willing to automate production processes to achieve a lower number of night work hours. Methods: We used a quantitative approach to collect primary data through the survey method. The questionnaire was completed by 502 large and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Slovenia. Results: We found no statistically significant correlation between the level of automation of production processes and the percentage of night work hours of production workers. We also found that the reduction of the proportion of night work does not appear to be the main motivator for the introduction of automation of production processes. Conclusions: Based on the results, we rejected the assumption that automation of production processes has a direct impact on the proportion of night work. Moreover, our study will benefit all those who are concerned with the automation of production processes and night work.

On improving assembly line efficiency

The efficient functioning of an assembly line is largely related to two tasks — the selection of equipment for the assembly line and the distribution of work between the workstations as well as the workstation and the person. A review of scientific research aimed at solving these problems is given. An invariant approach to the types of technological operations is proposed to automate production, which allows to solve successfully, including the designated tasks.

Digital Twin and Internet of Things—Current Standards Landscape

Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing industrial production by bridging the physical and the virtual worlds and further improving digitalization. Two essential building blocks in industry 4.0 are digital twins (DT) and the internet of things (IoT). While IoT is about connecting resources and collecting data about the physical world, DTs are the virtual representations of resources organizing and managing information and being tightly integrated with artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive services to further optimize and automate production. The concepts of DTs and IoT are overlapping when it comes to describing, discovering and accessing resources. Currently, there are multiple DT and IoT standards covering these overlapping aspects created by different organizations with different backgrounds and perspectives. With regard to interoperability, which is presumably the most important aspect of industry 4.0, this barrier needs to be overcome by consolidation of standards. The objective of this paper is to investigate current DT and IoT standards and provide insights to stimulate this consolidation. Overlapping aspects are identified and a classification scheme is created and applied to the standards. The results are compared, aspects with high similarity or divergence are identified and a proposal for stimulating consolidation is presented. Consensus between standards are found regarding the elements a resource should consist of and which serialization format(s) and network protocols to use. Controversial topics include which query language to use for discovery as well as if geo-spatial, temporal and historical data should be explicitly supported.

Sistema ERP para el Seguimiento de Órdenes de Producción

In an increasingly competitive business world, we live with the constant need to speed up, improve and potentiate the productivity of our resources and our organization, to turn our information into intelligent knowledge. For this, it is ideal to have this information online, in real time, from any device and from anywhere in the world. These conditions allow to make assertive decisions in a much more agile way. The development of the ERP for the control of order tracking in the company Zetrak S.A de C.V. Its purpose is to automate production processes through access to information in a reliable, accurate and timely manner, resulting in the reduction of time and costs in each of the processes involved in the production and distribution operations of the company. The Spiral Model was used as a development methodology, which allows producing more and more complete versions during the development of the system, until generating the final iteration. The system is formed in its first stage by the modules: Shipments, Engineering, Sales, Billing and Quality Control.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Opportunities and Challenges

The fourth industrial revolution, a term coined by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, describes a world where individuals move between digital domains and offline reality with the use of connected technology to enable and manage their lives. (Miller 2015, 3) The first industrial revolution changed our lives and economy from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. Oil and electricity facilitated mass production in the second industrial revolution. In the third industrial revolution, information technology was used to automate production. Although each industrial revolution is often considered a separate event, together they can be better understood as a series of events building upon innovations of the previous revolution and leading to more advanced forms of production. This article discusses the major features of the four industrial revolutions, the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution, and the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution.