Sustainable development in production-operations management

Production-operation activity is one of the most important functions of modern enterprises. It requires the involvement of various types of resources, such as: raw materials, materials, machines, capital, information, energy, human factor and others, which are used in production processes. However, many problems arise in operational activity. They concern such aspects as: waste of resources or their wasteful use, mismanagement, excessive energy consumption, environmental pollution, exploitation of human potential, etc. It is also emphasized that these problems are reflected both in the growing costs of a company’s activities and in climate change. However, more and more companies are becoming aware of these dangers and are implementing new products, new technologies and processes that use less raw materials and energy, being more environmentally-friendly. The purpose of implementing new solutions of production is to improve labour mobility, optimise the use of raw materials and resources, reduce costs, and to increase efficiency, productivity, etc. Taking the impact of operating activities on the environment into account, the purpose of this chapter is to present selected production methods from their cognitive aspects, the assumptions of which are consistent with the issues of sustainable development. In particular, focus was placed on the zero-waste concept, which allows to eliminate waste in all links of the value chain. Lean manufacturing and six sigma, which help enterprises fight waste in their activity, as well as circular production related to the implementation of closed-loop production principles in practice, are discussed. In addition, the life-cycle product design and recycling, as well as green and environment-conscious manufacturing are presented. The first of them assumes that the possibility of recycling should be considered in the process of designing products and services. The second one should be identified with a modern and systemic way of managing enterprises, taking all environmental aspects into account by all departments.

The behavior propagation and confrontation competition model based on information energy

In recent years, the influence of group behavior on individual behavior has been widely concerned by people. This paper takes the propagation of behavior-related information as the influencing medium, constructs the behavior propagation and confrontation competition model based on information energy, and studies the propagation of single behavior and confrontation behaviors in the network. In the model, the behavioral information energy on nodes is related to the information edge weight and the length of the reachable path between nodes, and we quantify the propagation probability of behaviors and the competition probability between the confrontation behaviors by the behavioral information energy. Through modeling and analyzing the change of node motivation and the behavior propagation rule, we carry out the simulation in small-world network and BA scale-free network, respectively. Experimental results show that the information energy has a promoting effect on the propagation of behaviors, and the behaviors that erupt in the network generally have an important information dissemination basis in the early stage and may be promoted by relevant information in the later stage. An open and tightly connected network environment is easier to promote the large-scale propagation of a new behavior. In addition, when two kinds of confrontation behaviors occur in the crowd network, the propagation of behavior-related information and the maintenance of people’s interest in the behavior are the key to the success of the behavioral competition.

A New Concept of Information Based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Its Experimental Verification

This study is the first use of Heisenberg's energy-time uncertainty principle to define information quantitatively from a measuring perspective: the smallest error in any measurement is a bit of information, i.e., 1 (bit)=(2∆E ∆t)⁄ℏ. If the input energy equals the Landauer bound, the time needed to write a bit of information is 1.75x10-14 s. Newton's cradle was used to experimentally verify the information-energy-mass equivalences deduced from the aforementioned concept. It was observed that the energy input during the creation of a bit of (binary) information is stored in the information carrier in the form of the doubled momentum or the doubled “momentum mass” (mass in motion) in both classical position-based and modern orientation-based information storage. Furthermore, the experiments verified our new definition of information in the sense that the higher the energy input is, the shorter the time needed to write a bit of information is. Our study may help understand the fundamental concept of information and the deep physics behind it.

The Ontological Dimension of Everyday Life in the Mythopoetic Picture of the World

The article deals with the concept of a home in traditional culture. It is argued that in the mythopoetic tradition, universal principles of creating a house were formed. This deserves attention today, because the main thesis in the concept of a home was the idea of the ontological dimension of everyday life, of the close connection of the spiritual and the material, of the connection of philosophical ideas and everyday actions. In traditional culture, everyday life was associated with the origins of being, was the sphere of application of creative forces. The object of research is the practice of building peasant houses in the medieval period, as well as in the XVIII-XIX centuries, their architecture and interior, their relationship with the surrounding landscape. The author uses general historical, semiotic and hermeneutical methods of research. The article systematizes the architectural principles of building a traditional home, which made the peasant house a prototype of the cosmos, a model of the universe. The author analyzes such structural elements of the mythological picture of the world as the tree of life, the world axis, the cross, the sacrifice, and their application in architecture. The author considers the ideas about the heterogeneity of space in the mythological culture and how they were used in the construction of the house; the function of doors, windows, gates in the symbolic structure of the house is investigated. The conclusion is made about the trinity of information, energy and matter in traditional culture.

Game theoretical approach for utility-based distributed balanced data routing in wireless sensor networks

In this thesis, two distributed algorithms for the construction of load balanced routing trees in wireless sensor networks are proposed. In such networks load balanced data routing and aggregation can considerably decrease uneven energy consumption among sensor nodes and prolong network lifetime. The proposed algorithms achieve load balancing by adjusting the number of children among parents as much as possible. The solution is based on game theoretical approach, where child adjustment is considered as a game between parents and child nodes, in which parents arc cooperative and children are selfish players. The gained utility by each node is determined through utility functions defined per role. Utility functions determine the behavior of nodes in each role. At the game termination, each individual node gains the maximum benefit based on its utility function, and the network reaches the global goal of forming the balanced tree. The proposed methods are called Utility Driven Balanced Communication (UDBC) algorithm which is designed for homogenous environment, where all nodes are assumed to produce equal amount of information, and Heterogenous Balanced Data Routing (HBDR) algorithm which is proposed for heterogenous environment, where different applications use different aggregation functions, and nodes can be vary in terms of the amount of produced information, energy levels, data transmission rate and available of the amount of produced information, energy levels, data transmission rate and available bandwidth for transmission. The advantage of this work over similar work in the literature is the construction of more balanced trees which results in prolonging network lifetime, with the capability of adaption according to specific application needs for sensitivity to delay and reliability of data delivery.

Game theoretical approach for utility-based distributed balanced data routing in wireless sensor networks

In this thesis, two distributed algorithms for the construction of load balanced routing trees in wireless sensor networks are proposed. In such networks load balanced data routing and aggregation can considerably decrease uneven energy consumption among sensor nodes and prolong network lifetime. The proposed algorithms achieve load balancing by adjusting the number of children among parents as much as possible. The solution is based on game theoretical approach, where child adjustment is considered as a game between parents and child nodes, in which parents arc cooperative and children are selfish players. The gained utility by each node is determined through utility functions defined per role. Utility functions determine the behavior of nodes in each role. At the game termination, each individual node gains the maximum benefit based on its utility function, and the network reaches the global goal of forming the balanced tree. The proposed methods are called Utility Driven Balanced Communication (UDBC) algorithm which is designed for homogenous environment, where all nodes are assumed to produce equal amount of information, and Heterogenous Balanced Data Routing (HBDR) algorithm which is proposed for heterogenous environment, where different applications use different aggregation functions, and nodes can be vary in terms of the amount of produced information, energy levels, data transmission rate and available of the amount of produced information, energy levels, data transmission rate and available bandwidth for transmission. The advantage of this work over similar work in the literature is the construction of more balanced trees which results in prolonging network lifetime, with the capability of adaption according to specific application needs for sensitivity to delay and reliability of data delivery.

The Impact of Digital Transformation on the Micrologistic System, and the Open Innovation in Logistics

This paper investigates the effects of digital production and information technologies on the development of logistic systems of different kinds: megalogistic, macrologistic, and micrologistic. The notions of a logistic system and types of logistic systems imply that logistics is considered in its broad sense as a modern methodology for managing all types of flows that appear in the process of socioeconomic activities of society and business: material, information, energy, financial and labor flows. The methodology discussed in this paper gives the answer to the question of what impact digital production and information technologies have on the development of various types of logistic systems. The methodology includes building a mathematical model in which the endogenous variables of the model reflect the resulting variables of the logistic system, while the exogenous variables reflect digital production and information technologies. The mathematical model is a system of interdependent dynamic econometric equations. Each equation is an autoregressive distributed lags model. In the model, the current values of an endogenous variable depend on their previous values, as well as on the current and previous values of other endogenous and exogenous variables. The novelty of the research is in the developed methodology for a comprehensive assessment of the impact made by digitalization on a totality of the interrelated and interdependent resulting indicators of the logistic system. A comprehensive assessment of the impact made by digitalization on a totality of interrelated and interdependent indicators of the logistic system is understood as a change in the indicators of the logistic system due to the effect of digitalization. The proposed methodology for a comprehensive assessment was empirically tested for Salesforce company.

Applying Onicescu information energy for gray level image segmentation

This article presents a method of segmenting images with gray levels that uses Onicescu's information energy calculated in the context of the neutrosophic theory. Starting from the information energy calcula-tion for complete neutrosophic information, it is shown how to extend its calculation for incomplete and inconsistent neutrosophic information. The segmentation method is based on calculation of thresholds for separating the gray levels using the local maximum points of the Onicescu information energy.

A Universe Without Matter: The Processing of Information/Energy through Discontinuous Space Cells in Two Models; a Computer Simulation, or a Self-Replicating Substrate of Space Cells

Whether the universe is a computer simulation, or whether we wish to efficiently model our universe in a computer simulation, there would be benefits to modeling it in a fashion analogous to computer spreadsheet, each lattice cell can be conceived as containing all the mathematical formula necessary to continuously compute its state relative to changes in all its neighboring cells, and by progression, in relation to all the cells of entire space-time lattice. Alternatively, the “real” universe may itself be built on a space cell lattice, an irregular foam of space cells, in which each cell may be conceived as a multidimensional cell of distortable space, the shape of which fully describes (a) the four basic forces (gravity, electromagnetic, strong, weak) observed at that cell of space, and (b) the probability (or weight distribution) of any quantum states overlapping the cell and its neighbors. At an appropriate scale, it would appear that this conceptual model would resolve apparent conflicts between general relativity and quantum physics. It would also provide a new interpretation of Planck’s constant as description of the number of space cell events associated with any set of observable events. If formulae operating at a lattice cell level can be improve our ability to understand and model larger scale phenomena, this would be strong evidence in favor of the theory that mathematics is not just a human invention but rather an inherent feature of space-time itself.