Negative Effects of Presence of Dorsal Diseases in Workers of a Metallic Industry in Mexicali, Mexico

An investigation of the negative effects in the health of workers of a metallic industry located in Mexicali city was made in which they suffered daily, of discomfort in the head, neck, back, and spine. This occurred when people of the manufacturing area of the industry that was evaluated developing operations that required great physical effort without adequate equipment and the industrial operations were repetitive. The analysis was made in 100 workers (30% women and 70% men) and were evaluated in the morning and evening shifts, which performed functions of lifting, loading, and gluing pieces of window frames for homes made of aluminum material. The aluminum frames had a weight of 20 kilograms with repetitive operations of until 50 lift for each eight-hour shift, generating the discomfort and pain. The study was from 2017 to 2019, and more than 50% of the workers in the manufacturing areas, in the two shifts of the company, suffered from discomfort and pain in the mentioned body areas, which caused the concern of management and supervision personnel.

Successful Entrepreneurs Drive Innovation and Productivity Through Sustainable Automation

How do we describe today's entrepreneur? The entrepreneur's life is far easier than what it was. The internet has made life very simple and brought the costs of entry for new businesses right down for most entrepreneurs. In the old traditional way of starting a business, you would have to rent or purchase premises, purchase computer equipment, license software, and hire programmers to design and develop the software. The cost of just the initial startup would be phenomenal. Nowadays, everything is on cloud servers, where you use and pay for what you need and expand and pay as you need more. What would have cost in the tens of thousands to start a new venture now is a fraction in comparison to before. Innovation in the technology sector has made this all possible.

Supply Chain Sustainability in Food and Beverage Industry

Green supply chain management (GSCM) is defined as the delivery of various products and services from the different manufacturers, suppliers, and end customers through the information flow in terms of environment. Moreover, unlike the conventional supply chain processes, green supply chain process is engaged in the implementation of various environment friendly ideas as well as strategies in it. GSCM includes different ways to amend the negative environmental impacts along with the improvement in efficiency, increased profitability and costs. In today's scenario, the consumers are shifting their preferences from unsustainable products to sustainable food products, thereby opting green for the same. This chapter emphasizes the necessities of the green supply chain processes as well as the strategies adopted by the firms, particularly in India in the food and beverage industry. The chapter focuses on the trends, impacts, challenges, and opportunities of GSCM.

Transition for Transformation for Sustainable Automation

Transformation and specifically digital transformation have been at the heart and soul of all enterprises. The focus of enterprises when it comes to transformation has been on digital transformation and in some cases organisational transformation. However, very rarely transformation has focused on both digital and organisational transformation, and very rarely for the purposes for transition for transformation. Transformation on its own will only provide improvement and enhancement to the current processes and systems and will not introduce new and innovate methods and approaches to the enterprises knowledge and capabilities. This chapter aims to emphasis the characteristics of transition for transformation from a business perspective in light of 21st century challenges and emphasizes the importance of transparency and collaboration.

Low-Cost Home Automation System for Physical Disability and Limited Mobility People

The general Latin American population with a physical disability or limited mobility has faced the daily basis challenge of having autonomy in home activities, with low-income or almost no-income. Needy Brazilian communities are examples of poor populations suffering from the lack of autonomy at home, aggravated by scarce financial resources. The authors developed a low-cost home automation system, aiming to assist people who live in Palmeira dos Indios city and Arapiraca city, needy communities located in the Northeast of Brazil. The system is composed of hardware and software components. The hardware comprises of microcontrollers used to actuate over electrical devices at home, while an Android application provides a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to control the devices using touch and voice commands by Bluetooth communication. They evaluated the system by implementing a home model and providing the home for four physical disability persons and one limited mobility person. They considered the system`s effectiveness, the system`s usability, and users` perceptions during the evaluation.

A Study of Green and Risk-Resilient Supply Chain Strategy

With the rapid development of the economy, environmental problems have become increasingly prominent. Environmental pollution and degradation have become global problems. Environmental problems, such as global warming, ozone depletion, smog, and water pollution, have largely affected economic development and social progress for the next generations. With the increase in the number of people and the consumption of resource-based companies, coal, oil, natural gas, and other non-renewable energy sources are gradually decreasing or even being depleted. The use of these non-clean energy sources exacerbates the deterioration of the environment.

Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Given that cultural heritage resources are irreplaceable, their protection is critical. Digital preservation has become a popular method for safeguarding cultural heritage resources in recent years. The purpose of this chapter was to determine how digital preservation can be used as a strategy to promote access to cultural heritage for sustainable development of South African rural communities. Data collection was based on a critical review of literature in order to analyze policy and mechanisms being put in place for effective preservation of cultural heritage. Findings revealed that most of African rural communities do not have mechanisms for safeguarding their cultural heritage, and there is lack of technological tools for preservation of cultural heritage. Cultural heritage policy should also be implemented and better explained to the rural communities' authorities.

Analysis of the Impact of Customer Relationship Management on Innovation Acquisition Using Agent-Based Modeling

The present study is conducted in order to examine the effect of Customer relationship management (CRM) on diffusion and acquisition of innovational products and services using agent-based modeling (ABM) methodology in a municipality. CRM components include customer orientation, organizational structure, knowledge management, and information technology. The innovational products and services diffusion steps also include awareness, interest, evaluation, testing, and adoption. A researcher-made questionnaire is used to collect data which has been distributed among 110 participants after testing its validity and reliability. SmartPLS3.2.6 and anylogic softwares are applied to analyze hypotheses and modeling and simulation, respectively. ABM is validated on the basis of experts' viewpoints. According to the research findings, CRM affects the diffusion process of municipality's products and services. ABM shows that without CRM, customers are usually lower for each phase of diffusion process.

Automatic Photovoltaic Solar Panel Dust Cleaning System

Renewable energy sources are currently regarded as viable options for stabilizing the energy crisis globally as well as addressing global warming challenges. Solar energy is the most promising and sustainable energy source as compared to other renewable energy sources such as coal, nuclear, wind, gas, and hydro energy. The increasing demand for solar panels should be reason enough to investigate ways in which we can increase their efficiency as much as possible. Dust, dirt, and bird dropping are major factors that can affect the performance of solar panel systems. This work presents the development of a solar panel cleaning system that automatically detects dust particles and cleans the solar panel to ensure the continues efficiency of the solar system is at an optimal level. The system comprises of five subsystems: dust sensing, water pumping, microcontroller, cleaning mechanism, and the power system. Tests carried out on the system shows its quick response to signals and effectiveness in cleaning the solar panel whenever dust particles are detected.

Demand Forecasting Models With Time Series and Random Forest

This chapter presents the recent methodological developments in demand management and demand forecasting subjects of the operations management. The background section provides detailed information on the domain of production management, operational analytics, and demand forecasting while providing introductory information on time series forecasting and related machine learning methodologies. The novel contribution of the chapter is the exploration developed in the solutions and recommendations section while examining the effect of stationarity in the time series forecasting methodologies of machine learning with improved benchmark results.