Servitization of manufacturing has become one of the main pathways for transition and upgrade in the manufacturing industry. New information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet of Things, Big Data, and Cloud Computing have enabled the servitization of manufacturing in terms of value creation, resource management, and supply chain management. This study presents a comprehensive review on the servitization in operations management in the era of new ICTs. A new value chain framework is proposed under the business model that revolves around servitization, which showcases the new activities and ways of implementation in the era of new ICTs. The virtualization, configuration, and evaluation of integrated manufacturing and service resources are analyzed. In particular, the methods used in new ICT-supported resource management platforms are surveyed. Problems in the supply chain management in manufacturing services (including the selection of partners, as well as the coordination, planning, and scheduling among members) are presented. This study concludes with a discussion on state-of-the-art servitization in operations management in the era of new ICTs.

Handoff processes during civil infrastructure operations are transitions between sequential tasks. Typical handoffs constantly involve cognitive and communication activities among operations personnel, as well as traveling activities. Large civil infrastructures, such as nuclear power plants (NPPs), provide critical services to modern cities but require regular or unexpected shutdowns (i.e., outage) for maintenance. Handoffs during such an outage contain interwoven workflows and communication activities that pose challenges to the cognitive and communication skills of handoff participants and constantly result in delays. Traveling time and changing field conditions bring additional challenges to effective coordination among multiple groups of people. Historical NPP records studied in this research indicate that even meticulous planning that takes six months before each outage could hardly guarantee sufficient back-up plans for handling various unexpected events. Consequently, delays frequently occur in NPP outages and bring significant socioeconomic losses. A synthesis of previous studies on the delay analysis of accelerated maintenance schedules revealed the importance and challenges of handoff modeling. However, existing schedule representation methods could hardly represent the interwoven communication, cognitive, traveling, and working processes of multiple participants collaborating on completing scheduled tasks. Moreover, the lack of formal models that capture how cognitive, waiting, traveling, and communication issues affect outage workflows force managers to rely on personal experiences in diagnosing delays and coordinating multiple teams involved in outages. This study aims to establish formal models through agent-based simulation to support the analytical assessment of outage schedules with full consideration of cognitive and communication factors involved in handoffs within the NPP outage workflows. Simulation results indicate that the proposed handoff modeling can help predict the impact of cognitive and communication issues on delays propagating throughout outage schedules. Moreover, various activities are fully considered, including traveling between workspaces and waiting. Such delay prediction capability paves the path toward predictive and resilience outage control of NPPs.

On-site maintenance (ONSM) is critical to ensuring the safety of equipment in the petrochemical industry. However, many accidents occur during ONSM processes because of unstable equipment, complicated work environment, and human error. To reduce congestion and exposure to hazards during on-site operations and thereby reduce the probability of accidents, off-site maintenance (OFSM) is proposed based on Energy Release Theory (ERT). The information requirements for OFSM are analyzed. A support system for OFSM, which makes use of visualization, information management, and localization capabilities, is developed. A case study utilizing OFSM and its support system for an oil-loading facility of a petrochemical company is conducted. The application results indicated that implementation of OFSM system can significantly reduce the operation risks and can improve the operation efficiency.

Buildings contribute to a major part of energy consumption in urban areas, especially in areas like Hong Kong which is full of high-rise buildings. Smart buildings with high efficiency can reduce the energy consumption largely and help achieve green cities or smart cities. Design and control optimization of building energy systems therefore plays a significant role to obtain the optimal performance. This paper introduces a general methodology for the design and control optimization of building energy systems in the life cycle. When the design scheme of building energy systems is optimized, primary steps and related issues are introduced. To improve the operation performance, the optimal control strategies that can be used by different systems are presented and key issues are discussed. To demonstrate the effect of the methods, the energy system of a high-rise building is introduced. The design on the chilled water pump system and cooling towers is improved. The control strategies for chillers, pumps and fresh air systems are optimized. The energy saving and cost from the design and control optimization methods are analyzed. The presented methodology will provide users and stakeholders an effective approach to improve the energy efficiency of building energy systems and promote the development of smart buildings and smart cities.