Vedlūga, Tomas

Manufacturing companies around the world, large and small, in developed and developing regions, tend to suffer from the inefficiencies of a cost-simulated, early pricing process for new products. Often, however, solutions to the complex challenges of the manufacturing industry lie at the intersection of social science and technology, where intelligent manufacturing plays a crucial role. Providing a deep review of innovative scientific technologies and knowledge, this edited collection delves into cost-cutting technologies in manufacturing planning processes that combine with social technologies to stimulate the development of organisational innovations. Chapters explore the solutions that artificial intelligence, data science, and knowledge management systems provide in order to resolve the problems posed by early cost estimation. Drawing on detailed examples from the furniture manufacturing businesses, they offer a new way of industrial thinking with transformative implications for the greater manufacturing industry.

Objectives: The present research has a significant value for the theory of and research in health informatics and clinical practice. The aim of the article was to investigate how important is knowledge richness and linkage as knowledge quality for the information technology system success decomposing existing electronic Prescription systems in the context of comparison regarding the building process. Methods: The four most actively used Lithuanian electronic Prescription modules have been selected for the research. To achieve the purpose, decomposition of electronic Prescription processes have been carried out to assess relations between knowledge richness and richness adopted in the electronic Prescription module and knowledge usability. The method of heuristic assessment and cognitive walkthroughs was used. The heuristic method is used for the evaluation of an information system by a specialist in the field or by qualified members of the information system development team. Results: A completely developed electronic Prescription system functioning in the entire state has been implemented only in several European countries and Finland is one of the best examples. Despite the fact that several information systems have been developed in Lithuania that prescribes electronic Prescription with 40 million Euros spent on information technology systems, still, 15% of all prescriptions are written on paper in Lithuania. Conclusions: A dynamic selection rule could be apply to address the issue of electronic Prescription use. Such analysis can help the healthcare administrators and professionals to evaluate the potential of enabling information technology and the opportunity it created to rethink or reengineer the e.Prescription process and the associated activities based on the enabling information technology capability.

The task of cost and price estimation is primarily grounded upon the company’s capacity to recognize complexity, which is rapidly growing in the modern manufacturing sector. A great deal of today’s industries face a problem of growing complexity, which affects all vital functions of the organization and puts up a serious challenge in terms of company’s competitiveness. The goal of the present research is to find out how furniture companies working with customization manufacturing identify complexity in their performance and what strategies they use to deal with the complexity of pricing in cases of new orders.

Customized manufacturing entails a personalization demand, which turns manufacturing into a complex task difficult to solve automatically. Customized manufacturing requires completely new technological solutions and long and careful prototype development and testing. The technology-based approach relies on collection and preservation of information and factual data and ERP is the most common solution to realize that approach (Blankenship & Brueck, 2008). However, it still fails to respond to the customized needs even though ERPs provide plenty of innovative solutions for prognosis, trending, etc. The study shows, that production of customized furniture takes on average 60 percent longer than production of standardized furniture. The study also reveals that the costs of custom-made furniture production (cost estimation) are usually predictable, taking into account furniture size (11.6%), production time (25.2%), design coincidences (8.8%), used materials (26.1%) marketing (9.0%) and know-how (19.3%). The goal of this paper is to investigate the ways of knowledge preservation recognizing the ERP role and defining the stimulus to preserve knowledge for future decisions in cost estimation in customized production.

Customized manufacturing entails a personalization demand, which turns manufacturing into a complex task difficult to solve automatically. Customized manufacturing requires completely new technological solutions and long and careful prototype development and testing. The technology-based approach relies on collection and preservation of information and factual data and ERP is the most common solution to realize that approach (Blankenship & Brueck, 2008). However, it still fails to respond to the customized needs even though ERPs provide plenty of innovative solutions for prognosis, trending, etc. The study shows, that production of customized furniture takes on average 60 percent longer than production of standardized furniture. The study also reveals that the costs of custom-made furniture production (cost estimation) are usually predictable, taking into account furniture size (11.6%), production time (25.2%), design coincidences (8.8%), used materials (26.1%) marketing (9.0%) and know-how (19.3%). The goal of this paper is to investigate the ways of knowledge preservation recognizing the ERP role and defining the stimulus to preserve knowledge for future decisions in cost estimation in customized production.

The furniture manufacturing sector of the Baltics is facing serious challenges common in all European countries, namely, the growing global competition for customized solutions. New standards to be followed in the industry tend to increase production costs, extend manufacturing time and cause frequent errors in the product quality. To maintain sustainability, companies need decision support instruments, allowing an immediate reaction to customized orders and proper evaluation of manufacturing procedures, costs and deadlines. The complex problem of cost estimation at an early stage could be solved partly by strengthening operational research in decision support systems supplemented with machine learning techniques. Additional reliability could be acquired complementing an intelligent system with a human knowledge intervention and applying outcomes of behavioural operational research. Scientific and methodological issues of how to integrate the output of structured expert judgement into an intelligent cost estimation system is a pressing problem. The goal of the pre-sent research is to look into the cultural pattern of competence recognition within furniture industry with the purpose to adjust the structural expert judgement strategy as an instrument to validate expert input into the decision support tool for cost estimation. The research is based on mix method strategy (a qualitative study, a quantitative study and an structural expert judgement experiment). The findings clearly highlighted that a well-composed group of experts could be a possible solution in assessing uncertain aspects of cost estimation. Although the cultural model of the furniture sector would recommend a slightly different approach: the top executives and the best engineers in this sector are seen as experts. This should be taken into account when developing methodological recommendations for the implementation of the structural expert judgement.

The task of cost and price estimation is primarily grounded upon the company’s capacity to recognize complexity, which is rapidly growing in the modern manufacturing sector. A great deal of today’s industries face a problem of growing complexity, which affects all vital functions of the organization and puts up a serious challenge in terms of company’s competitiveness. The goal of the present research is to find out how furniture companies working with customization manufacturing identify complexity in their performance and what strategies they use to deal with the complexity of pricing in cases of new orders.

Pamatuoti teikiamą elektroninių paslaugų naudą yra sunku dėl informacijos ir ryšių technologijų taikymo įvairovės bei greitos transformacijos. Sveikatos priežiūros sferoje atsiranda dar daugiau sunkumų dėl šios srities specifiškumo ir plataus suinteresuotųjų rato. Todėl teikiant viešąsias elektronines sveikatos paslaugas, vis labiau orientuojamasi į vartotoją. Ne mažiau svarbu ir vartotojų žinios apie tokias paslaugas, noras ir gebėjimas jomis naudotis. Straipsnyje pristatomas 2016 m. atliktas elektroninės prisirašymo paslaugos suinteresuotųjų šalių tyrimas. Pacientai ir sveikatos priežiūros įstaigos darbuotojai dalyvavo kiekybiniame tyrime, kuriuo siekta atskleisti jų požiūrį į elektroninę prisirašymo paslaugą ir įvairius jos aspektus. Elektroninės prisirašymo paslaugos taikymas vartotojams turi būti nuolatinis procesas, kurio metu reikia eksperimentuoti su paslauga ir analizuoti rezultatus. Šis procesas tiesiogiai priklauso nuo elektroninės paslaugos specifikos ir vartotojų poreikių bei noro ja naudotis. Norą naudotis elektroninėmis paslaugomis nulemia daugelis veiksnių, tokių kaip naudojimo įpročiai ir vartotojo elgsena. Tyrime naudojama aprašomosios statistikos ir neparametrinės statistikos analizė, kurios pagrindą sudaro tyrime dalyvaujančių kintamųjų tarpusavio ryšys. Keliamos hipotezės, remiantis demografinių ir kitų aspektų priklausomybe. Statistinė duomenų analizė atskleidė, kad elektroninės prisirašymo paslaugos elementai yra priklausomi nuo tam tikrų demografinių aspektų, tokių kaip amžius arba išsilavinimas. Nors elektroninėmis paslaugomis labiau linkęs pasinaudoti jaunimas (49,1 proc.), negalima eliminuoti nė vieno iš segmentų, nes kiekvienas jų yra potencialus pacientas. Kuriant elektroninę prisirašymo paslaugos vizualizaciją, reikėtų vadovautis universaliu dizainu, kai kuriama vartotojo aplinka nereikalauja jokio specialaus pasirengimo ir ja gali naudotis visi: vaikai, suaugusieji, vyrai, moterys, senyvo amžiaus žmonės, neįgalieji, įvairių tautybių ir kitų skirtumų turintys žmonės.