SMART ENTERPRISE 4.0 - The pandemic-proof digital transformation of manufacturing
When the RISE Laboratory began its research into digital transformation in 2013, we could hardly have imagined how much this phenomenon would grow and how it would develop in just 8 years. At least in Italy, no one was yet talking about "4.0", but it was now clear that the digital transformations already underway in the lives of each of us were also appearing in the industrial world. Over time, the term 'Industry 4.0' was established, and later the phenomenon extended beyond industry and beyond production, encompassing all business processes (Enterprise 4.0) and going beyond the boundaries of individual companies (Supply chain 4.0).
This is why we now prefer to speak of 'digital transition', and think of it as a new paradigm and no longer as the application of some more or less new digital technology to manufacturing processes. It is a paradigm, moreover, that intertwines and intersects with other paradigms that are asserting themselves just as vigorously and just as fundamentally in the current panorama, such as, for example, the so-called "servitisation" and, perhaps even more so, the circular economy.
This Report summarizes the empirical evidence obtained from a sample of 35 Italian public and private healthcare firms and hospitals. The research, conducted by the RISE Laboratory, paid particular attention to investment in digitalization and computerization, the availability of logistic competences and the deployment of state-of-the art inventory and materials management policies as key levers in the efficiency and effectiveness creation. The adoption of these levers is examined in relation with a set of exogenous and endogenous factors characterizing each considered health care firm. By the same token, we analyzed the potential of each of these levers to improve healthcare companies' efficiency and effectiveness, and thus to spur the health care system competitiveness
CIRCULAR ECONOMY: State of the Art and Implementation in the home appliances world
Global warming, uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources and excessive production of waste are increasingly important problems. According to a recent study commissioned by the United Nations, only 12 years remain to limit the phenomenon of climate change, rethinking production and consumption patterns on a global scale to take into account the concept of finite limit of resources.
Circular Economy can be seen as a possible answer to these problems. The home appliance industry and supply chain, which has always looket at environmental problems, can be considered as a potential arena for studying the application of this paradigm, capable of providing ideas and illustrating success stories, good practices, constraints and barriers, which can also be transferred to other sectors.
Through the collection, mapping and analysis of case studies, this research provides an overview of the implementation of the Circular Economy paradigm in the household appliances supply chain.
