All posts by VPInstitute

Lean Six Sigma in manufacturing process: a bibliometric study and research agenda

Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type

The purpose of this paper is to develop a bibliometric study about Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in the manufacturing process and to conduct an analysis of sources of publication, authorship, citations and other bibliometric indicators. This paper also identifies the research agenda for future research related to the LSS approach in manufacturing processes. A total of 508 articles published during the period 2002 to 2017 were collected through an automated process from the Scopus and Web of Science databases and later analyzed using techniques such as data mining, bibliometric indicators analysis, cluster analysis, network analysis and word cloud. The boundaries of the study cover studies directed to the manufacturing processes. The research identified 1,110 authors from 54 countries and 15 most prolific journals among the 162 journals investigated. The study unveils relevant articles, authors and journals that have discussed LSS initiatives in the manufacturing process. The study findings can make practitioners aware of the state of the art and the specificities of the most prolific studies. Furthermore, this paper also intends to clarify the project themes and tools most used in these works. The geographical locations of influential articles and authors are revealed. Additionally, frequently used words are listed and helped to develop a research agenda that highlights relevant themes, methods and industries.

https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-08-2019-0207

Author(s): Juliano Endrigo Sordan, Pedro Carlos Oprime, Márcio Lopes Pimenta, Paolo Chiabert, Franco Lombardi
Organization(s): Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Politecnico di Milano
Source: The TQM Journal
Year: 2020

Did the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake trigger a change in the conduct of research on seismic risk?

Research evaluation, Research Examples

This study aims to address how the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake influenced knowledge generation and diffusion compared to the research stemming from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in the United States and the 1995 Hanshin Awaji Earthquake in Japan, for the three countries are exposed to high seismic risk. The findings show that (1) regarding research quantity, the influence of the Wenchuan Earthquake on disaster-related knowledge generation is just beginning compared with the gradual decreases in research on the other earthquakes; (2) regarding disciplinary development, the proportion of studies relating to the Wenchuan Earthquake in natural sciences and engineering technology is gradually decreasing, while the proportion of studies in medical science, social sciences and economics is increasing; (3) the quantity of earthquake-related studies is not solely related to the influence of a specific disaster but associated with the national financial support offered by the affected country. One reason why China experiences the high research output is that Chinese national finance strongly supports such research, similar to the United States and Japan. This phenomenon corresponds with the fact that the major research institutions in China are national institutions rather than universities. Finally, (4) interdisciplinary research on the Wenchuan Earthquake mainly involves interactions between natural sciences and engineering technology. Interactions between other disciplines need to be enhanced. Thus, this research argues that, although disaster knowledge generation and diffusion is imbalanced, the multidimensional nature of earthquakes has been recognized in the literature.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104628

Author(s): Qiang Zhang, Qibin Lu, Xuanting Ye, Shiling Xu, Leesa K. Lin, Qian Ye, An Zeng
Organization(s): Beijing Normal University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Source: Safety Science
Year: 2020

Sustainable urban drainage: delineation of a scientific domain of knowledge production (FULL-TEXT)

Research Examples, Research profiling

Sustainable Urban Drainage emerged and gained prominence during the late 90s. Despite this progress, there is little uniformity in subjects and definition of terms within the overall sustainability theme. This tends to create a duplication of objectives and confusion about the correct use of techniques and procedures. This paper seeks to identify, map and
evaluate ‘Sustainable Urban Drainage’ as a scientific domain, using relationships between underlying subthemes. We analyzed 3,805 publications by 8,237 authors with relation to 11,957 citations using sociometric and bibliometric techniques. The results confirm the
existence of the knowledge domain with one main nucleus and 20 independent networks. Core subthemes such as stormwater management, low impact development, integrated urban water management, bioretention, and best management practices are distinguishable as the main domain.

Full-text can be downloaded by visiting https://periodicos.utfpr.edu.br/rts/article/view/9017

Author(s): Altair Rosa, Eduardo Mario Mendiondo, Marina Batalini Macedo, Vladimir Caramori de Sousa, David Sample, and Mário Procopiuck
Organization(s): Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná,University of São Paulo
Source: Revista Tecnologia e Sociedade
Year: 2020

Intellectual property in entomology: Analysis and perspective on recent trends in global patent publications

Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type

Intellectual property (IP) is an important consideration for entomological research and provides a means to capture value from new discoveries. Herein, we describe an analysis of more than 26 000 patent publications from 2007–2017 related to the field of entomology. These patents were divided among 8000 patent assignees; however, only 5% of the assignees had ≥10 patents. Corporations accounted for the largest share of patents (59%), with individuals (20%), academic institutions (17%) and government organizations (4%) making up the remaining segments. From 2007–2017 the number of entomological patents increased by 400%, with the largest number being from China. However, unlike patents from Europe, Japan or the US, which target a range of countries, the Chinese patents almost exclusively focus on China. Among the array of subjects covered are transgenic insects and plants, repellents, recombinant insect cells, with the highest proportion of patents focused on insecticides (39%), followed by insecticide mixtures (27%) and formulations (21%). The top 30 patent assignees included companies/institutions from China (18), Europe (3), Japan (6) and the US (3). Among the top 12 entities, IP from the US assignees was distributed across insecticides, mixtures and insecticidal traits while those from China were more focused on mixtures. However, given expanding IP numbers from China it is expected that in the future there will be a greater impact on new insecticides and related technologies. Link to paper

Author(s): Ronda L Hamm, Anne Gregg, Thomas C Sparks
Organization: Corteva Agriscience
Source: Pest Management Science
Year: 2020

Changing soil carbon: influencing factors, sequestration strategy and research direction (FULL-TEXT)

Research Examples, Research profiling

Soil carbon (C) plays a critical role in the global C cycle and has a profound effect on climate change. To obtain an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of global soil C changes and better manage soil C, all meta-analysis results published during 2001–2019 relative to soil C were collected and synthesized. The effects of 33 influencing factors on soil C were analyzed, compared and classified into 5 grades according to their effects on soil C. The effects of different categories of influencing factors, including land use change (LUC), management and climate change, on soil C and the underlying mechanism were compared and discussed. We propose that natural ecosystems have the capacity to buffer soil C changes and that increasing C inputs is one of the best measures to sequester C. Furthermore, a comparison between the meta-analyses and previous studies related to soil C based on bibliometric analysis suggested that studies on wetland soil C, soil C budgets and the effects of pollution and pesticides on soil C should be strengthened in future research.

Open Source full-text  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-020-0137-5

Author(s): Shangqi Xu, Chunlei Sheng, and Chunjie Tian
Organization: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Source: Carbon Balance Manage
Year: 2020

The relation between research priorities and societal demands: The case of rice (FULL-TEXT)

Research Examples, ST&I indicators, ST&I policy

To what extent is scientific research related to societal needs? To answer this crucial question systematically we need to contrast indicators of research priorities with indicators of societal needs. We focus on rice research and technology between 1983 and 2012. We combine quantitative methods that allow investigation of the relation between ‘revealed’ research priorities and ‘revealed’ societal demands, measured respectively by research output (publications) and national accounts of rice use and farmers’ and consumers’ rice-related needs. We employ new bibliometric data, methods and indicators to identify countries’ main rice research topics (priorities) from publications. For a panel of countries, we estimate the relation between revealed research priorities and revealed demands. We find that, across countries and time, societal demands explain a country’s research trajectory to a limited extent. Some research priorities are nicely aligned to societal demands, confirming that science is partly related to societal needs. However, we find a relevant number of misalignments between the focus of rice research and revealed demands, crucially related to human consumption and nutrition. We discuss some implications for research policy.

As winner of the October 2019 Elsevier Atlas Award, FULL-TEXT is available at  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.027

Author(s): Tommaso Ciarli, Ismael Ràfols
Organization(s): SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit), University of Sussex; Universitat Politècnica València
Source: Research Policy
Year: 2019

Technological domain in the automotive sector: analysis of the relational structure of patents for electric vehicles (FULL-TEXT)

Network analysis, Patents, Research Examples

This work aims to analyse a relational structure of patents in automotive sector, especially for electric vehicles. The automotive industry is equivalent to 22% of Brazil’s industrial gross domestic product (GDP), 4% of Brazil’s total GDP, and worldwide it should reach a mark of 100 million vehicles sold by 2020. In recent decades, innovation processes have become a matter of survival for companies. Resource Based View admits that companies are looking for strategic resources that are a source of competitive advantage. This work comprises the automotive market as an organizational field in which the actors struggle to reach more favourable positions from the available resources. The network approach was used together with patent analysis to highlight the existing relationships within this industry in the construction of innovation, through the analysis of patents of high commercial value in the automotive sector, collected through the Derwent database.

For FULL-TEXT see http://leblog.gerpisa.org/node/4456

Author: Filippo Filippo Savoi de Assis
Organization: Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar
Source: Gerpisa Colloquium
Year: 2018

Exploring Technology Evolution Pathways to Facilitate Technology Management: From a Technology Life Cycle Perspective

Future-oriented technology analysis, Research Examples, Research Type, Uncategorized

Technological innovation is a dynamic process that spans the life cycle of an idea, from scientific research to production. Within this process, there are often a few key innovations that significantly impact a technology’s development, and the ability to identify and trace the development of these key innovations comes with a great payoff for researchers and technology managers. In this article, we present a framework for identifying the technology’s main evolutionary pathway. What is unique about this framework is that we introduce new indicators that reflect the connectivity and the modularity in the interior citation network to distinguish between the stages of a technology’s development. We also show how information about a family of patents can be used to build a comprehensive patent citation network. Finally, we apply integrated approaches of main path analysis (MPA)—namely global MPA and global key-route main analysis—for extracting technological trajectories at different technological stages. We illustrate this approach with dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), a low-cost solar cell belonging to the group of thin-film solar cells, contributing to the remarkable growth in the renewable energy industry. The results show how this approach can trace the main development trajectory of a research field and distinguish key technologies to help decision makers manage the technological stages of their innovation processes more effectively.

10.1109/TEM.2020.2966171

Author(s): Ying Huang, Fujin Zhu, Alan L. Porter, Yi Zhang, Donghua Zhu, Ying Guo
Organization(s): Wuhan University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Search Technology, University of Technology Sydney, China University of Political Science and Law
Source: IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
Year: 2020

Who studies where? Boosting tropical conservation research where it is most needed (FULL-TEXT)

Research evaluation, Research Examples, Research Type, ST&I policy

Despite the mounting threats that tropical ecosystems face, conservation in the tropics remains severely under‐researched relative to temperate systems. Efforts to address this knowledge gap have so far largely failed to analyze the relationship between an author’s choice of study site and that author’s country of origin. We examined factors that motivate both foreign and domestic scientists to conduct research in tropical countries, based on a sample of nearly 3000 tropical conservation research articles. Many barriers that have historically deterred foreign research effort appear to have been overcome, although US scientists still respond negatively to safety concerns and distance. The productivity of local scientists is affected by corruption and lack of institutional support. Both foreign and in‐country scientists are increasingly working in places with more listed threatened species, but many regions still lack adequate conservation research. Although foreign scientists could be attracted to less‐studied areas through targeted grants, the long‐term solution must be to train and employ more local scientists.

https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2146 for FULL-TEXT https://flore.unifi.it/retrieve/handle/2158/1185963/461923/Segovia_et_al-2020-Frontiers_in_Ecology_and_the_Environment.pdf

Author(s): Ana L. Reboredo Segovia, Donato Romano, Paul R. Armsworth
Organization(s): Boston University, University of Florence, University of Tennessee
Source: Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Year: 2020

Scientific Literature of Small-Angle X-Ray and Neutron Scattering Applied to the Characterization of Materials at the Nanometer Scale (FULL-TEXT)

Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type

The SAXS and SANS techniques are widely applied to the structural characterization of materials at the nanometer scale. We here report quantitative analyses of the published literature related to these techniques and to relevant features of the International SAS Conferences. A total number of 42,048 articles related to SAXS and SANS were retrieved. The annual total number of published articles related to SAXS exhibits a fast and persistent growth from 1990 until 2018 while those referring to SANS remained essentially constant along the past two decades. Furthermore, the number of citations of articles published by authors from the USA and from some European countries (Germany, France, UK) are significantly higher than those published by authors from other countries. The persistent increase in the number of published articles related to SAXS around the world and particularly in Brazil is well correlated with the also increasing number of open synchrotron sources.

For FULL-TEXT of article http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1980-5373-mr-2019-0327

Author(s): Hannes Fischer, Aldo Craievich

Organization(s): FATEC Shunji Nishimura, Universidade de São Paulo

Source: Materials Research

Year: 2019