There have been many recent advances in wireless communication technologies, particularly in the area of wireless sensor networks, which have undergone rapid development and been successfully applied in the consumer electronics market. Therefore, wireless networks (WNs) have been attracting more attention from academic communities and other domains. From an industrial perspective, WNs present many advantages including flexibility, low cost, easy deployment and so on. Therefore, WNs can play a vital role in the Industry 4.0 framework, and can be used for smart factories and intelligent manufacturing systems. In this paper, we present an overview of industrial WNs (IWNs), discuss IWN features and related techniques, and then provide a new architecture based on quality of service and quality of data for IWNs. We also propose some applications for IWNs and IWN standards. Then, we will use a case from our previous achievements to explain how to design an IWN under Industry 4.0. Finally, we highlight some of the design challenges and open issues that still need to be addressed to make IWNs truly ubiquitous for a wide range of applications.

A review of industrial wireless networks in the context of Industry 4.0

Although interruptions are daily occurring events for most working people, little research has been done on the impacts of interruptions on workers and their performance. This study examines the e Vects of interruptions on task performance and its regulation, as well as on workers’ psychological and psychophysiological state. Two parallel experiments were carried out in the Netherlands and in Russia, using a common conceptual framework and overlapping designs. Employees with relevant work experience carried out realistic text editing tasks in a simulated o Yce environment, while the frequency and complexity of interruptions were experimentally manipulated. It was hypothesized that interruptions: (i) would cause a deterioration of performance; (ii) evoke strategies to partially compensate for this deterioration; (iii) aVect subjects’ emotions and well-being negatively; and (iv) raise the level of eVort and activation. It was also hypothesized that greater frequency and complexity of interruptions would enhance the expected e Vects. The hypotheses are only partially cone rmed. The results show that, contrary to what was expected, interruptions cause people to perform the main task faster while maintaining the level of quality. Participants develop strategies enabling them to deal e Vectively with the interruptions, while actually over-compensating the potential performance decline. Interruptions do have a negative impact on emotion and well-being, and lead to an increase of e Vort expenditure, although not to an increase in activation. Thus the improved performance is achieved at the expense of higher psychological costs. Greater complexity evoked more favourable responses among the Dutch participants and more unfavourable ones among the Russian participants. These diVerences are interpreted in terms of the participants’ professional background. The research demonstrates that the e Vects of interruptions reach beyond the execution of additional tasks and the change of work strategies. Interruptions appear to have an after-e Vect, ine uencing the workers’ subsequent readiness to perform. Detailed analysis of the activity in the interruption interval, focusing on

Temporal factors in mental work: effects on interrupted activities

As academic and practitioner studies on crowdsourcing have been building up since 2006, the subject itself has progressively gained in importance within the broad field of management. No systematic review on the topic has so far appeared in management journals, however; moreover, the field suffers from ambiguity in the topic's definition, which in turn has led to its largely unstructured evolution. The authors therefore investigate the existing body of knowledge on crowdsourcing systematically through a penetrating review in which the strengths and weakness of this literature stream are presented clearly and then future avenues of research are set out. The review is based on 121 scientific articles published between January 2006 and January 2015. The review recognizes that crowdsourcing is ingrained in two mainstream disciplines within the broader subject matter of innovation and management: (1) open innovation; and (2) co-creation. The review, in addition, also touches on several issues covered in other theoretical streams: (3) information systems management; (4) organizational theory and design; (5) marketing; and (6) strategy. The authors adopt a process perspective, applying the ‘Input–Process–Output’ framework to interpret research on crowdsourcing within the broad lines of: (1) Input (Problem/Task); (2) Process (session management; problem management; knowledge management; technology); and (3) Outcome (solution/completed task; seekers’ benefits; solvers’ benefits). This framework provides a detailed description of how the topic has evolved over time, and suggestions concerning the future direction of research are proposed in the form of research questions that are valuable for both academics and managers.

/pdf/crowdsourcing-a-review-and-suggestions-for-future-research-jn2tv5mkqp.pdf

Crowdsourcing: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

In this survey a new application paradigm life and safety for critical operations and missions using wearable Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) technology is introduced. This paradigm has a vast scope of applications, including disaster management, worker safety in harsh environments such as roadside and building workers, mobile health monitoring, ambient assisted living and many more. It is often the case that during the critical operations and the target conditions, the existing infrastructure is either absent, damaged or overcrowded. In this context, it is envisioned that WBANs will enable the quick deployment of ad-hoc/on-the-fly communication networks to help save many lives and ensuring people's safety. However, to understand the applications more deeply and their specific characteristics and requirements, this survey presents a comprehensive study on the applications scenarios, their context and specific requirements. It explores details of the key enabling standards, existing state-of-the-art research studies, and projects to understand their limitations before realizing aforementioned applications. Application-specific challenges and issues are discussed comprehensively from various perspectives and future research and development directions are highlighted as an inspiration for new innovative solutions. To conclude, this survey opens up a good opportunity for companies and research centers to investigate old but still new problems, in the realm of wearable technologies, which are increasingly evolving and getting more and more attention recently.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/14/5/9153/pdf

Surveying wearable human assistive technology for life and safety critical applications: standards, challenges and opportunities

On security challenges and open issues in Internet of Things

Multipath routing is an efficient technique to route data in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because it can provide reliability, security and load balance, which are especially critical in the resource constrained system such as WSNs. In this paper we provide a survey of the state-of-the-art of proposed multipath routing protocols for WSNs, which are classified into three categories, infrastructure based, non-infrastructure based and coding based, based on the special techniques used in building multiple paths and delivering sensing data. For each category, we study the design of protocols, analyze the tradeoff of each design, and overview several representing protocols. In addition, we give a summery of design goals, challenges, and evaluation metrics for multipath routing protocols in resource constrained systems in general.

Multipath Routing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Email consumes as much as a quarter of knowledge workers’ time in organizations today. Almost a necessity for communication, email does interrupt a worker’s other main tasks and ultimately leads to information overload. Though issues such as spam, email filtering and archiving have received much attention from industry and academia, the critical problem of the timing of email processing has not been studied much. It is common for many knowledge workers to check and respond to their email almost continuously. Though some emails may require very quick responses, checking emails almost continuously may lead to interruptions in regular knowledge work. Managing email processing can make a significant difference in an organization’s productivity. Previous research on this topic suggests that perhaps the best way to minimize the effect of interruptions is to process email frequently for example, every 45 min. In this study, we focus on studying email response timing approaches to optimize the communication times and yet reduce the interruptive effects. We investigate previous recommendations by performing a two-phase study involving rigorous simulation experiments. Models were developed for identifying efficient and effective email processing policies by comparing various ways to reduce interruptions for different types of knowledge workers. In contrast to earlier research findings, results indicate that significant productivity improvements could be achieved through the use of some email processing policies while helping attain a balance between email response time and task completion time. Findings also suggest that the best policy may be to respond to email two to four times a day instead of every 45 min or continuously, as is common with many knowledge workers. We conclude by presenting many research opportunities for analytical and organizational IS researchers.

You’ve got email! Does it really matter to process emails now or later?

An indispensable mode of communication and information sharing in modern organizations is email. In particular, emails have been known to cause interruptions in the processing of knowledge workers' primary tasks, thereby increasing information overload. There is a penalty, in terms of extra reimmersion time, associated with every task that gets interrupted by email. So, how often should one process email? In this study, we have modeled and compared different ways in which this interruption effect of emails can be reduced. We use simulation to study the interruption effects on two different types of tasks (longer tasks and shorter tasks). Prior research has suggested that the best policy to respond to emails is every 45 minutes. Contrary to prior research, the findings of this study seem to suggest that, in most cases, knowledge worker performance could be improved by responding to emails 4 times in a given working day. Another major contribution of the paper is a contingency framework that prescribes a policy to use in responding to emails in various working environments so as to reduce the effect of interruptions caused by emails. Keywords-Emails, interruptions, information overload, task analysis & simulation.

https://interruptions.net/literature/Gupta-DSI04.pdf

An exploratory analysis of email processing strategies

Early group decision support systems (GDSS) literature discussed how group size and member proximity impacted the design of the room and technology necessary to facilitate group decision-making. A Legislative Session is the early term for a large group that holds face to face meetings. With advances in mobile technology, we can turn any large group meeting into an opportunity to capture the wisdom of the crowd. This paper will describe how both crowdsourcing initiatives and group wisdom support systems (GWSS) initiatives can be supported by mobile devices. An example of a keynote address at an academic conference and the use of JoinSpeaker technology will be presented as a way to hold a dynamic crowdsourcing efforts.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1063&context=amcis2012

The Use of Mobile Devices as Group Wisdom Support Systems to Support Dynamic Crowdsourcing Efforts

Almost a necessity for communication, email consumes significant portions of knowledge workers’ time in today’s organizations. Though issues such as spam, filtering, and archiving have received much attention from industry and academia, the critical problem of the timing of email processing has not been studied much. It is common for many knowledge workers to check and respond to their emails almost continuously. Though some emails may require very quick responses, continuous email checking may lead to workplace interruptions and overload. This study presents a framework for studying email response timing approaches to minimize the communication times and yet reduce the interruptive effects. A rigorous analysis of the effective and efficient email processing policies, in a series of two-phase simulated virtual experiments, is performed by comparing various ways to reduce interruptions for various work settings. Findings suggest that managing email processing can make a significant difference in workplace productivity.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&context=amcis2009

Robert A. Greve

Papers

Multipath Routing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

You’ve got email! Does it really matter to process emails now or later?

An exploratory analysis of email processing strategies

The Use of Mobile Devices as Group Wisdom Support Systems to Support Dynamic Crowdsourcing Efforts

Overcoming Email Addiction: Understanding the 'Leave Me Alone!' Approach