Conference Topic

Blockchains and their key elements distributed ledgers, smart contracts and decentralized apps have a unique disruptive potential on business models in many industries ranging from finance through energy and logistics to IoT. Applications comprise digital currencies or assets, digital identity, proof of ownership, provenance, digital rights management, and secure distributed storage. Blockchains may also be especially beneficial for data exchange between companies and other third parties, e.g. in supply chains. The combinn of blockchain technology with big datatioa will create even greater opportunities: For example, blockchains may enhance big data storage solutions regarding data governance and quality and advanced analytics can unlock valuable insights from blockchain-enabled data stores.
The session “Blockchain" will shed light on both technical topics as well as business impacts of blockchain technology. This session will be divided in two tracks, one for practitioners and the other for the scientific community. For the first track, we invite people with experience on the application of blockchain technologies in real world cases to submit their intention to present their contributions. For the later, we invite researchers to present scientific papers about the topic, that if accepted will be published in the conference proceedings, with the best papers invited to submit an extended version on the topic on the Special Issue “Blockchain and Tokenizatin in Industry” of the Computers & Industrial Engineering: An International Journal (Elsevier, Impact Factor: 2.623).

The Blockchain Technology is said to be one of the most disruptive technology of the decade. It allows mutually mistrusting entities to exchange records on a shared ledger and interact without relying on a trusted third party. A blockchain moreover provides an integrity protected data storage that is much more secure than those stored in centralised servers while at the same time providing for process transparency. These attributes of the Blockchain allow its use in multiple applications in Industry and Services. Any application where interacting parties need to share data but cannot trust a central server can benefit from blockchain applications, thus making it ideal for cross-organizational data exchange.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic. Machines are no longer programmed but trained, or they even learn independently. Many areas of economy and society will change dramatically.
The ICE/IEEE ITMC conference picks up this discussion and asks:
Where will we be in 2018? Which new technological developments will be available? How and for which purposes will we use it? In which fields will we find AI in the near future?

Apart from the rather “classical” technical AI topics, there are a lot of fields that are also affected by the newest AI developments. These are also relevant in the context of the conference. Two examples of where substantial questions will arise in the future are:

Machine Creativity – as we are not able to define what the core of creativity is – will there be something like machine creativity? Is AI the better Creative Director? What will its relationship to human creativity look like – cooperation or competition?
Ethical Questions – Which ethical or legal problems will arise, how do we deal with them? When and how will we move from weak to strong AI?

Let us know in what area you see AI in the near future, how this affects the scientific discussion and what the practical implications are.

Digitization encompasses all areas of business. Even today, many value creation business models require the availability of high-quality data, and the importance of data for new business models will steadily increase. Special importance is attached to internal and external master data management with company resource data as a central element. The master data management encompasses all activities for the management of master data in and between companies. Although there is a great deal of research need in the field of master data management, it is clear that digitization poses further and new challenges for master data management. The use of new device types in the Internet of Things raises questions of the efficient management of data about these devices and their integration into the corporate processes in the area of master data management. Furthermore, issues that arise from the continuous flow of data from these devices for their processing and management must be considered. Digitization thus results in a variety of research needs: approaches to (master) data management must be extended, in particular, to unstructured data (“big data"). Through the integration of freely accessible, open databases (“Open Data") and their linking for example, based on extensible ontologies (linked data), large-scale data infrastructures are emerging. Data becomes a central component of business models or new services (“data-as-a-service"), whereby personal data must be protected.

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Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality has gained significant hype in the technology community over the last few years, and continues to be an active sector of research and development. While providing major improvements for consumer applications, these technologies also offer tremendous possibilities for optimizing industrial processes leading to improved product/service quality while significantly reducing production costs. Current major industrial application areas include: medical research and therapy, virtual training, manufacturing processes and several other sectors.

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The enormous trend of digitization in industries is not only relevant for the planning and control of manufacturing, it relates directly to manufacturing processes and technologies, too. The generative building of parts and products directly from digital data, without molds, dies and dwarfs enables completely new approaches to realize physical products, for example based on complex or bionic designs, which are traditionally seen not manufacturable – not at all or not in an economic manner.

The enormous trend of digitization in industries is not only relevant for the planning and control of manufacturing, it relates directly to manufacturing processes and technologies, too. The generative building of parts and products directly from digital data, without molds, dies and dwarfs enables completely new approaches to realize physical products, for example based on complex or bionic designs, which are traditionally seen not manufacturable – not at all or not in an economic manner.

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Advances in digital technologies and their application in the industrial domain led to the emergence of business models relying on a broad adoption of digital platforms dedicated to industrial scenarios (automation, simulation, supply chain management, etc.). This special session is intended to cover how the integration of digital technologies within industrial plants can federate business model innovation, focusing on how the different levels of the industrial value chain can be supported and/or rearranged by the adoption of digital platforms carrying technological contents and by the creation of new BtoB/BtoC ecosystems.

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Planning, building and running of cross domain Industrial Internet systems (Ecosystems) require common standards, methods and reference architectures to ensure interconnectivity and interoperability. The session therefore addresses the challenges we do face from different perspectives. Topics of the session are but not limited to IIoT driven business opportunities, IIoT development with respect to reference architectures, build methods and tools as well as Verification and Validation and how is V&V affected by system boundaries which span across organizations and domains. The session is supposed to provide answers or pointers towards a practical approaches.

The digital transformation of healthcare services is one of the key challenges in health and social
care. While providing opportunities to improve outcomes and reduce costs of healthcare, ICT also
brings new challenges and risks. This session is focusing on ICT for Healthcare in an ageing society,
including but not limited to:
 ICT for patient empowerment & self management;
 ICT supported collaboration and integrated care;
 Technical aspects such as data security, privacy enhancing technologies, interoperability;
 Societal implications, e.g. privacy, technology acceptance and digital health literacy.

This session will bridge and combine the polarity in the discussions on mobility regarding technology on the one end and the market / users on the other end. The impact of new technology, or new combinations of existing technologies in addressing the needs of the market are a common point of interest in this session. With the advent of new paradigms and technology for mobility a change in industry can be observed and have to be further explored and explained.

This session aims at giving a global and still concrete approach to the major challenge of sustainableurbandevelopment with energy as the backbone of the exchange.To this purpose, a number of paths have to be explored, relyingon already acquired experience:

 The development of local renewable energy production, consumption and storage,accompanied with the adequate Smart Energy Grid infrastructure.

 The use of recyclable/reusable materials in buildings and infrastructure construction torespond to circular economy principles while impacting energy efficiency using the life cycleapproach.

 The improved application of digital solutions like BIM, IoT, 3D printing …at various levels ofthe economic activity, with the smart energy and data grids as the core networks… thesemany challenges not only have to be taken on individually, the now need to be met takingeach other into account to reach optimal, sustainable and flexible responses.

 The deployment of integrated innovative solutions as the Positive Energy Blocks (PEB),where multifunctional groups of buildings are connected together to optimize energy management and at the same time contribute to urban regeneration.Innovation in this context is a priority, not to say an emergency, given the size and complexity of thetask. Both EU and national innovation programmes need to focus on this «urban challenge» withnot only European but also world wide implications

Self-organization in firms can assume very different forms.Not all of them help to increaseinnovativeness or the ability to adapt the innovations of others. In the workshopdifferenttypes ofself-organization in firmsare presented. Real cases than demonstrate, in which situations thedifferent forms of self-organization are appropriate to increase innovativeness and how they can befostered

Innovation is increasingly “service innovation"; The development of new offers to the market is more and more dominated by the development of services. And the starting point for successful development processes is a thinking that focuses on the “service to the customer".

Reasons are the progressing “dematerialization" of the economy, driven by digitisation. This is evident in the success of digital service companies such as Amazon, Uber, Google, Facebook and others. But even traditional industrial companies will only master their future if they understand themselves and their products as an integral component of comprehensive “service ecosystems" for the creation of value for the customer (“Value in Context"). Traditional service providers, such as energy suppliers and the financial services industry, are also reinventing themselves and transforming into “smart service providers".

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The survival in turbulent business environment drastically depends on gaining and supporting competitive advantages. There is a great variety of ways to be competitive: by means of product innovation, key engineering technologies, sophisticated IT –
structure. Whatever the industrial enterprises would choose they definitely should take into consideration organization technologies. Obviously the vector of current industrial development is aimed primarily at the intellectualization: smart enterprises, smart connectivity, Industry 4.0, Internet of things, development of robotics and autonomous systems. That in turn requires the development of appropriate organization technologies in various spheres of smart industrial enterprises. That’s why the issues concerning „Advanced Organization Technologies" is of great importance to be discussed.

The special session “Rethink Project Management” is the 3rd edition in the context of the International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation. It includes topics covering setting the future research agenda, the research and application in management of single projects, mega projects and programmes as (semi-) temporary organisations driving strategic change programs in organizations, the management of project portfolios, and particularly the management of project-oriented organisations, which are created and engaged namely to manage projects and programmes that are public-private funded and sponsored, such as the university-industry collaborations.

The session “Women & STEM" deals with diversity and gender in STEM. We are trying to answer questions like: What are the effects of gender imbalances in STEM? What are the reasons for them and what can be done about them? What role do biases, stereotypes and gender-specific power relations play? What has already been achieved?

The term “Industry 4.0” encompasses the promise of a new industrial revolution – one that marries advanced manufacturing techniques with the internet of things (IoT) to create a digital manufacturing enterprise that is not only interconnected, but communicates, analyzes, and uses information to further drive intelligent action back into the physical world. The topic aims to cover the insights from global research communities towards the practical and technological advances towards the aspects of “future digital supply chains".

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While Living-Labs, known as “Public-Private-People Partnership” (4P) (Pallot, 2009), Fab-Labs, known as “Do-It-Yourself” and other firms’ Open-Labs are recognized as open-innovation intermediaries (Osorio et al. 2015), there are still mature enterprises, SMEs and even start-ups that do not have the proper environment to create breakthrough innovations to enhance their competitiveness (Lecossier et al., 2017).    Such open-innovation intermediaries often succeed in providing an appropriate innovation environment (organization, infrastructure, methods & tools) that allows engaging all stakeholders (e.g. Architects, Marketers, Designers, Engineers, Scientists), especially user communities, either from public authorities or private organizations in innovation projects, at the earlier stage, for co-creating value (Pallot, 2009).  Even crowdsourcing platforms (e.g. Innocentive) have become quite popular for sourcing ideas and solutions in connecting firms to people (e.g. retired engineers, scientists) who subscribe to the innovation intermediary website in order to submit solutions to posted firms’ challenges.    There are User-Centered Methods (UCD), such as: Design Thinking (DT) or eXperience Design (XD), that are often used as a corner stone for articulating, around users, the interdisciplinary approach in involving a multidisciplinary team composed of, for example: Marketers, Designers, Engineers and scientists. The main goal resides in co-creating, exploring, experimenting and evaluating ideas, innovative concepts and usage scenarios from different perspectives, especially anticipating what will be the User eXperience (Pallot & Pawar, 2012). Bearing in mind that UX is a multidimensional concept that often includes human, social, cultural, societal, technological and economical dimensions (Pallot & Pawar, 2012). Both quantitative and qualitative methods are traditionally applied during User eXperience (UX) studies; however, the “mixed method” was experimented more recently (Krawczyk et al., 2017) during the early stage of an App design.    Furthermore, there are methods, techniques and tools that allow a team to be collectively immersed in new ideas, innovative concepts and usage scenarios at the earlier stage through product or service prototyping (physical: 3D-printing and functional kit or virtual: immersive technology (VR, AR, MR)) (Dupont et al., 2016; 2017; Pallot et al., 2017).    Pallot M. (2009). Engaging Users into Research and Innovation: The Living Lab Approach as a User Centred Open Innovation Ecosystem. Webergence Blog. “Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-05-09. Retrieved 2011-06-07.

This will focus on innovation of design related topics applied at a city level.

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This topic will focus in the area of entrepreneurship utilising new technologies and the digitisation of new/existing business process.

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This topic will focus on how new business model to be developed to leverage on the recent developments of digital twins and associated technologies. This topic is use-case agnostic and application in any domain are welcomed.

This will focus on how innovation projects in the space of the latest disruptive digital developments, i.e Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence, Deep learning etc… can be managed to ensure these technologies achieve their full potential