Within the profile Technical Information Technology (ICT Department) the most important specializations are Embedded Software and Industrial Automation. About half of the Technical Information curriculum consists of learning modules, the other half is organized in projects. The whole study lasts four years. After two-and-a-half year students choose a specialization. Before the choice is made students have several occasions in which they learn something about the possible fields of specialization. In the first and second year there are two modules about Industrial Automation. First there is a module on actuators, sensors and interfacing, later a module on production systems. Finally there is an Industrial Automation project. In this project groups of students get the assignment to develop the control for a scale model flexible automation cell or to develop a monitoring system for this cell. In the last year of their studies students participate in a larger Industrial Automation project, often with an assignment from Industry. Here also the possibility exists to join multidisciplinary projects (IPD; integrated product development).
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A description of our experiences with a model for education in innovative, interdisciplinary and international engineering. (Students from different (technical) disciplines in Higher Education are placed in industry for a period of eighteen months after completing two-and-a-half year of theoretical studies). They work in multi-disciplinary projects on different themes, in order to grow to fully equal employees in industry. Besides students, teachers and company employees participate in the projects. The involvement of other level students, both from University and from Vocational Education, is recommended. The experiments in practice give confidence in the succesful implementation of this model.
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This is a repository containing an agent-based model (code, data, documents and results) of Industrial Symbiosis Network implementation. The repository is related to the publication:Lange, K.P., Korevaar, G., Nikolic, I., Herder, P.M., 2021. Actor Behaviour and Robustness of Industrial Symbiosis Networks: An Agent-Based Modelling Approach, 2020:64:4. JASSS. https://doi.org/10.18564/JASSS.4635The purpose of the model is to explore the influence of actor behaviour, combined with environment and business model design, on the survival rates of Industrial Symbiosis Networks (ISN), and the cash flows of the agents. We define an ISN to be robust, when it is able to run for 10 years, without falling apart due to leaving agents.The model simulates the implementation of local waste exchange collaborations for compost production, through the ISN implementation stages of awareness, planning, negotiation, implementation, and evaluation.One central firm plays the role of waste processor in a local composting initiative. This firm negotiates with other firms to become a supplier of their organic residual streams. The waste suppliers in the model can decide to join the initiative, or to have the waste brought to the external waste incinerator. The focal point of the model are the company-level interactions during the implementation or ending of synergies.The model consists of three types of actors, waste suppliers, processor, and incinerators. The modeled waste supplier and processor are part of the ISN. In the model these agent types negotiate and evaluate the outcomes by means of the Theory of Planned Behavior. The modeled incinerator is part of the external environment. This agent acts as the infinite sink of all waste flows, taking up op the waste that is not used in the local composting initiative.
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Currently, many novel innovative materials and manufacturing methods are developed in order to help businesses for improving their performance, developing new products, and also implement more sustainability into their current processes. For this purpose, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been very successful in the fabrication of complex shape products, that cannot be manufactured by conventional approaches, and also using novel high-performance materials with more sustainable aspects. The application of bioplastics and biopolymers is growing fast in the 3D printing industry. Since they are good alternatives to petrochemical products that have negative impacts on environments, therefore, many research studies have been exploring and developing new biopolymers and 3D printing techniques for the fabrication of fully biobased products. In particular, 3D printing of smart biopolymers has attracted much attention due to the specific functionalities of the fabricated products. They have a unique ability to recover their original shape from a significant plastic deformation when a particular stimulus, like temperature, is applied. Therefore, the application of smart biopolymers in the 3D printing process gives an additional dimension (time) to this technology, called four-dimensional (4D) printing, and it highlights the promise for further development of 4D printing in the design and fabrication of smart structures and products. This performance in combination with specific complex designs, such as sandwich structures, allows the production of for example impact-resistant, stress-absorber panels, lightweight products for sporting goods, automotive, or many other applications. In this study, an experimental approach will be applied to fabricate a suitable biopolymer with a shape memory behavior and also investigate the impact of design and operational parameters on the functionality of 4D printed sandwich structures, especially, stress absorption rate and shape recovery behavior.
Denim Democracy from the Alliance for Responsible Denim (ARD) is an interactive exhibition that celebrates the journey and learning of ARD members, educates visitors about sustainable denim and highlights how companies collaborate together to achieve results. Through sight, sound and tactile sensations, the visitor experiences and fully engages sustainable denim production. The exhibition launches in October 2018 in Amsterdam and travels to key venues and locations in the Netherlands until April 2019. As consumers, we love denim but the denim industry, like other sub-sectors in the textile, apparel and footwear industries, faces many complex sustainability challenges and has been criticized for its polluting and hazardous production practices. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project brought leading denim brands, suppliers and stakeholders together to collectively address these issues and take initial steps towards improving the ecological sustainability impact of denim production. Sustainability challenges are considered very complex and economically undesirable for individual companies to address alone. In denim, small and medium sized denim firms face specific challenges, such as lower economies of scale and lower buying power to affect change in practices. There is great benefit in combining denim companies' resources and knowledge so that collective experimentation and learning can lift the sustainability standards of the industry and lead to the development of common standards and benchmarks on a scale that matters. If meaningful, transformative industrial change is to be made, then it calls for collaboration between denim industry stakeholders that goes beyond supplier-buyer relations and includes horizontal value chain collaboration of competing large and small denim brands. However collaboration between organizations, and especially between competitors, is highly complex and prone to failure. The research behind the Alliance for Responsible Denim project asked a central research question: how do competitors effectively collaborate together to create common, industry standards on resource use and benchmarks for improved ecological sustainability? To answer this question, we used a mixed-method, action research approach. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project mobilized and facilitated denim brands to collectively identify ways to reduce the use of water and chemicals in denim production and then aided them to implement these practices individually in their respective firms.
Collaborative networks for sustainability are emerging rapidly to address urgent societal challenges. By bringing together organizations with different knowledge bases, resources and capabilities, collaborative networks enhance information exchange, knowledge sharing and learning opportunities to address these complex problems that cannot be solved by organizations individually. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparel sector, where examples of collaborative networks for sustainability are plenty, for example Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals, and the Fair Wear Foundation. Companies like C&A and H&M but also smaller players join these networks to take their social responsibility. Collaborative networks are unlike traditional forms of organizations; they are loosely structured collectives of different, often competing organizations, with dynamic membership and usually lack legal status. However, they do not emerge or organize on their own; they need network orchestrators who manage the network in terms of activities and participants. But network orchestrators face many challenges. They have to balance the interests of diverse companies and deal with tensions that often arise between them, like sharing their innovative knowledge. Orchestrators also have to “sell” the value of the network to potential new participants, who make decisions about which networks to join based on the benefits they expect to get from participating. Network orchestrators often do not know the best way to maintain engagement, commitment and enthusiasm or how to ensure knowledge and resource sharing, especially when competitors are involved. Furthermore, collaborative networks receive funding from grants or subsidies, creating financial uncertainty about its continuity. Raising financing from the private sector is difficult and network orchestrators compete more and more for resources. When networks dissolve or dysfunction (due to a lack of value creation and capture for participants, a lack of financing or a non-functioning business model), the collective value that has been created and accrued over time may be lost. This is problematic given that industrial transformations towards sustainability take many years and durable organizational forms are required to ensure ongoing support for this change. Network orchestration is a new profession. There are no guidelines, handbooks or good practices for how to perform this role, nor is there professional education or a professional association that represents network orchestrators. This is urgently needed as network orchestrators struggle with their role in governing networks so that they create and capture value for participants and ultimately ensure better network performance and survival. This project aims to foster the professionalization of the network orchestrator role by: (a) generating knowledge, developing and testing collaborative network governance models, facilitation tools and collaborative business modeling tools to enable network orchestrators to improve the performance of collaborative networks in terms of collective value creation (network level) and private value capture (network participant level) (b) organizing platform activities for network orchestrators to exchange ideas, best practices and learn from each other, thereby facilitating the formation of a professional identity, standards and community of network orchestrators.
