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With the use of digital innovations including artificial intelligence (AI), the manufacturing business has been reshaped by the fourth industrial revolution. Yet, since rescheduling determinations are unpredictable and random mechanisms exist, controlling enhanced production scheduling still presents challenges. So, this study presents an innovative digital technologies-driven scheduling mechanism leveraging AI to tackle the difficulties of rescheduling in the aspect of production scheduling. A genetic-assisted beetle swarm optimization (GBSO) strategy is introduced for the flexible job shop problem (FJSP) with sequence-dependent configuration and constrained dual supplies. Then, rescheduling sequences are discovered using the support vector machine (SVM) approach. The Python environment is utilized for testing the suggested procedures, and the effectiveness of these approaches is examined in terms of scheduling latencies and the rate of rescheduling. This research demonstrated that the developed methodologies achieved the best performance in rescheduling frequency and scheduling latencies, thereby enhancing the manufacturing sector operations.

In this paper, we examine how the minimum wage affects firm productivity growth with a representative Chinese manufacturing data. Instrumental variable estimation is employed to deal with the potential endogeneity problem between minimum wage and productivity growth. We find that with a 1% increase in the minimum wage, the productivity growth rate on average decreases by 0.299%. Overall, we find that variations in the minimum wage have a highly heterogeneous effect on productivity growth across regions, time and ownerships. To deal with the continuous increase in the minimum wage, firms will use more capital and intermediate input to replace labor.

This paper analyzes exports of multinational corporations (MNCs) in Vietnamese manufacturing, highlighting the disproportionately large contribution of heavily-foreign MNCs with foreign ownership shares of 90% or more. The exports of heavily-foreign manufacturing MNCs are substantial and concentrated in apparel, footwear, and electric machinery-related industries. Export propensities also tend to be markedly higher in heavily-foreign MNCs than in other MNCs, and these differences generally persist after controlling for the effects industry affiliation, firm size, vintage, and capital intensity. There is a large variation in the relationship between ownership shares and export propensities among industries and years, however.

The paper attempts to analyze the spillover effect of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) across Indian manufacturing industries. Foreign presence by way of FDI brings new channels of technology spillover to the domestic industrial firms in the form of enhanced efficiency and diffusion of knowledge in the long-run. By carrying out Pedroni cointegration tests, the analysis tries to provide a long-run relationship between endogenous variables and explanatory variables, pertaining to technology spillovers across Indian manufacturing industries. We find that technology spillovers are relatively higher in industries like food products, textiles, chemicals, drugs and pharmaceuticals and non-metallic mineral products.

In this paper, we study the total factor productivity (TFP) of manufacturing industries in 22 Indian states for the periods 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 using industry data from ASI database. We estimate TFP by ordinary least squares using cross-sectional data. For correcting potential endogeneity, we apply two-stage least-squares approach using intermediate inputs as instruments. Our results show that despite a faster growth in the industries in the sample period, there appear wide regional disparities in the TFP in most industries assessed. We note that low-productivity states display a higher variation in TFP across industries than high-productivity states. Our results also confirm the dominance of capital-intensive techniques in Indian manufacturing. In addition, more importantly, there appears to be no sign of change in elasticity of inputs over the sample period.

This paper examines ownership-related wage differentials for four types of workers employed by medium–large (20 or more employees) wholly foreign multinational enterprises (WFs), joint-venture multinationals (JVs), state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and domestic private firms in Vietnamese manufacturing in 2009. When all sample firms were combined, unconditional JV-private and WF-private wage differentials were 106–124% for managers, 78–87% for professionals and technicians, 56–68% for clerical and support workers and 22–48% for production workers. Correspondingly, conditional wage differentials which account for influences of worker education and sex, in addition to firm capital intensity and size, were smaller and usually significant: 72–78% for managers, 32–36% for professionals and technicians, 23–28% for clerical and support workers and 15–16% for production workers. SOE-private differentials were all much smaller. There was substantial variation at the industry level, but conditional WF-private differentials were positive and significant for most occupations and industries and JV-private differentials were also positive and significant in most industries for highly paid managers or professionals and technicians, but not for lowly paid clerical and support workers or production workers. Most industry-level SOE-private differentials were also insignificant.

While China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is widely considered as an attempt to reshape the global geo-political landscape through its massive investment/engagement in capital-intensive infrastructure, an often-neglected topic is the performance of Chinese-funded firms in manufacturing sector. Therefore, this paper sought to examine the efficiency levels of Chinese manufacturing firms in Malaysia. By using firm-level data supplied by Malaysia’s Department of Statistics, this study employs Data Envelopment Analysis to examine the efficiency levels of Chinese manufacturing firms in comparison with local and other foreign firms in 2010 and 2015. The results show that Chinese manufacturing firms show higher efficiency levels than local and foreign firms in 2010 and 2015, implying that these firms have the potential to transfer technology and share managerial skills to local firms. However, the efficiency levels of Chinese firms deteriorated from 2010 to 2015, suggesting that firms’ relocations decision may have been driven by distortions created by incentives and other supports provided by the Chinese government rather than by firms’ efforts to sustain or raise efficiency levels. The findings suggest that Chinese firms have to be careful in making strategic decision to relocate operations abroad to ensure that government initiatives are in sync with firm-level performance.

The reallocation of resources from low- to high-productivity firms can generate large aggregate productivity gains. The paper uses data from the Malaysian manufacturing censuses of 2005 and 2010 to measure the country’s hypothetical productivity gains if all misallocation within industries are removed. Comparing the results across the two census waves, we conclude that efficiency gaps (that is, the degree of misallocation) in Malaysia have narrowed by one-fifth. The efficiency gaps, however, appear to be over 40%, indicating a substantial room for improvement. This is important, particularly if total factor productivity growth is expected to support future economic growth. The analysis in this paper accounts only for resource misallocation within sectors. There may be other, possibly large, resource misallocation across sectors. Closing those gaps could boost total factor productivity and gross domestic product growth even further.

Industrial transfer is an important driving force for competitiveness promotion of the manufacturing at Zhejiang. Based on the theoretical model established, effects of industrial transfer on different dimensions of competitiveness were empirically analyzed from aspects of the direction and the hierarchy. The results showed that it was positively related to the industrial capacity competitiveness and the earning competitiveness, negatively related to the external competitiveness and not related to the internal competitiveness, with effect on the intensive being significantly stronger than that on the extensive. At the same time, there was breakage in transmission path of industry transfer on promotion of competitiveness of the manufacturing.

Based on the stakeholder theory, we posit that firms’ innovation, as a strategic choice, is determined by not only firms’ resources but also their pressures from different stakeholders and relationship with the government. Using a dataset of 3,444 firms in seven ASEAN countries, we find that firms’ innovative outputs are positively influenced by export orientation and fierce competition but restrained by the presence of foreign investment. In addition, while strengthening the relationship with government facilitates, the chance to create some types of innovation, could magnify or dampen the effects of those pressures on firms’ innovation. Our findings have useful implications for the firms’ managers to accumulate and spend resources to build up a strong capacity for innovation. For the governments in ASEAN region, they should focus on improving the institutional quality and providing incentives for foreign investments that only bring advanced technologies and spillover effects.

Energy consumption of numerical control (NC) workshop has lots of characteristics, such as hierarchy, multi-sources and time-varying. These characteristics make the modeling and evaluation of energy consumption in NC workshop very difficult. In this paper, a novel hierarchical model of the energy consumption in NC workshop is presented. Then, the calculation methods of energy efficiency in each layer are given. Furthermore, the acquisition method of the energy consumption data which is easily implemented is put forward and an experiment in NC workshop was made to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed energy consumption model. The experimental results showed that the model cannot only describe the energy consumption effectively but also provide a way to identify the bottleneck of energy consumption in the workshop.

Manufacturing product innovation is increasingly showing a green, low-carbon, systematic ecological innovation development trend. In this paper, using CiteSpace analysis method and assisted by BICOMB2 software, the literature of CNKI (1992–2019) and WOS (1995–2019) database was analyzed to construct the knowledge mapping of manufacturing product innovation, and the research findings were as follows: (i) The research is mainly concentrated in China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries. The number of Chinese scholars’ research is the largest, but the American scholars’ research is the first in novelty and prospective, and its sigma value is as high as 294.17. (ii) In recent years, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Xi’an University of Technology, Hunan University and other research institutions have recently produced more research results on product innovation. Among them, Shanghai Jiaotong University can be ranked first. (ii) “Green product innovation” and “product innovation performance” can continue to be the hot spots for future manufacturing product innovation and development.

This paper examines the usefulness of support services to manufacturing microenterprises as perceived by the microenterprise owners. In Kenya, there is an emphasis on financial support services at the expense of other services but evidence of their usefulness to the survival and maintenance of manufacturing microenterprises is scarce. Convenience sampling was used to select 172 manufacturing microenterprises that had received any kind of support. Data was collected through researcher-administered questionnaires and analysed using frequencies, percentages and chi-square tests. Results revealed that though financial support was utilised by almost two thirds of the enterprises, over three quarters of the owners did not perceive it as useful, mainly due to the little amount of money given as credit. Training was considered useful to microenterprises, especially in the areas of record keeping and marketing. Social networks, in terms of ROSCAs, friends and relatives, were the major sources of support for manufacturing microenterprises.

The causes of complex manufacturing systems' failures are preliminarily analyzed. The techniques of creating highly reliable manufacturing systems are then discussed. It has been shown that modern safety and quality analysis conducted from early design phase to operation and maintenance will enhance the reliability of complex manufacturing systems. In addition, optimization between human operators and machines reduces confusion and increases the reliability of such systems. Employing teamwork in all aspects of the organizational systems will enhance the productivity of complex systems. Moreover, there should also exist a unique and systemic mechanism which integrates the performance of the organizational systems with those of technical (engineering) and nontechnical (people) subsystems.

Disparate industry bodies across the planet use pallets for storing large and heavy objects. Pallets provide an assurance of safe handling of material (cargo) and storage of material in a damage-free environment. In this work, an attempt has been made to analyze and investigate making pallets out of ULTEM 9805 using the latest additive techniques (FDM). The maximum deflections and von Mises stresses are analyzed for the disparate boundary conditions indicating the possible alternatives or loads to be used. Study of surface (morphology) and characteristics was done in order to establish the relationship between pallet surface and its application. The factors of load, maximum and minimum values, ascertained in each stage are 168.15, 522.22, 215.31 and 316.79 kPa as well as 18.77, 6.7, 1.2 and 35.84 kPa for the floor, rack, forklift and conveyor load supports, respectively. A cross-hatched design causes a rise in capacity of the shear factor owing to the length of the span being in correlation with rectilinear fill. The filament of surface, made of ULTEM 9805, exhibits a level of roughness of 43.14 μm on the pallet surface indicating better holding capacity and grip. A 9^∘ peak shift is comprehended with respect to XRD, indicating a compressive residual factor measured at 76.47 MPa.

The article deals with A-Bio Pharma and two of its key services.

Nuevolution enter drug discovery collaboration with The Institute of Cancer Research and Cancer Research Technology.

Covidien launches advanced medical training and education center in India.

PharmaCell to acquire cell therapy production facility from TiGenix.

University Hospital of Iceland and Kerecis to collaborate on tissue-regeneration research.

AstraZeneca completes the acquisition of Bristol-Myers Squibb share of global diabetes alliance.

Ergomed and Ferrer to develop Lorediplon for insomnia.

Lupus research organizations welcome big-science push to drive new therapies for lupus patients.

AbbVie expands manufacturing presence with US$320 million investment in Singapore.

California Stem Cell partners on CIRM grant to develop transplantable 3D retinas.

Asia's first under-one-roof nutritional research center set up in Singapore.

China Biologic receives GMP certification at its Guizhou Taibang facility.

Hua Medicine's novel glucokinase activator reports positive Phase 1a data for diabetes and initiates Phase 1b trials.

QIAGEN launches QuantiFERON-TB gold in-tube in China to aid tuberculosis control.

AirWare Labs expands manufacturing and sales into China.

Global Partners SillaJen, Transgene and Lee's Pharmaceutical confirm clinical development plan for Pexa-Vec.

Gyros and Tekon Biotech sign distribution agreement.

AstraZeneca and Shenzhen University Health Science Center to collaborate on chronic kidney disease.

Bayer Healthcare to significantly increase production capacity in China.

NEWS – Canbridge Life Sciences and EUSA Pharma form agreement to commercialize prescription medical device in China.

NEWS – miacom diagnostics GmbH teams up with Fosun Diagnostics to bring diagnostic arrays to Chinese and Asian markets.

NEWS – Medtronic and Lifetech Scientific Corporation expand strategic alliance to bring pacemakers to China.

NEWS – Wearable device for the early detection of common diabetes-related neurological condition.

NEWS – Herbalife plans expansion of manufacturing capabilities in China.

NEWS – Cook Medical enrolls first patient in drug eluting peripheral stent clinical study in China.

NEWS – Provectus Signs Memorandum of Understanding with Sinopharm-China State Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry, and Sinopharm A-THINK Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

NEWS – Scientists develop new high yield allele to improve rice production.

RESEARCH INSTITUTES – The Peking University Center of Bioinformatics.

GE Healthcare Life Sciences take part in Life-Saving, Olivier Loeillot (GM of Bioprocess Asia).

Cennerv Pharma: A Company that Fights Along with Mental Illnesses.

How Can Cord Blood be Used to Save Lives? Life-Saving Mission of SCBB: An Interview with Dr. William Hwang.

An Interview with Mr. Stephen Ooi, Senior Executive Advisor Zimmer Biomet Asia Pacific.

APACMed – Serving Unmet Healthcare Needs in Asia Pacific, Fredrik Nyberg (CEO of APACMed).

Vaccination, One of the Solutions to Prevent Dengue Infection.

MonaLisa Touch^® Advanced Laser Treatment for Better Life Quality.