The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global health and humanitarian crisis that catastrophically affects many industries. To control the disease spread and restore normal lives, mass vaccination is considered the most effective way. However, the sustainable last-mile cold chain logistics operations of COVID-19 vaccines is a complex short-term planning problem that faces many practical challenges, ...

The decade of big data has emerged in recent years, which has led to entering the era of intelligent transportation. One of the main challenges to deploying intelligent transportation is dealing with winter roads in cold climate countries. Different operations can be used to protect the road from ice and snow, such as spreading chemicals (here salt) on the road surface. Using salt for de-icing and ...

The recent advancement of digitalization and information and communication technology (ICT) has not only shifted the manufacturing paradigm towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, namely Industry 4.0, but also provided opportunities for a smart logistics transformation. Despite studies have focused on improving the smartness, connectivity, and autonomy of isolated logistics operations with a primary ...

In order to optimize the wind turbine operation in ice prone cold regions, it is important to better understand the ice accretion process and how it affects the wind turbine performance. In this paper, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based 2D and 3D numerical techniques are used to simulate the airflow/droplet behaviour and resultant ice accretion on a 300 kW wind turbine blade. The aim is to ...

Given the importance of human centricity, resilience, and sustainability, the emerging concept of Industry 5.0 has pushed forward the research frontier of the technology-focused Industry 4.0 to a smart and harmonious socio-economic transition driven by both humans and technologies, where the role of the human in the technological transformation is predominantly focused on. Several studies discuss ...

As a disruptive technology, additive manufacturing (AM) is revolutionizing manufacturing supply chains. AM consists of producing 3-dimensional objects through layer-by-layer addition of compound material based on digital models. The scheduling of additive manufacturing operations differs from traditional (i.e., subtractive and injection molding) manufacturing with a single production run involving ...

The prediction of efficiency scores for winter road maintenance (WRM) is a challenging and serious issue in countries with cold climates. While effective and efficient WRM is a key contributor to maximizing road transportation safety and minimizing costs and environmental impacts, it has not yet been included in intelligent prediction methods. Therefore, this study aims to design a WRM ...

Smart monitoring plays a principal role in the intelligent automation of manufacturing systems. Advanced data collection technologies, like sensors, have been widely used to facilitate real-time data collection. Computationally efficient analysis of the operating systems, however, remains relatively underdeveloped and requires more attention. Inspired by the capabilities of signal analysis and ...

Additive manufacturing is a rapidly evolving manufacturing technology bringing numerous and wide opportunities for the design team involved in the process by creating intricate and customized products with saving labor, time, and other expenses. Innovative AM methods and numerous practical applications in aerospace, automotive, medical, energy, and other industries have been developed and commercialized ...

Since December 2020, the vaccines from several manufacturers, e.g., Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, etc., have been approved for mass vaccination to control the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused more than 100 million infections and 2.4 million deaths. These vaccines are produced and transported in large quantities to suffice the needs of several countries. Before arriving at the end-users, the vaccines ...