Search

Organizations seeking to improve their performance, like Corporate Social Responsibility targets, face a key organisational design challenge. Designing the key components of the organization and their layout will have major impact on performances, and needs thus a robust design process. Organisation theory provides several models and methods to answer that need. Yet this design process has not been confronted to design methods literature, such as systematic design. The aim of this paper is to provide a synthesis of multiple theoretical elements coming from organization sciences, confronted with a classical engineering design model, to reveal similarities, differences and lacks of current literature on organization design. Our analysis of the available literature on organisation theory, organisation design and change management showed that this design process is close to systematic design, but we also highlighted several breaks in the design process, such as the lack of functional approach.

Product-service system (PSS) innovation is acknowledged as a promising way to achieve sustainability through better exploitation of given resources. Nevertheless, PSS implementation is also described as increasing failure risk for companies. Despite that authors have identified paradoxical situations as a source of failure while implementing PSS, few researches have focused on understanding the origin of these paradoxes. In this review, we aim at understanding how methodologies cope with the challenges of designing PSS throughout the complete company perimeter as well as how to manage interactions within this perimeter to avoid potential paradoxes and thus failure. To do so, we will rely on the business model innovation literature and, more specifically, the business model canvas to define and discretize the company perimeter. As for the interactions and their imbrication regarding paradoxes appearance, we will refer to Putnam et al. theory to gain deeper understanding of paradoxes-appearance mechanism. Our bibliometric strategy brought us to analyze 14 international articles via our graph, enabling us to highlight that some poles’ interactions during design are partly unaddressed, resulting potentially in the creation of tension sources and therefore potential paradoxes and ultimately implementation failure. Considering this, future research works could focus on defining all significant interactions to consider while designing a PSS as well as the typology of answers to engage while facing tensions. In that respect, these works could provide actionable solutions to lower PSS implementation-failure risk, thus benefiting those who wish to achieve better sustainability through PSS.

Through the decades, production planning activities have sought to balance market requirements and the optimal use of available resources in different industries. In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, this study aims to disclose the purposes of production planning activities. To this end, this paper provides a literature review of the existing offer of production planning applications over the past 10 years. The authors propose a framework based on the objectives, scope and resources. The research conducted demonstrates that due to the uncertainty of the external environment, research propositions on production planning are focused on shorter planning horizons. The research also indicates that in order to face disruptions, production planning applications are mainly addressed to balance resource utilization. Ultimately, the study shows that a considerable part of innovative production planning applications have not yet been applied to real industrial cases, and moreover, they remain experimental propositions with no further use.

Recent advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine design have resulted in induction of strong CD4 T-cell proliferative and polyfunctional cytokine responses, which are also characteristic for long-term non-progressing (LTNP) HIV-infected individuals. However, limited information is available on the persistence of these responses after infection. Results from studies in non-human primates indicate that vaccine-induced immune responses are partially maintained upon viral infection and differ from the responses seen in non-vaccinated animals that typically progress to disease. However, it is unclear how these partially preserved responses compare to immune responses that are acquired naturally by LTNP animals. In this study, immune-response profiles were compared between vaccinated animals that, upon SHIV89.6p challenge, became infected but were able to control virus replication, and a group of animals having spontaneous control of this viral infection. Both groups were found to develop very similar immune responses with regard to induction of CD4 and CD8 T-cell polyfunctional cytokine responses, proliferative capacity and cytotoxic capacity, as measured by a standard 51Cr release assay and more direct ex vivo and in vivo CTL assays. Hence, vaccinated animals that become infected, but control infection, appear to establish immune responses that are similar to those elicited by long-term non-progressors.

The authors describe the production and characterization of a collection of Arabidopsis lines each carrying a transposed Ac (trAc) element. A total of 507 lines were obtained following germinal transpositions of a single Ac element located on the upper portion of chromosome III. Southern analysis revealed that up to 90% of the lines in this collection harbour distinct insertions of Ac in the Arabidopsis genome. As previous studies on the behaviour of Ac in Arabidopsis have indicated that approximately two out of three transposition events occur to linked loci, the authors hypothesized that this collection could be of great use in isolating insertional mutants for genes located in the vicinity of the donor locus. PCR and phenotypic screens were performed to identify mutations in five loci located within a 40 cm region of chromosome III centered on the donor locus. Molecular analyses confirmed the presence of germinal insertions of Ac in three of the loci (NPTII, ABI3 and EST #210A22). At a fourth locus (AtDMC1), despite the absence of a germinal insertion, one line in which somatic insertions occurred regularly was identified and may be of use in isolating a germinal insertion. This collection of trAc lines constitutes a useful complement to the existing collection of T-DNA insertion lines and will soon be made available through the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center.

International audience; In order to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive international context, French companies are forced to follow one or more of various possible routes: relocating some of the activities, optimizing the design and / or production process, or innovate technologically. When they choose to develop new technologies, it is advisable to seek outside expertise in different areas. Thus they must exchange and create knowledge in partnership with other companies. But in order to control and integrate this future technology, we support that the acquisition and the capitalization of the technical training, during the process of innovation, are of primary importance. This article demonstrates that the construction of this knowledge base can be achieved only by formalizing close and rigorous collaboration. To do this, we propose a model of the collaborative process, meant for the leaders of innovative projects to support design.

International audience; Rapid prototyping machines are becoming faster at manufacturing machine tools. The processes of quality assurance impose the qualification of the production devices. A procedure and a test part are proposed for that purpose; intended for the family of processes of point-by-point layer manufacturing. Existing test parts only permit benchmarking and comparisons between machines: their capacity can be evaluated, but the test part analysis does not make it possible to establish the link between noted defects and their causes. The proposed process and test part permit the identification of the defects and whether their origins are machine or material linked. This paper describes the approach used to design the test part. Some preliminary measures were made on a test part, in order to discuss procedure and measurements.

International audience; Facing the increasing complexity of the product design area, (reduction of cycle times, introduction of simultaneous engineering, introduction of digital mock-up, ... ) a research department which wants to define a rapid prototyping process is confronted to the problem of the tools' choice. Therefore, we will propose in this article, a method allowing to conceive such a process. In a first chapter, we present the rapid prototyping area in the product design environment, in a second chapter we will propose our method illustrated by an industrial case.