Other Projects

Project 1: Designing the Authentication Platform based on the Patented 3D Printing Digital Watermarking Technology and Blockchain Technology 

Programme of research

This is funded by the Li Dak Sum Innovation Fellowship. The past decades have witnessed the rapid development of the 3D printing (3DP) industry and the increasing attention for intellectual property rights (IPs) protection. The IPR industry has long suffered from the time consumed to authorising the rights, the difficulties of realising the profit and the low efficiency of protecting the rights. Like the 3DP design, the digital data is characterised as easy to tamper and lose, making it more difficult to store as evidence for IPR. The co-creation, sharing and co-ownership of 3DP further intensified the difficulties of obtaining evidence and accountability for IPR protection. Blockchain can help and have been helping in restoring the evidence of IPR, but the application of blockchain technology for intellectual property protection is still limited.

This project intends to use blockchain technology to build a 3D printing authentication platform and industry ecosystem based on the patented 3DP watermarking technology and develop several supporting technologies like 3DP digital model encryption algorithm compilation technology, 3DP entity computing visual recognition technology and Blockchain cloud storage technology.

This project will provide a 3DP authentication service platform to protect the IPs of 3DP products in ways that are easy-to-use, accurate and worry-free, which will not only fill the industrial market gap with a platform that covering multiple product authentication services but also help to promote the standardised development of the 3DP industry and the process of national digital asset IPR protection.

Project 2: Unified Information System Based Supply Chain Integration and Optimisation for Intermodal Transportation: A Study on Ningbo Port

Programme of research

This project aims to respond to the "Belt and Road" initiative. Starting from the research on the acceptance of system diffusion model and the port operation data optimisation model, it establishes an intelligent one-stop electronic booking and tracking platform for intermodal transportation that combing maritime and land transportation to realize the supply chain Integration and optimisation. Regarding establishing the one-stop maritime and land logistics booking and tracking system, it can combine port competitiveness, container throughput forecast, and unified logistics standards to help simplify booking and tracking of domestic and foreign maritime and land logistics industries programs. In accordance with the integration of the evaluation system and diffusion model of the maritime-land electronic logistics information system, a theoretical framework is established to integrate the existing model. On this basis, the environment and relevant factors of the maritime- land supply chain will be fully considered. Moreover, the background of maritime-land intermodal transportation with the existing evaluation and diffusion theory for the construction, integration and optimization of the integrated system are combined. In terms of the analysis of the competitiveness of the hinterland and the forecast of port throughput, by using the established market competitiveness evaluation model of the hinterland under the new market environment, suggestions are put forward for Ningbo Zhoushan Port to improve its competitiveness. Ningbo Zhoushan port will be further promoted to informatization, diversification and individuation, and endowed with the role of a hub gateway for international maritime transportation.

Project 3: Impact mechanism and strategy of supply chain resilience based on digital platform in the COVID-19 context

Programme of research

COVID-19 has seriously affected the macro-economy and brought great challenges to the sustained competitiveness of the industrial supply chain in China. Supply chain resilience emphasises that enterprises can respond to the emergencies that lead to volatile fluctuation and even interruption of the supply chain (e.g. COVID-19) via strategic optimisation, flexible organisation, recover quickly, and operate stably. In the COVID-19 context, numerous supply chain digital platforms have played an essential role in fighting disease, ensuring people’s well-being, stabilising the economy and promoting employment. However, there are still a series of problems in the digital platform, including inadequate supervision, impaired functions, insufficient integration, information island and fuzzy profit model. These problems have severely hindered adopting digital platforms to improve supply chain resilience and reduce enterprise risk. In this case, this project firstly investigates practice status and digital platform application of supply chain enterprises through literature survey and field survey. Secondly, we will clarify the impact mechanism of digital platforms on enterprise supply chain resilience, i.e. the role and function of digital platforms in supply chain processes and different subjects. Based on these analyses, this project will propose the application strategy of digital platforms to improve supply chain resilience.

Project 4: Research on the operation optimisation and application of the decision support system for the reusable packaging sharing platform

Programme of research

In supply chain operation, packaging operation is at the terminal of production logistics and the starting point of social logistics. Traditional disposable logistics packaging products, as the basic guarantee and support products throughout the supply chain, cause a large amount of waste of packaging resources and environmental pollution, which restricts the standardised operation of logistics and circulation efficiency. Therefore, as an important part of the low-carbon supply chain operation practice framework, the promotion, application and systematic operation and management of reusable packaging has been the focus of national and industry level. However, there are three main challenges in the reusable packaging operation and management in the industry: redundant and repetitive reusable packaging business operation processes and insufficient digitisation; diverse order requirements and uncertain market demand for reusable packaging, which leads to mismatch between supply and demand of reusable packaging, resulting in increased risk of supply chain breakage; and lack of incentive decision-making for revenue distribution in the systematic operation of the reusable packaging platform. 

Based on the above practical challenges, this project will build an emerging reusable packaging shared service decision support system based on the results of previous research, and propose a set of digital process reengineering and shared service function reorganisation architecture. Among other things, it will model the demand and recycling volume of the customer's reusable packaging appliances, and propose a collaborative scheduling operation of the integrated shared service platform and an optimisation strategy for the platform's revenue distribution. This will reasonably improve the platform's order fulfilment capacity, profitability, reusable packaging equipment use efficiency and platform logistics system operation efficiency, giving full play to the advantages of reusable packaging in the circular economy and low-carb