Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the development of intelligent agriculture (IA) in China, which is an important tendency in advancing the agricultural productivity in the coming era. Design/methodology/approach Considering publications as featured evidence of an emerging phenomenon, the authors review publications of IA. Specifically, the use of term, definition and examples of IA, both English and Chinese literature, and government policies of China are all reviewed. Additionally, the authors use basic statistical and thematic analysis to help synthesizing the literature and drawing conclusions. Findings from various sources of publications supplement with each other. Findings IA in China has shown three main characteristics: unbalanced geographic distribution, an early stage of the trend and attention mainly focused on a limited range of technologies. Compared with the development of IA in other countries, such as Japan, India and the USA, featured with diversified properties, similarities and differences of IA development in China and in other countries are also discussed. Originality/value This general review contributes by uncovering the emergence of IA, identifying its general definition with a comprehensive set of practical examples and pointing out the present characteristics and problems of IA development in China. The general review provides a necessary summary for the policy makers and researchers to have a systematic understanding of IA and better promote its future development. At last, the paper calls for a process-based strategy with different goals at different stages, a sustainable mechanism coordinated by multiple participants, and a localized consideration for relevant policy making.
This study revisits the Guitang Group, one of the best known industrial symbiosis cases in the sugar industry. Our goal is to offer an evolutionary understanding of industrial symbiosis at the Guitang Group. This article focuses on the organizational boundary change of the Guitang Group over time, and acknowledges this process as one of the seven industrial symbiosis dynamics proposed by Boons et al. We offer a historical view of the critical forces behind Guitang's industrial symbiosis evolution since the 1950s; particularly how these changes were influenced by broader economic and institutional contexts of importance in China. These insights include the role of institutionalized research and development (R&D) as well as technology-oriented leadership as driving forces for Guitang's innovation, particularly since the 1990s, when greater efficiency and productivity were emphasized, leading to the establishment of further symbiotic relationships in the company's evolutionary process. As a result, the Guitang Group grew from 2 internal to 11 internal and external symbiotic exchanges and is now a conglomeration with more than 3000 employees generating more than 1 billion RMB (150 million USD) in revenue annually.
This study draws a holistic view of the supply chain with three service strategies – namely, after-sales service; maintenance, repair and operations; and the product-service system – by analysing over 71 articles in this field. In this investigation, the content analysis is used to scrutinize the research to establish the knowledge, reveal the research opportunities and propose research strategies. The supply chain for product-service system depends more heavily on the implementation of the cooperation, collaboration and integration principles in operation. However, a complete analysis reveals that those crucial principles did not embody in current literature. Current research also failed to discuss the service operation decisions by modelling the intricate relations among them in a broad product-service supply chain context. Thus, the future research directions include developing service demand forecasting models; combining the time-series methods and the causal methods; establishing service resource planning models; addressing the relations between service deliverables, service capacity and the service resource; and strengthening the quantitative evaluation of the product-service supply chain performance with a systemic view. Moreover, by addressing the principles of cooperation, collaboration and integration, the added values of this review are the proposed research strategies for integrated forecasting of product services, integrated product-service resource allocation and scheduling, and systematic performance evaluation of the product-service supply chain. The findings and the proposed research strategies develop an in-depth understanding of product-service supply chain applications and serve as a basis for future research.
By-product exchange; By-product synergy; Ecoindustrial parks; Resource synergy Definitions Industrial symbiosis refers to a process of connecting flows among industrial actors through (1) use of secondary material, water, and energy resources and/or (2) utility and service sharing across a network toward net sustainability outcomes (Boons et al. 2017). Industrial symbiosis is one of the founding notions within the field of industrial ecology. It builds upon the notion of biological symbiotic relationships in nature, where species exchange resources in a mutually beneficial manner. For industries, collaboration and synergistic opportunities offered by geographic proximity are key to successful symbiotic relationships (Chertow 2000). Concrete realizations of industrial symbiosis include the development of eco-industrial parks and self-organized sustainable industrial ecosystems (Chertow 2007).
To effectively control soil erosion, three hierarchies of the National Soil and Water Conservation Regionalization Scheme have been established in China. However, the scheme has its limits, which can be summarized by two points: first, the tertiary hierarchy functional region exhibits obvious heterogeneity; second, the ecosystem function does not influence the regionalization scheme results during the process of regionalization. To enhance the guidance of the regionalization, a new indicator system included soil erosion risk, soil erosion intensity and ecosystem service value was developed to explore the subdivision of the tertiary hierarchy functional region. Moreover a scheme for the subdivision of the tertiary hierarchy functional region was formed. In this scheme, the central Hunan hilly soil conservation and living environmental protection section was divided into three subregions: Luoxiao-Xuefeng Mountain high ecological value section, Xiangjiang middle and downstream medium ecological value section, and Hengyang Basin low ecological value section. Specifically, with regard to soil and water conservation regionalization, the concept of subregions within the tertiary hierarchy-based functional region was proposed and the new indicator system that highlighted ecosystem functions was applied for the first time on a regional scales; this method provides a new way of thinking about other regionalization schemes.
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