We live in a technology driven era where each day new gadgets improve the way we live our lives. Many resources are being spent on building these devices that often turn obsolete overnight. Taking into account that these electronics have a long-term impact on the environment, a waste management system must be embedded in the electronic product lifecycle. In this paper, we propose a monitoring system for recycling batteries from electronic equipment and devices. This solution covers specific waste management issues to manage and reduce battery waste and to recover valuable materials and components. A solution for the continuous monitoring of each battery waste container is also proposed. The solution involves the storage of all information regarding the recycling process, such as pickup date and time, collector’s name, quantity, and location. The research is also extended for smartphone usage. This is an important feature for collectors who need to access data in real time from any location. The mobile application directly reads the weight of battery waste, automatically saves the date and time, and stores the location along with any other useful information.

Given the significant role of startups in the wellbeing of the economy and considering that more than half of the existing startups either work or have activities related to the IT field, in the current paper we have proposed a model meant to aid IT startups in their development process and in achieving customer satisfaction while ensuring the quality of deliverables. The proposed model has been applied and tested on IT startups and the results have been disseminated in the course of the paper. The need for the proposed model arose from the observations regarding the issues that IT startups are faced with in regard to customer satisfaction, timely delivery of products, reaching a level of quality for the offered products and team management.

Quality management has evolved throughout time in ways that allowed companies to adapt quality practices and principles into their activities in order to provide better products/services to their customer. The latest trends point to the pivotal role that quality plays in the Industry 4.0 era, where it is expected to synergize with Industry 4.0 practices in order to ensure that not only products are built faster and cheaper but also that they can meet the quality expectations of the customers. This gave birth to the concept of Quality 4.0, a new way of managing quality which uses modern technologies such as: IoT, Blockchain, Big data, AI and sensors in order to gather relevant information, monitor process performance and act preemptively in regard to the quality of the process output. An issue that emerges however, is identifying the relevant data and ways to manage it as this is considered to be a major obstacle in the implementation of Quality 4.0 practices. The research focuses on providing the foundational base for Knowledge management practices of companies looking to embrace Quality 4.0 to ensure that these companies use relevant data in their daily activities.

MATEC Web of Conferences, open access proceedings in Materials science, Engineering and Chemistry

The concept of Education 4.0 emerged linked to trends regarding Industry 4.0 and Internet 4.0 and is based on the integration of emerging technologies to revolutionize the way education is delivered. The use of these emerging technologies has created a vast amount of data that requires careful and thorough management in order to obtain the most possible benefits such as developing personalized learning experiences, smart ways of tracking student progress and providing feedback to all parties involved in the educational process. Therefore, knowledge management tools and strategies are gaining more importance, especially in the context of higher education institutions which have been identified as important sources of knowledge creation and sharing. The implementation of specific knowledge management strategies can furthermore help facilitate the transition to Education 4.0 by embracing key aspects of Industry 4.0 and Internet 4.0 such as promoting a culture of innovation, collaboration, continuous learning, providing a support system for streamlining administrative processes, cost reduction and improving the decision-making process. In the current paper, the authors analyse the current trends regarding knowledge management strategies deployed in Education 4.0 and propose a set of possible approaches which take into account knowledge management practices for an efficient transition to Education 4.0. The set of possible approaches and Industry 4.0 tools that could facilitate the transition have been organized in a structured, easy to follow model based on a four-stage process that relies on the feedback loops from both the process inputs and outputs. Using the proposed model facilitates the transition to Education 4.0 and helps practitioners understand the main aspects of each stage and select the Industry 4.0 tools that can be used in their respective context in order to yield most benefits.

The digitalization of banking services refers not only to the application of new technologies, but also involves a completely different approach and way of thinking for all actors involved. Given the dominance of the technological environment and unprecedented customer expectations, banks in Romania have concluded that the practices of quality management can be implemented for banking activities, inspired by the actions of international banks that have entered the national market. Knowing and anticipating customer needs and expectations as they evolve, by focusing on achieving and maintaining a maximum degree of satisfaction to retain customers is a primary objective for all banks. It is strategically relevant that the impact of Industry 4.0 on the transformation of the banking sector does not jeopardize security, which fuels the need for a balance between competition, innovation, security and customer satisfaction. In addition to the accelerated digitalization processes in the banking sector, the human factor will continue to play a key role in the future, as the focus will remain on the bank’s customer, security and trust. The aim of the paper is to explore the possibilities of implementing Quality 4.0 and Industry 4.0 in banking systems and their impact by studying the literature.