Meaning of flaws

The HCMC Department of Transport shared that the city aims at possessing a multi-means public transport system, including 8 metro lines, 3 tram lines, 6 bus rapid transit lines (BRT), and 200 regular bus lines, in order to meet the traveling demands of the community.

Due to the dense population in HCMC, leading to the large number of private vehicles, urban traffic at the moment has to shoulder a heavy burden, and the average velocity of vehicles in the downtown is just 20-25km per hour.

To tackle this problem, the municipal authorities have adjusted the planning of the urban transport system to implement the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) model. This model maximizes the link between residential, business, manufacturing areas and the existing public transport system.

HCMC is going to apply this model along Metro Line No.1 (from Ben Thanh in the downtown to Suoi Tien in Thu Duc City), Metro Line No.2 (the first phase: Ben Thanh – Tham Luong in District 12; the second phase: Tham Luong – Cu Chi District) and Metro Line No.5 (the first phase Bay Hien Intersection in Tan Binh District – Sai Gon Bridge; the second phase: Can Giuoc Coach Station in Long An Province – Bay Hien Intersection).

The HCMC Management Center of Public Transport (MCPT) is going to introduce 21 high-quality bus lines. This is expected to rebuild the community’s trust towards buses, and thus increasing their bus use.

In order to fulfill the goal, these buses must maintain their route schedule and are not allowed to skip bus-stops or passengers under any circumstances. They have free Wi-Fi, a route monitoring device, a sound system automatically connected to MCPT to announce destinations, free newspapers to serve passengers.

Bus attendants must have good manner, especially towards the senior, the disabled, the ill, and the invalids. Bus drivers must ensure safety by strictly obeying traffic laws and minimizing disorder inside the bus.

The new 21 lines must have sufficient infrastructure, including bus stops, stopping space, regularly updated information boards about current routes and schedules. These facilities must be clean and not illegally occupied by peddlers.

As suggested by Associate Prof. Dr. Pham Xuan Mai from HCMC University of Technology (Vietnam National University – HCMC), it is critical that bus route schedules be maintained so that customer confidence is regained, and people come back to this common public transport.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Canh from the University of Economics and Law (Vietnam National University – HCMC) said that the formerly piloting scheme of bus priority lane on Tran Hung Dao Street encountered certain objection from the community. However, it is this practice, along with careful planning, that is implemented widely in developed countries to help buses be more welcomed by the public.

Experts in the field suggested that HCMC should launch the piloting scheme for bus priority lane on some major streets like Dien Bien Phu (from Ly Thai To Roundabout – Sai Gon Bridge) or Vo Thi Sau (from Dan Chu Roundabout – Dinh Tien Hoang Street), which has many bus lines.

Simultaneously, better private vehicle restriction rules should be introduced on these two streets to make the scheme more effective.

Accepted the recommendation, MCPT is going to pilot bus priority lanes on the mentioned streets at morning and afternoon peak hours on weekdays. Each lane is supposed to be 3.25m wide, separated with other lanes by road fence. These lanes are for buses, ambulances, firetrucks, mini buses, and passenger vehicles 12-seat+.

Lately, HCMC has built several new streets; yet the proportion of traffic space in the urban land use is a tiny minority of 10 percent, which is not even 1/2 of the standard. Adding to the problem is the ever-increasing number of private vehicles, reaching 9 million at present (including 7.2 million scooters).

With such a high traffic density, with a priority lane, it is truly challenging for buses to maintain their schedules. Some bus companies reported that 80 percent of their buses cannot fulfill this goal. Some are even 1 hour late.

Just 3 years ago, buses were the most favorite choice of students coming to Thu Duc University Village, and there was a bus running each 10 minutes. Sadly, over 1/2 of those lines are canceled now since they cannot ensure the precise arrival time.

Obviously, the development of public transportation must go along with a more logical control of private vehicle growth.

By Quoc Hung – Translated by Vien Hong

Derek Ong, Electronic Industrial Software Solutions manager, Keysight Technologies

Squeezing every last drop of productivity from invested manufacturing equipment on the factory floor was the goal, and hence a lot of focus was on downtime and throughput. Predictive maintenance and asset utilisation are important business outcomes from any successful Industry 4.0 implementation.

Then COVID-19 happened. Other than the race to 5nm chips, 5G, and cloud computing, some sectors of the electronics manufacturing industry have seen a drastic drop in volume, leading to a surplus of production assets on the floor. For some, machines have idled. For others, COVID-19 has caused massive supply chain disruptions.

The necessary steps taken by governments around the globe to manage and halt the spread of this epidemic, has restricted movement of factory employees and subsequently lowered productivity and output. The trade situation between the US and China has forced manufacturers to shuffle operations for business continuity. There are everlasting shifts in manufacturing paradigms as a result of COVID-19. The new “norm” needs a rethink on how Industry 4.0 technology enablers will be used to address the new challenges.

Quality over quantity

Before COVID-19, Industry 4.0 adoption mostly revolved around asset utilisation. In the current situation, it may be better to ensure that every single manufactured product is of the highest quality the process allows. Due to shortages of materials and parts, rising logistics costs and restricted factory employees, manufacturers will have to minimise Return Merchandise Authorizations (RMA) even more than before. Better quality may also prove to be a compelling value differentiator to win more business.

Quality has always been one of the most important manufacturing performance metrics but rather than the usual narrative of adopting Industry 4.0 technologies such as big data analytics, AI, and the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIOT) to maximise asset utilisations, will need to pivot to adding more focus on improving the quality of the product being manufactured. Keeping machines up and running with minimal downtime gives less Return of Investment (ROI) if product recalls are happening or assets are loaded only half the time most days.

Manufacturing analytics is quickly rising to prominence

Qualitative and quantitative data on products – usually from test and measurement equipment on the floor – is an important source of insights for any big data analytics implementation. They allow engineers to maintain process parameters that yield the highest quality and they provide a real-time barometer of gross reproducibility and repeatability of equipment and processes, which is important for the predictable quality standard of the products.

This means that lower Cost-of-Poor-Quality (COPQ) is going to be something Industry 4.0 technology adoption has to address quickly.

Dangers of anomaly detection and things to look out for

Since the launch of Keysight’s PathWave Manufacturing Analytics in 2018, more manufacturers are embracing the new “normal” and using big data advanced analytics on test and measurement that are generated every second on the production floor.

A core fundamental analytics insight from the platform is being able to predict potential quality issues before they happen. The machine learning tool usually used to do this is around anomaly detection. We have seen a lot of examples of factories investing in setting up a generic big data platform and using publicly available open-source anomaly detection algorithms in production.

What is eventually evident is that these algorithms tend to be low in accuracy when dealing with test and measurement data, as opposed to continuous signals from sensors. This is what drove us to develop our own anomaly detection machine learning model at Keysight, which is tuned to provide the highest accuracy on test and measurement data from the floor.

We also identified “Alert Fatigue” in manufacturing industries that use anomaly detection as a predictor. Hundreds of thousands of measurements are taken in real-time in productionand a large number of anomalies are being alerted to operators or engineers every minute of the day. It is an impossible task for the users to decide which anomaly is most important and what are the most urgent actions to take.

Ultimately, this fatigue leads users to ignore the alerts, and the slow but sure demise of the entire advanced analytics project begins. If the right actions to prevent losses cannot be taken, then the ROI cannot be realised. This is important as, in order to make any investments in big data advanced analytics implementation in the factory worthwhile, it has to directly correlate with business outcomes.

Last year, we put together a team of data scientists and test and measurement experts in Keysight to develop an alert scoring machine learning model that works seamlessly with our anomaly detection algorithms to score measurement anomaly alerts in real-time, and we are planning the release of the new Alert Scoring feature in our upcoming PathWave Manufacturing Analytics 2.4.0 release in the spring of 2021. Alerts are labelled and sorted by the machine learning model as either high, medium, or low severity. The interpretation of the machine learning model of severity required supervised learning that Keysight’s test and measurement were able to provide.

With this first-in-industry alert scoring model, we were able to reduce the number of alerts sent to users for disposition by 90 per cent, in real-life testing. Instead of a hundred alerts, the engineer or operator will only receive ten of the most severe or important alerts.

The ability to combine domain knowledge and data science, sets companies such as Keysight, apart from generic big data platform partners, and we look forward to helping manufacturers achieve more tangible business outcomes with our 2021 roadmap.

Testing time is money: The business impact of test equipment issues

Keysight, Qualcomm enable global forum to activate certification of C-V2X Test Plan

Keysight Technologies drives telehealth growth

Keysight Technologies acquires Eggplant to strengthen automation test market

By Bich Thuy

The list includes 750 referees and assistant referees. All are required to pass several tests before FIFA selects the final 56 referees and 100 assistants.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many global football tournaments were either postponed or canceled last year, meaning many refs on the list have not seen the pitch during the past nine months.

However, in Vietnam, women’s football tournaments still took place as normal, from the U14 contest to the national championship, thanks to the country’s superb efforts in containing Covid-19. That means Trang and Trinh were refereeing regularly in 2020, giving them an advantage in the competition for a spot at Women’s World Cup 2023.

Referee Bui Thu Trang and assistant referee Truong Thu Le Trinh. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Dong.

Trang is one of only three referees in Vietnam certified as elite FIFA refs. This is the highest level of refereeing and can only be awarded to those who reach FIFA standards, are fluent in English and passed physical tests at all levels.

“I was really excited when I heard the news because World Cup is a dream for anyone who works in the football field, including a referee like me. No Vietnamese referee has ever been selected into the candidate list before, not to mention the final list. But I will try my best. If I get selected, it would be a dream come true for me,” Trang said.

According to FIFA requirements, candidates like Trang and Trinh are expected to referee football matches at the highest level in their countries. FIFA also requires candidates to participate in the men’s training program for referees and assistant referees so they could improve their skills under the instruction of elite experts in the region as well as the world. Throughout these courses, FIFA will assess, evaluate and select the best for World Cup.

The Hanoi Department of Education and Training has recommended local schools should reopen from March 2.

Under the proposal sent to the municipal people’s committee, the Hanoi Department of Education and Training said that if there are no locally-infected Covid-19 cases by March 2, then local schools could reopen. It means that Hanoi would have witnessed no community transmission patients for 14 days by then.

Schools in Hanoi may be re-opened from March 2

According to the Hanoi Centre for Disease Control, Hanoi has seen no new Covid-19 cases since February 17. People who are being quarantined in Hanoi after coming into close contact with Covid-19 patients have tested negative for the virus or have not shown any suspected symptoms.

Despite positive signs, the Hanoi Centre for Disease Control advised local residents to strictly conform to Covid-19 prevention regulations.

Meanwhile, HCM City has decided to allow local students to return schools from March 1.

By February 22, 51 cities and provinces in Vietnam had reopened their schools.