The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare two different business models called business to business and business to consumer. The first model -business to business or B2B is defined as the transfer of goods and services between businesses or firms without the interference of consumers. The second model, business to consumer or B2C is customer-oriented in which the goods and services are sold immediately to customers in the market. This research focuses on the performance of these two business models in North Macedonia and Serbia. Our analysis tries to provide information regarding the countries’ development in different sectors within B2B and B2C models that are affected by specific indicators such as net salaries, total employment level, investment and exports, and research&innovation. Furthermore, besides the analysis of these indicators separately for each country, the paper will show the results and compare the performance differences among listed developing countries.

Higher education is a key element of prosperous communities, and the quality of education should be a priority in attracting prospective students. Good education implies good academic staff, well-equipped laboratories, facilities, and efficient processes. Maintain efficient processes is challenging abut achievable. One of the possible solutions to improve education processes is to pursue a lean strategy in order to reduce waste and non-value-added activities. The purpose of this paper is to combine paying off strategies from manufacturing companies with higher education institutions (HEI), in order to enhance the quality of education and efficiency of higher education institutions. This research deals with application lean tools in university processes with the aim of investigating the possibility of applying lean concepts in HEI. Processes from the student affairs office from a Bosnian university were taken as a case study. The tools were used for data collections, student satisfaction measurement, process efficiency analysis and assessment whether the university is ready for the implementation of the lean concept. As a result, it was observed that communication channels between university and students are weak, the student information system does not respond to students’ needs, internal communication channels need to be improved and human resources are underused. Overall, it was found that the lean strategy can be applied in HEIs but for the successful implementation of lean thinking, lifestyle from top management to lower management must be adopted.

In the past decades, insulation materials such as petrochemical and inorganic have been used for building insulation. The production of these insulation materials consumes a large amount of energy, which has a significant effect on the environment throughout the life cycle. Comparative performance analyses of renewable (natural) insulation materials for building application in terms of their impact on the environment, the useful lifetime, cost, insulation performance, thermal diffusivity water vapor resistance and flammability were analyzed using statistical tools. It was found that renewable insulating materials have competitive performances with traditional nonrenewable materials in terms of heat insulation performances, fire resistance and cost. Also it was found that renewable materials have significantly better performances such as less impact to the global warming, longer useful lifetime, and lower thermal diffusivity.

In accordance with the advancement in robotics and the scholarly literature, the extents of utilizing robots for autistic children are widened and could be a promising method for individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) treatments, where the different form of robot (humanoid, non-humanoid, animal-like, toy, and kits) can be employed effectively as a support tool to augment the learning skills and rehabilitate of the individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Thus, the robots were exploited for ASD children in different aspects namely; modelling, teaching, and skills practicing; testing, highlighting and evaluating; providing feedback or encouragement; join Attention; eliciting social behaviours; emotion recognition and expression; imitation; vocalization; turn-taking; and diagnostic. The related literature published recently in journals and conferences is taken into account. In this paper, we review the use of robots that help in the therapy of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The articles on using robots for autistic children rehabilitation and education which reported results of experiments on a number of participants were implicated. After looking in digital libraries under this criteria, and excluding non-related, and duplicated studies, 39 studies have been found. The findings were focused mainly on the social communication skills of autistic children and how the extent of the robots mitigate their stereotyped behaviours. Deeper research is required in this area to cover all applications of robotic on autistic children in order to design feasible and low-cost robots that ensure provide high validity.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by ARDA. Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare two different business models called business to business and business to consumer. The first model -business to business or B2B is defined as the transfer of goods and services between businesses or firms without interference of consumer. The second model, business to consumer or B2C is customer oriented in which the goods and services are sold immediately to customers in the market. This research focuses on the performance of these two business models in North Macedonia and Serbia. Our analysis tries to provide information regarding the countries’ development on different sectors within B2B and B2C models that are affected by specific indicators such as net salaries, total employment level, investment and exports, and research&innovation. Furthermore, besides analysis of these indicators separately for each country, the paper will show the results and compare the performance differences among listed developing countries.