An approach to control collaborative processes in PLM systems

Companies that collaborate within the product development processes need to implement an effective management of their collaborative activities. Despite the implementation of a PLM system, the collaborative activities are not efficient as it might be expected. This paper presents an analysis of the problems related to the collaborative work using a PLM system. From this analysis, we propose an approach for improving collaborative processes within a PLM system, based on monitoring indicators. This approach leads to identify and therefore to mitigate the brakes of the collaborative work

Open Innovation for Ideating and Designing New Product Service Systems

Abstract For modern manufacturing companies, the combination of physical products and intangible services (called Product-Service Systems or PSS) has been proved by time to be useful to enhance the product features by adding value throughout new functionalities, and bringing competitive advantages in a specific target market. Through PSS, companies create new business opportunities, extend the market share, differentiate the product portfolio, and improve sustainability. The PSS approach shifts the company attention from producing physical products to offering integrated systems. However, ideating and designing a PSS is a complex and multifaceted process, which requires multiple competences and cross-functions cooperation within the manufacturing company. In fact, the design phase requires to simultaneous dal with the characteristics of the physical product and of the intangible services, the last ones being by their nature fuzzy and difficult to define. Furthermore, the two entities have to be synergistically delivered and strategically managed thanks to the adoption of a PSS lifecycle management methodology and tools, in particular for the creation of a proper PSS infrastructure to delivery and maintain all the components from the design to the end of life phases. Several methodologies to design PSS can be found in literature. Most of them focus on technical development stages, while some of them face also the innovation aspects and sustainability. However, traditional product-centered approaches are not able to fully support the processes that manufacturing companies have to put in place for creating PSSs. This paper presents a new approach, based on the combination of the Open innovation method with IT solutions supporting information sharing and intra-team cooperation, in that any manufacturing company could adopt to manage the design process of a PSS. In particular, the methodology and the tools are focused on the early stages of the PSS design process, as Ideation and Concept definition that have been developed within the European FP7 project FLEXINET

Maintaining systems-of-systems fit-for-purpose: a technique exploiting material, energy and information source, sink and bearer analysis

Across many domains, systems suppliers are challenged by the complexity of their systems and the speed at which their systems must be changed in order to meet the needs of customers or the societies which the systems support. Stakeholder needs are ever more complex: appearing, disappearing, changing and interacting faster than solutions able to address them can be instantiated. Similarly, the systems themselves continually change as a result of both external and internal influences, such as damage, changing environment, upgrades, reconfiguration, replacement, etc. In the event of situations unforeseen at design time, personnel (for example maintainers or operators) close to the point of employment may have to modify systems in response to the evolving situation, and to do this in a timely manner so that the system and/or System-of-Systems (SoS: a set of systems that have to interoperate) can achieve their aims. This research was motivated by the problem of designing-in re-configurability to the constituent systems of a SoS to enable the SoS and its systems to effectively and efficiently counter the effects of unforeseen events that adversely affect fitness-for purpose whilst operational. This research shows that a SoS does not achieve or maintain fitness-for-purpose because it cannot implement the correct, timely and complete transfer of Material, Energy and Information (MEI) between its constituents and with its external environment that is necessary to achieve a desired outcome; i.e. the purpose

Synthetic biology tools for transcriptional activation and regulation of biosynthetic gene clusters in filamentous fungi

The increasing number of sequenced fungal genomes revealed a vast of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) with unknown produced compounds. However, most of the fungal SM BGCs are transcriptionally silent under laboratory growth conditions, and the signal or stimulus triggering the transcriptional activation of these clusters is often unknown, rendering these BGC “cryptic”. Obviously, considering the enormous diversity of the fungal kingdom and the notion that BGCs are widespread, characterized SMs so far represent only the tip of the ice-berg. With the advent of synthetic biology novel applications and tools have been developed for fungi, aiming at the transcriptional activation of cryptic BGCs. The objective of this thesis was to develop novel synthetic biology tools for filamentous fungi, with the aim of transcriptional activation of transcriptionally silent and “cryptic” BGCs, as well as the controlled production of BGC encoded secondary metabolites in the fungal host

With frequency simulation to design the monitoring of frame structures

Based on experience from the testing of the mining stacker in the copper mine in Bor, a practical procedure of frequency simulation of the enforced vibration of the structure was demonstrated. Modelling of the excitation was performed by the harmonic function of the eccentric mass of the belt conveyor drive. The paper shows how the drive frequency excitation affects the amplitude of vibration of the supporting structure. From this, the idea is presented - an algorithm for software that would allow for keeping the dynamic properties of the members of the structure within controlled range. An experiment for accelerating the structure and its FFT analysis in the frequency domain was performed. Dynamic modelling of the structure allows obtaining the objectivised concept of the measurement system for monitoring based on the given level of dynamic sensitivity of the parts of the structure

With frequency simulation to design the monitoring of frame structures

Based on experience from the testing of the mining stacker in the copper mine in Bor, a practical procedure of frequency simulation of the enforced vibration of the structure was demonstrated. Modelling of the excitation was performed by the harmonic function of the eccentric mass of the belt conveyor drive. The paper shows how the drive frequency excitation affects the amplitude of vibration of the supporting structure. From this, the idea is presented - an algorithm for software that would allow for keeping the dynamic properties of the members of the structure within controlled range. An experiment for accelerating the structure and its FFT analysis in the frequency domain was performed. Dynamic modelling of the structure allows obtaining the objectivised concept of the measurement system for monitoring based on the given level of dynamic sensitivity of the parts of the structure

Current trends on ICT technologies for enterprise information s²ystems

The proposed paper discusses the current trends on ICT technologies for Enterprise Information Systems. The paper starts by defining four big challenges of the next generation of information systems: (1) Data Value Chain Management; (2) Context Awareness; (3) Interaction and Visualization; and (4) Human Learning. The major contributions towards the next generation of information systems are elaborated based on the work and experience of the authors and their teams. This includes: (1) Ontology based solutions for semantic interoperability; (2) Context aware infrastructures; (3) Product Avatar based interactions; and (4) Human learning. Finally the current state of research is discussed highlighting the impact of these solutions on the economic and social landscape

tiphys an open networked platform for higher education on industry 4 0

Abstract Objective of Tiphys project is building an Open Networked Platform for the learning of Industry 4.0 themes. The project will create a Virtual Reality (VR) platform, where users will be able to design and create a VR based environment for training and simulating industrial processes but they will be able to study and select among a set of models in order to standardize the learning and physical processes as a virtual representation of the real industrial world and the required interactions so that to acquire learning and training capabilities. The models will be structured in a modular approach to promote the integration in the existing mechanisms as well as for future necessary adaptations. The students will be able to co-create their learning track and the learning contents by collaborative working in a dynamic environment. The paper presents the development and validation of the learning model, built on CONALI learning ontology. The concepts of the ontology will be detailed and the platform functions will be demonstrated on selected use cases