Decision-making systems and the product-to-service shift

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is first, to provide input to the “through life knowledge and information management” grand challenge and second to provide industry with a tool for assessing the quality of the process(es) by which decisions are reached. Design/methodology/approach – An iterative approach is used with two student-based case studies, followed by two research institution case studies, and then two industrial case studies. Validation of the tool by managers is undertaken in another case study. Findings – An analytic framework is created which allows managers to categorise and display the characteristics of their decision processes. By assessing the resulting voids and clusters within the framework, the efficacy of the process can be determined. The framework has an associated management process, first to enable managers to see and compare instances of other situations, especially those leading to “disaster”, and second to upgrade the tool itself as assessments are undertaken. Research limitations/implications – The tool has been developed in a UK manufacturing environment. It has demonstrated its usefulness in the defence industry, but its wider applicability is not yet known. It requires industrialization to make it usable by managers. Practical implications – Use of the tool has already led to significant changes to the capability development process in a major defence company, and has been used by a board in a civilian company to understand why they have cost overruns and delivery problems. Originality/value – The paper has not discovered another, simple-to-use tool for the same purpose

Managing knowledge for capability engineering

The enterprises that deliver capability are trying to evolve into through-life businesses by shifting away from the traditional pattern of designing and manufacturing successive generations of products, towards a new paradigm centred on support, sustainability and the incremental enhancements of existing capabilities from technology insertions and changes to process. The provision of seamless through-life customer solutions depends heavily on management of information and knowledge between, and within the different parts of the supply chain enterprise. This research characterised and described Capability Engineering (CE) as applied in the defence enterprise and identified to BAE Systems important considerations for managing knowledge within that context. The terms Capability Engineering and Through Life Capability Management (TLCM), used synonymously in this thesis, denote a complex evolving domain that requires new approaches to better understand the different viewpoints, models and practices. The findings and novelty of this research is demonstrated through the following achievements: Defined the problem space that Requirements Engineers can use in through-life management projects. Made a contribution to the development of models for Systems Architects to enable them to incorporate ‘soft’ systems within their consideration. Independently developed a TLCM activity model against which BAE Systems validated the BAE Systems TLCM activity model, which is now used by UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Developed, and published within INCOSE1, the INCOSE Capability Engineering ontology. Through the novel analysis of a directly applicable case study, highlighted to Functional Delivery Managers the significance of avoiding the decoupling of information and knowledge in the context of TLCM. Through experimentation and knowledge gained within this research, identified inadequacies in the TechniCall (rapid access to experts) service which led to the generation of requirements for an improved service which is now being implemented by BAE Systems. The results showed that managing knowledge is distinct when compared to information management. Over-reliance on information management in the absence of tacit knowledge can lead to a loss in the value of the information, which can result in unintended consequences. Capability is realised through a combination of component systems and Capability Engineering is equivalent to a holistic perspective of Systems Engineering. A sector-independent Capability Engineering ontology is developed to enable semantic interoperability between different domains i.e. defence, rail and information technology. This helped to better understand the dependencies of contributing component systems within defence, and supported collaboration across different domains. Although the evaluation of the ontology through expert review has been accomplished; the ontology, KM analysis framework and soft systems transitioning approach developed still need to undergo independent verification and validation. This requires application to other case studies to check and exploit their suitability. This Engineering Doctorate research has been disseminated through a number of peer reviewed publications

The application of modified adaptive landscapes to heuristic modelling of engine concept designs using sparse data

The automotive internal combustion engine industry operates in a sector that relies on high production volumes for economies of scale, and dedicated production equipment for efficiency of operations and control of quality, yet is subject to the vagaries of a dynamic marketplace, with the need for constant change. These circumstances place pressure on engine designs to be optimised at launch to be competitive and meet market needs, yet be adaptable to uncertain requirements for change over their production life. Engine designers therefore need concept configuration evaluation tools that can assess architectures for resilience to geometric change over the production life of the product. The problem of being resource efficient whilst having the capacity to adapt tochanging environments is one that has been addressed in nature. Natural systems have evolved strategies of satisficing conflicting requirements whilst being resource efficient. The theory of adaptive landscapes helps us to visualise the adaptive capacity of potential morphological forms. A concept attribute analysis methodology based on satisficing and adaptive landscapes has been developed and tested for application to engine concept design. The Plateau, Flooded Adaptive Landscape technique (PFAL),has been evaluated against exemplar engine life histories and shows merit in aiding the decision-making process for concept designers working with sparse data. The process lets the designer visualise the attribute map, enabling them to make better trade-off decisions and share these with non-expert stakeholders to gain their input in final concept choices

An incremental hybridisation of heterogeneous case studies to develop an ontology for capability engineering

An analysis of perspectives for “capability engineering” has been conducted by the INCOSE UK Capability Working Group (CWG). This paper is a continuation of this study led by the CWG ontology work stream that aims to develop a single shared ontology for the concept of capability engineering to enable semantic interoperability and to support a formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation. Case study material from the different domains of rail, defence and information services was used. The ontology development was executed in three phases; (1) pre-analysis, (2) ontology modelling and (3) post-analysis. The pre-analysis involved literature reviews, requirements specification, systems engineering process utilisation; and resource identification i.e. examination of the case study material. The ontology modelling phase comprised information extraction and classification in addition to modelling and code representation using a mark-up tool, MS Excel and Protégé. The post-analysis involved validation workshops through using expert focus groups