Interoperability and Standards: The Way for Innovative Design in Networked Working Environments

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityIn today’s networked economy, strategic business partnerships and outsourcing has become the dominant paradigm where companies focus on core competencies and skills, as creative design, manufacturing, or selling. However, achieving seamless interoperability is an ongoing challenge these networks are facing, due to their distributed and heterogeneous nature. Part of the solution relies on adoption of standards for design and product data representation, but for sectors predominantly characterized by SMEs, such as the furniture sector, implementations need to be tailored to reduce costs. This paper recommends a set of best practices for the fast adoption of the ISO funStep standard modules and presents a framework that enables the usage of visualization data as a way to reduce costs in manufacturing and electronic catalogue design.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Enterprise architecture for small and medium-sized enterprises : CHOOSE

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an enterprise’s organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and IT infrastructure. EA is used as a holistic approach to keep things aligned in a company. Some emphasize the use of EA to align IT with the business, others see it broader and use it to also keep the processes aligned with the strategy. Recent research indicates the need for EA in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), important drivers of the economy, as they struggle with problems related to a lack of structure and overview of their business. However, existing EA frameworks are perceived as too complex and, to date, none of the EA approaches are sufficiently adapted to the SME context. Therefore, in this PhD, we present the CHOOSE approach for EA for SMEs. The approach consists of four artifacts: a metamodel, a method, software tool support, and a visualization. The approach is kept simple so that it may be applied in an SME context and is based on the essential dimensions of EA frameworks. Five steps were taken: first, the problem of EA in SMEs was extensively analyzed. Next, the CHOOSE metamodel was developed during action research in SMEs. Then, action research in six companies was used to develop an adequate method (consisting of guidelines, a roadmap, and stop criteria) and to further refine this CHOOSE metamodel, while different types of software tools (PC, iPad, Android, ...) were developed to enable the evaluation rounds. Finally, a proper visualization was established

Exploring of Potential of Cloud Computing for Small and Medium Enterprises

Business activities such as human resources management, payroll, finance, and accounting are crucial for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, adopting technologies such as cloud computing is expected to improve SMEs’ efficiency. The migration from current business practices to cloud computing amongst SME entrepreneurs remains a challenge. Therefore, this study presents a short review of cloud computing concepts, the characteristics, types of cloud computing service models, and also cloud computing deployment models. This study highlights the benefits and challenges faced by SMEs entrepreneurs in adopting cloud computing. Also, this study explores the existing cloud computing services provided for SMEs. The present study aims to provide a better understanding of cloud computing’s potential to be applied in helping SMEs manage their business activities

Informatics Research Institute (IRIS) September 2008 newsletter

2007-8 was a very busy year for IRIS. It was a bumper year for visiting Profs with Prof Michael Myers visiting from New Zealand, Prof Brian Fitzgerald visiting from University of Limerick, Ireland, Prof. Uzay Kaymak visiting from Erasmus University Netherlands and Prof Steve Sawyer visiting from Pennsylvania State University, USA. Their visits enriched our doctoral school, seminar programme workshops and our research. We were very lucky to have such a distinguished line up of visiting professors and we offer them hearty thanks and hope to keep ongoing research links with them

Design space exploration using multi-instance modelling and its application for SMEs

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Alignment of IT projects with business strategy: An analysis of the interrelationships between the factors affecting IS alignment at strategic, tactical and operational levels

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Despite numerous efforts to integrate business and IS strategic plans, organisations are not delivering the expected benefits from IS investment. To address this issue, IS alignment research has discussed extensively the idea of establishing two-way commitment between business and IS managers. This commitment, however, has proved to be difficult to achieve at strategic level and consequently difficult to transmit to lower levels within organisations. Given that current literature has identified the main factors affecting IS alignment, this research extends the analysis of those factors to tactical and operational levels to develop a model that depicts the dynamic interrelationships between the factors affecting IS alignment. Through an interpretative approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods, the model was developed, tested and evaluated in three phases. During the exploratory phase the factors IT governance, communication, partnership, IT value, scope & architecture and human resources skills were scrutinised using a pilot case study and a survey. The results aided the selection of relevant variables that could be used in the model to assess alignment across different levels, and therefore, to develop a preliminary model that included the initial relationships between the factors. For the testing phase, a case study approach was selected. An IS alignment assessment process was designed and applied in one SME and one large organisation. Although the assessment process did not prove appropriate in an SME context, the application of the assessment process in the large organisation allowed the identification of the root causes of high or low levels of IS alignment of five strategic IT projects. For the evaluation phase further analysis was conducted to modify the preliminary model in the light of the outcomes from the large organisation. The findings from the evaluation phase helped in the identification of two categories of factors (structural and dynamic) and how they interrelate, and these are incorporated into the final model. Structural factors refer to those cultural and structural forces that determine whether the information systems function is valued or not as a partner in delivering business value from IT investments. On the other hand, the dynamic factors refer to those aspects that impact on IS alignment as a result of the dynamic interaction between the people involved in the strategy formulation and implementation. The model and the assessment process represent a contribution towards a better understanding of the nature of IS alignment

Knowledge Based Approach to Support Innovation Processes in Small and Medium Sized Manufacturing Enterprises

Knowledge plays a key role in the management of innovation processes in the organisation. A large number of efforts have been made to support the innovation processes by academics and practitioners in the field of Innovation and Knowledge Management. As a result, there are several methods and approaches now available for companies to manage their innovation knowledge more effectively. However, the aspects of knowledge identification, storage and utilisation to support innovation processes has not been researched extensively. In addition, it is argued that the existing methods and approaches which were originally developed and implemented in large organisations do not meet the special requirements of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, there is a need for more research to investigate what information and knowledge sources are being used, how these sources are stored and when they are utilised in the innovation process in SMEs. This thesis inspects the above mentioned issues in greater depth by conducting a series of case studies of the innovation processes in SMEs. The research has been specifically focused on the needs of SMEs in the manufacturing sector and has studied product, process and service innovation. This research programme commenced with a thorough study of the current literature associated with Innovation, Innovation Models, Knowledge Management, Quality Circle Programme and Learning Organisation. The second stage of this research has utilised the findings from the literature review to develop a novel research framework to examine current innovation and knowledge management practices in use within manufacturing SMEs. The programme applied primary research methods to validate the knowledge gained from the secondary research. The UK based manufacturing SMEs were used as test beds to investigate and understand their innovation practices, tools and procedures applied in their innovation processes; and to gather responses to key research questions. In the third stage, the results from the previous stages were utilised to develop a novel knowledge-based innovation framework that implements a new methodology for the adoption of innovation processes in manufacturing SMEs. The construction of the novel innovation framework has been based on individual practices found in traditional problem-solving approaches such as the Quality Circle Programme, combined with a selected group of practices obtained from different management processes such as Knowledge Management and team learning and sharing practices such as Learning Organisation. The fourth stage implemented the proposed framework as a software tool that can be used to support innovation processes. In the final stage, the thesis was concluded with the validation of the proposed knowledge toolset, discussion on the validation results and the application of the toolset to support innovation processes in manufacturing SMEs

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

A cloud business intelligence security evaluation framework for small and medium enterprises

Cloud business intelligence has practical importance in data management and decision-making, but the adoption and use among South African small and medium enterprises remain relatively low compared to large business enterprises. The low uptake persists irrespective of the awareness and acceptance of the benefits of Cloud business intelligence in the business domain. Cloud business intelligence depends on the cloud computing paradigm, which is susceptible to security threats and risks that decision-makers must consider when selecting what applications to use. The major objective of this study was to propose a security evaluation framework for Cloud business intelligence suitable for use by small and medium enterprises in small South African towns. The study utilised the exploratory sequential mixed-method research methodology with decision-makers from five towns in the Limpopo Province. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyse the data. The findings show that the level of adoption of Cloud business intelligence in the five selected towns was lower than reported in the literature, and decision-makers were eager to adopt and use safe Cloud business intelligence, but this was hindered by their inability to evaluate security in these applications. Factors preventing the adoption of Cloud business intelligence were decision-makers’ limited knowledge of the applications and security evaluation, the inability to use industry security frameworks and standards due to their complexities, mistrust of cloud service providers in meeting their obligations when providing agreed services, and lack of security specialists to assist in the evaluation process. Small and medium enterprises used unapproved security evaluation methods, such as relying on friends who were not information technology security specialists. A security evaluation framework and checklists were proposed based on the findings of the study and the best practices of the existing industry frameworks and standards. The proposed security evaluation framework was validated for relevance by information technology security specialists and acceptance by small and medium enterprise decision-makers. The study concluded that the adoption and use of Cloud business intelligence were hindered by the lack of a user-friendly security evaluation framework and limited security evaluation knowledge among decision-makers. Furthermore, the study concluded that the proposed framework and checklists were a relevant solution as they were accepted as useful to assist decision-makers to select appropriate Cloud business intelligence for their enterprises. The main contribution of this study is the proposed security evaluation framework and the checklists for Cloud business intelligence, for use by decision-makers in small and medium enterprises in small South African towns in the Limpopo Province.School of ComputingPh. D. (Information Systems

Cloud Manufacturing Model to Optimise Manufacturing Performance

Being predicted as the future of modern manufacturing, cloud-based manufacturing has drawn the attention of researchers in academia and industry. Researches are being done towards transforming every service in to cloud based service-oriented manufacturing mode in the manufacturing industry. There are many challenges that would arise when travelling towards this paradigm shift which is being addressed by researchers, but there are very few researches that concentrate on the elastic capability of cloud. Elastic capability makes this paradigm unique from all the other approaches or technologies. If elasticity is not achievable then the necessity of migrating to cloud is unnecessary. So, it is imperative to identify if at all it is necessary to adopt cloud-based manufacturing mode and discuss the issues and challenges that would arise to achieve elasticity when shifting to this emerging manufacturing paradigm. This research explores the importance of adopting cloud-based manufacturing mode to improve manufacturing performance based on the competitive priorities such as cost, quality, delivery and flexibility and proposes an elasticity assessment tool to be included in the cloud-based manufacturing model for the users to assess the challenges and issues on the realisation of elasticity on the context of manufacturing, which is the novelty of this research. The contribution to knowledge is a clear understanding of the necessity of cloud based elastic manufacturing model in the manufacturing environment for the manufacturing SMEs to gain a competitive advantage by achieving the competitive priorities such as low-cost, high-quality, and on-time delivery. Finally, the research suggests the best combination of manufacturing parameters that has to be emphasised to improve the manufacturing performance and gain a competitive advantage