Graph-based reasoning in collaborative knowledge management for industrial maintenance

Capitalization and sharing of lessons learned play an essential role in managing the activities of industrial systems. This is particularly the case for the maintenance management, especially for distributed systems often associated with collaborative decision-making systems. Our contribution focuses on the formalization of the expert knowledge required for maintenance actors that will easily engage support tools to accomplish their missions in collaborative frameworks. To do this, we use the conceptual graphs formalism with their reasoning operations for the comparison and integration of several conceptual graph rules corresponding to different viewpoint of experts. The proposed approach is applied to a case study focusing on the maintenance management of a rotary machinery system

Analysis of manufacturing operations using knowledge- Enriched aggregate process planning

Knowledge-Enriched Aggregate Process Planning is concerned with the problem of supporting agile design and manufacture by making process planning feedback integral to the design function. A novel Digital Enterprise Technology framework (Maropoulos 2003) provides the technical context and is the basis for the integration of the methods with existing technologies for enterprise-wide product development. The work is based upon the assertion that, to assure success when developing new products, the technical and qualitative evaluation of process plans must be carried out as early as possible. An intelligent exploration methodology is presented for the technical evaluation of the many alternative manufacturing options which are feasible during the conceptual and embodiment design phases. 'Data resistant' aggregate product, process and resource models are the foundation of these planning methods. From the low-level attributes of these models, aggregate methods to generate suitable alternative process plans and estimate Quality, Cost and Delivery (QCD) have been created. The reliance on QCD metrics in process planning neglects the importance of tacit knowledge that people use to make everyday decisions and express their professional judgement in design. Hence, the research also advances the core aggregate planning theories by developing knowledge-enrichment methods for measuring and analysing qualitative factors as an additional indicator of manufacturing performance, which can be used to compute the potential of a process plan. The application of these methods allows the designer to make a comparative estimation of manufacturability for design alternatives. Ultimately, this research should translate into significant reductions in both design costs and product development time and create synergy between the product design and the manufacturing system that will be used to make it. The efficacy of the methodology was proved through the development of an experimental computer system (called CAPABLE Space) which used real industrial data, from a leading UK satellite manufacturer to validate the industrial benefits and promote the commercial exploitation of the research

Labour Agency and Transnational Environmental Regulation - A Study of the Relevance of Global Framework Agreements

This thesis analyses how the growing role of labour actors in processes of environmental regulation is reflected in and influenced by the negotiation and implementation of global framework agreements that include environmental provisions (EGFAs). Departing from previous studies of GFAs, the thesis provides a thoroughly contextualised thematic analysis of GFAs focussed on environmental issues, using a trans-disciplinary approach, combining legal and sociological perspectives through the prism of labour environmentalism. It asks how the inclusion of environmental provisions is connected to other processes of environmental regulation, including through the agency of labour actors, mainly unions, at different scales. Data collection involves the creation of a database of EGFAs consisting of statistical information and an extensive account of their content, and an analysis of three case studies, chosen from the database and informed by semi-structured interviews and focus groups carried out with union and management representatives at various scales. Relying on a bourdieusian analytical framework articulated around the ‘thinking tools’ of field, habitus and capital, the thesis makes a methodological contribution by weaving together the analysis of the content of EGFAs and the cases. Ultimately, the thesis provides an empirical, analytical and theoretical understanding of practices of negotiation and implementation of EGFAs. Emphasising that context matters, it shows that these practices are connected to political, legal and organisational regulatory processes involving labour actors at multiple scales. The agency of labour actors in these processes relates to their capacity to connect to multi-scalar and multi-directional networks through the articulation of abstract rules, standards, notions, etc. with concrete situations. Focussing on processes of environmental regulation, prevalent approaches were found to be informed by different conceptions of the relationship between labour and nature and to translate into various understandings of the role of EGFAs, ranging from endorsement of companies’ CSR policies and practices to instruments of social and environmental justice

An activity-based model for managing unstructured content

An increase in the volume of documents, images and other unstructured content in organisations has resulted in several new approaches to the management of unstructured content. These approaches are however focused on specific problem areas and do not address the problem of how to manage all unstructured content in a unified manner. This research investigates the requirements for managing unstructured content from a records management, knowledge management and information security perspective. To address the management requirements, a model for managing unstructured content by using organisational activities as a basis for categorising the content into a taxonomy is proposed. The management requirements for unstructured content are then determined and applied on the taxonomical node level. The research showed that a strong relationship exists between organisational activities and the content management requirements of unstructured conent. It was also shown that using an activity-based model for classifying unstructured content, can be used as the basis for managing unstructured content from a records management, knowledge management and information security persective. CopyrightDissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2009.Information Scienceunrestricte