The design co-ordination framework : key elements for effective product development

This paper proposes a Design Co-ordination Framework (DCF) i.e. a concept for an ideal DC system with the abilities to support co-ordination of various complex aspects of product development. A set of frames, modelling key elements of co-ordination, which reflect the states of design, plans, organisation, allocations, tasks etc. during the design process, has been identified. Each frame is explained and the co-ordination, i.e. the management of the links between these frames, is presented, based upon characteristic DC situations in industry. It is concluded that while the DCF provides a basis for our research efforts into enhancing the product development process there is still considerable work and development required before it can adequately reflect and support Design Co-ordination

Proceedings of the third International Workshop of the IFIP WG5.7

Contents of the papers presented at the international workshop deal with the wide variety of new and computer-based techniques for production planning and control that has become available to the scientific and industrial world in the past few years: formal modeling techniques, artificial neural networks, autonomous agent theory, genetic algorithms, chaos theory, fuzzy logic, simulated annealing, tabu search, simulation and so on. The approach, while being scientifically rigorous, is focused on the applicability to industrial environment

Towards a new approach for enterprise integration : the semantic modeling approach

Manufacturing today has become a matter of the effective and efficient application of information technology and knowledge engineering. Manufacturing firms’ success depends to a great extent on information technology, which emphasizes the integration of the information systems used by a manufacturing enterprise. This integration is also called enterprise application integration (here the term application means information systems or software systems). The methodology for enterprise application integration, in particular enterprise application integration automation, has been studied for at least a decade; however, no satisfactory solution has been found. Enterprise application integration is becoming even more difficult due to the explosive growth of various information systems as a result of ever increasing competition in the software market. This thesis aims to provide a novel solution to enterprise application integration. The semantic data model concept that evolved in database technology is revisited and applied to enterprise application integration. This has led to two novel ideas developed in this thesis. First, an ontology of an enterprise with five levels (following the data abstraction: generalization/specialization) is proposed and represented using unified modeling language. Second, both the ontology for the enterprise functions and the ontology for the enterprise applications are modeled to allow automatic processing of information back and forth between these two domains. The approach with these novel ideas is called the enterprise semantic model approach. The thesis presents a detailed description of the enterprise semantic model approach, including the fundamental rationale behind the enterprise semantic model, the ontology of enterprises with levels, and a systematic way towards the construction of a particular enterprise semantic model for a company. A case study is provided to illustrate how the approach works and to show the high potential of solving the existing problems within enterprise application integration

An information systems framework for event management in supply chain operations

As competition has shifted from the company to the Supply Chain level, gaining a competitive edge becomes an issue of efficient collaboration amongst SC partners. Within the e-business era the level of competitiveness is determined by the ability of an SC to react and adjust rapidly to market and industrial changes and to overcome burdens originating both from inside and outside the SC borders. These features create the framework for defining agility within supply chains. Managing turbulence in SCs, while maintaining customer satisfaction at a low operational cost requires proactive dynamics towards risk factors. An agile Supply Chain addresses direct and indirect sources of risk, which expand outside the SC boundaries. Supply risk is related to the potential occurrence of an incident such as inbound supplies failure that results in customer dissatisfaction. Sources of risk in the SC have various origins which due to their dynamic nature cannot always be predicted, such as turbulence in oil or currency prices, physical or manmade disasters, production failures, product recalls and so on. Organizations need to respond to events as certain unexpected events can cause chaos in the SC and form patterns with negative impact, such as the bullwhip effect, backlogs etc. Chaos in the SC originates from managerial and computer control decisions and actions but apart from the internal sources, chaotic spikes in the SC demand can also originate from external changes. This thesis proposes that Internet based Information Systems support is required for responsive Supply Chains, in order to address risk origins under a holistic perspective. An event driven architectural framework is proposed in the context of SC operations, which enables flexibility and agility in an e-business setting. The concept of events is explored within the Supply Chain domain and the information regarding patterns of occurring events is identified and disseminated. Initially the theoretical ground for event identification is set and unexpected events in a SC context are classified. Building on the events classification, a notation (EPN) to model event patterns is described. Finally an architecture (SCEDRA) which captures unexpected events and forms and disseminates event patterns is proposed

Development of a Framework for the Assessment of the Role and Impact of Technology on the Public Procurement Process: an Irish Health Sector Study

This thesis sets out to examine how the role and impact of technology, in the context of the public procurement process, can be assessed by addressing it as a single bounded structural entity. The thesis specifically examines the procurement process in the Irish Health Sector. This thesis takes the view that context for the procurement process is critical and that adopting a structuration approach to the examination of the process allows for a greater understanding of the role of technology. The thesis is built around a thematic structure which examines the changing relationship between information technology systems and organisational structure. In particular the thesis focuses in on the interaction of technology and people in the context of a process. The methodological approach is the development of case studies. Three case studies are examined in particular, the first two taking the traditional approach of examining technology impact on an organisation. The third case examines the impact on the procurement process itself. Findings illustrate that this approach is useful in identifying clusters of technology, which are generally seen in isolation in the traditional approach. A key finding is that the development of technology and its role and impact is influenced at a number of levels, from European Union to Organisational. The use of Structuration as a basis for understanding the contextual settings, allows for the examination of the procurement process as single bounded structural entity, which is created by the social actors, the participants in the process. The combination of the Structuration approach and the conceptual model realises a way of examining processes that are not organisationally bound. This advances the development of the technology research discipline. The cases contribute to the empirical knowledge base by recounting sectoral changes that occurred in the Irish Health Sector during the research. The framework contributes to the theoretical knowledge by providing a novel and innovative approach to assessing the role and impact of technology on a process

Ontological foundations for structural conceptual models

In this thesis, we aim at contributing to the theory of conceptual modeling and ontology representation. Our main objective here is to provide ontological foundations for the most fundamental concepts in conceptual modeling. These foundations comprise a number of ontological theories, which are built on established work on philosophical ontology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of language and linguistics. Together these theories amount to a system of categories and formal relations known as a foundational ontolog