Knowledge formalization in experience feedback processes : an ontology-based approach

Because of the current trend of integration and interoperability of industrial systems, their size and complexity continue to grow making it more difficult to analyze, to understand and to solve the problems that happen in their organizations. Continuous improvement methodologies are powerful tools in order to understand and to solve problems, to control the effects of changes and finally to capitalize knowledge about changes and improvements. These tools involve suitably represent knowledge relating to the concerned system. Consequently, knowledge management (KM) is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Particularly, the capitalization and sharing of knowledge resulting from experience feedback are elements which play an essential role in the continuous improvement of industrial activities. In this paper, the contribution deals with semantic interoperability and relates to the structuring and the formalization of an experience feedback (EF) process aiming at transforming information or understanding gained by experience into explicit knowledge. The reuse of such knowledge has proved to have significant impact on achieving themissions of companies. However, the means of describing the knowledge objects of an experience generally remain informal. Based on an experience feedback process model and conceptual graphs, this paper takes domain ontology as a framework for the clarification of explicit knowledge and know-how, the aim of which is to get lessons learned descriptions that are significant, correct and applicable

Evaluation of occupational and professional profiles in Ecuadorian context based on guide of Knowledge SWEBOK and ontological model

Bodies of Knowledge (BOK), contain the relevant knowledge for a discipline, and it is necessary for the development of the science, and application in the professional, and occupational profiles, and the possible incidence in the industry of Ecuador. In this paper, it is shown an evaluation of professional and occupational profiles based on standard Software Engineering Body of Knowledge SWEBOK 2004 (Spanish Version), and the development of ontological model, in order to obtain the necessary information to establish the relationship, and the criteria to evaluate the profiles based on the guide of knowledge

Evaluation of occupational and professional profiles in Ecuadorian context based on guide of Knowledge SWEBOK and ontological model

Bodies of Knowledge (BOK), contain the relevant knowledge for a discipline, and it is necessary for the development of the science, and application in the professional, and occupational profiles, and the possible incidence in the industry of Ecuador. In this paper, it is shown an evaluation of professional and occupational profiles based on standard Software Engineering Body of Knowledge SWEBOK 2004 (Spanish Version), and the development of ontological model, in order to obtain the necessary information to establish the relationship, and the criteria to evaluate the profiles based on the guide of knowledge

The development of a case based reasoning tool for high-speed signalized expressway intersections in the State of Iowa

The safety of signalized expressway intersections has been the focus of prior research. These efforts have yielded results that were either inconclusive or required further investigation. This thesis presents the application of case-based reasoning to the issue. Similar intersections and crash reduction factors (CRFs) are used to establish expected crash performance for a candidate intersection. A spreadsheet based tool is developed that compares candidate intersections to these comparison sites. The tool uses expert opinions, attribute weights, and crash reduction factors to assist in the decision to signalize a site, to compare performance of existing signalized intersections to similar sites, or to explore the potential safety effects of intersection modification or changes in traffic patterns

When costs from being a constraint become a driver for concept generation

Managing innovation requires solving issues related to the internal development and engineering processes of a company (supply side), in addition to facing the market and competition (demand side). In this context, the product development process is crucial, as different tradeoffs and issues that require managerial attention tend to arise. The main challenges result in managers requiring practical support tools that can help them in planning and controlling the process, and of designers requiring them for supporting their design decisions. Hence, the thesis aims to focus on product costs to understand its influence on design decisions as well as on the overall management of the product development process. The core part of the thesis is based on the models and methods developed for enhancing cost analysis at the beginning of the product development process. This investigation aims to determine the importance of cost estimation in improving the overall performance of a newly designed product. The focus on post-sales and, more generally, on the customer, has become so relevant that manufacturers have to take into account not only the most obvious aspects about the product and related services, but even consider the associated implications for customers during product use. However, implementing a product life cycle perspective is still a challenging process for companies. From a methodological perspective, the reasons include uncertainty regarding the available approaches and ambiguity about their application. In terms of implementation, the main challenge is the long-term cost management, when one considers uncertainty in process duration, data collection, and other supply chain issues. In fact, helping designers and managers efficiently understand the strategic and operational consequences of a cost analysis implementation is still a problem, although advanced methodologies for more in-depth and timely analyses are available. And this is even more if one considers that product lifecycle represents a critical area of investment, particularly in light of the new challenges and opportunities provided by big data analysis in the Industry 4.0 contexts. This dissertation addresses these aspects and provides a methodological approach to assess a rigorous implementation of life-cycle cost while discussing the evidence derived from its operational and strategic impacts. The novelty lies in the way the data and information are collected, dynamically moving the focus of the investigation with regard to the data aggregation level and the product structure. The way the techniques have been combined represents a further aspect of novelty. In fact, the introduced approach contributes to a new trend in the Product Cost Estimation (PCE) literature, which suggests the integration of different techniques for product life-cycle cost analysis. The findings obtained at the end of the process can be employed to assess the impact of platform design strategy and variety proliferations on the total life-cycle costs. By evaluating the possible mix of options, and hence offering the optimal product configuration, a more conscious way for planning the product portfolio has been provided. In this sense, a detailed operational analysis (as the cost estimation) is used to inform and drive the strategic planning of the portfolio. Finally, the thesis discusses the future opportunities and challenges for product cost analysis, assessing how digitalisation of manufacturing operations may affect the data gathering and analysis process. In this new environment, the opportunity for a more informed, cost-driven decision-making will multiply, leading to varied opportunities in this research field

Ανάλυση καινοτομικής συμπεριφοράς ελληνικών επιχειρήσεων περιόδου 1994-1998

Παρατηρήσεις έκδοσης: παρουσιάζεται μερική απώλεια περιεχομένου λόγου βιβλιοδεσίας.Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία πραγματεύεται ζητήματα τα οποία σχετίζονται με την καινοτομική συμπεριφορά των ελληνικών επιχειρήσεων. Στην σύγχρονη οικονομία της γνώσης, η έννοια της καινοτομίας βρίσκεται στην καρδιά της επιχειρηματικής λειτουργίας. Μια σειρά ζητημάτων, όπως η οικονομική μεγέθυνση και η αύξηση της απασχόλησης συνδέονται με την καινοτόμα λειτουργία των επιχειρήσεων. Εύλογα λοιπόν, η καινοτομία ενδιαφέρει τις επιχειρήσεις και τους φορείς που χαράζουν στρατηγική και σχεδιάζουν και υλοποιούν πολιτικές για την οικονομία. Η προσέγγιση αυτών των ζητημάτων έγινε από δύο δρόμους, συμπληρωματικούς μεταξύ τους. Αρχικά διερευνήσαμε την διεθνή βιβλιογραφία και σκιαγραφήσαμε την σχέση ανάμεσα στις επιχειρήσεις και σε μια σειρά ζητημάτων που σχετίζονται με την καινοτομία. Η έμφαση δόθηκε στις μικρομεσαίες επιχειρήσεις, καθώς αυτές αποτελούν τον κύριο κορμό των ελληνικών επιχειρήσεων. Ακολούθως, χρησιμοποιήσαμε τα αποτελέσματα μιας έρευνας που έγινε για λογαριασμό της Γενικής Γραμματείας Έρευνας & Τεχνολογίας, στα πλαίσια της 1ης και 2ης Κοινοτικής Απογραφής για την Καινοτομία, μέσω της οποίας μετρήθηκαν στοιχεία καινοτομικότητας των ελληνικών επιχειρήσεων για την περίοδο 1994 έως 1998. Επεξεργαστήκαμε στατιστικά τα αποτελέσματα αυτά και αποτυπώσαμε μια καθαρότερη εικόνα της σχέσης ανάμεσα στην καινοτομία και τις ελληνικές επιχειρήσεις όπως αυτή διαγράφεται μέσα από την συμπεριφορά τους. Τα συμπεράσματα που προκύπτουν κινούνται στην κατεύθυνση του προσδιορισμού των αλλαγών που πρέπει να γίνουν, τόσο από τις επιχειρήσεις όσο και από την πολιτεία, ώστε να μεταβληθεί και η νοοτροπία των επιχειρήσεων και ο τρόπος με τον οποίο το κράτος χαράζει πολιτική για τις επιχειρήσεις. Ως επακόλουθο των προηγουμένων προτείνονται διάφορα πεδία έρευνας ώστε να προσδιορισθούν οι πραγματικές ανάγκες και απαιτήσεις των ελληνικών επιχειρήσεων και να σχεδιασθούν τα κατάλληλα εργαλεία χάραξης και υλοποίησης πολιτικής

Compressing Labels of Dynamic XML Data using Base-9 Scheme and Fibonacci Encoding

The flexibility and self-describing nature of XML has made it the most common mark-up language used for data representation over the Web. XML data is naturally modelled as a tree, where the structural tree information can be encoded into labels via XML labelling scheme in order to permit answers to queries without the need to access original XML files. As the transmission of XML data over the Internet has become vibrant, it has also become necessary to have an XML labelling scheme that supports dynamic XML data. For a large-scale and frequently updated XML document, existing dynamic XML labelling schemes still suffer from high growth rates in terms of their label size, which can result in overflow problems and/or ambiguous data/query retrievals. This thesis considers the compression of XML labels. A novel XML labelling scheme, named “Base-9”, has been developed to generate labels that are as compact as possible and yet provide efficient support for queries to both static and dynamic XML data. A Fibonacci prefix-encoding method has been used for the first time to store Base-9’s XML labels in a compressed format, with the intention of minimising the storage space without degrading XML querying performance. The thesis also investigates the compression of XML labels using various existing prefix-encoding methods. This investigation has resulted in the proposal of a novel prefix-encoding method named “Elias-Fibonacci of order 3”, which has achieved the fastest encoding time of all prefix-encoding methods studied in this thesis, whereas Fibonacci encoding was found to require the minimum storage. Unlike current XML labelling schemes, the new Base-9 labelling scheme ensures the generation of short labels even after large, frequent, skewed insertions. The advantages of such short labels as those generated by the combination of applying the Base-9 scheme and the use of Fibonacci encoding in terms of storing, updating, retrieving and querying XML data are supported by the experimental results reported herein