The suitability of PRINCE2 for engineering infrastructure

The view that PRINCE2 was not suitable for application to infrastructure was identified in a study done for a separate purpose, namely, to examine project governance and methodology, which is not reported in this paper. It was asserted by several participants in interviews conducted with a sample of experienced practitioners across a range of industries and disciplines. This paper follows up on those comments by conducting an examination of PRINCE2 from an engineering infrastructure perspective to investigate the validity of this assertion. It takes a deductive, definitional approach to determine if there are any features in it that would cause difficulty for engineering infrastructure use. Seventeen features were examined, and 15 were found to have difficulty in application to the project management of engineering infrastructure. The remaining two found inconsistencies that were unlikely to cause too much difficulty. The features causing difficulty include non-generic terminology for the terms project, lifecycle and stage, using a product rather than a project-based process, use of an iterative product delivery process unsuited to predictive projects, use of a delivery process for all project phases, assumption of a board governance model with inappropriate accountabilities, lack of clarity around the use of the project plan, and absence of a lifecycle appropriate for engineering infrastructure, with PRINCE2 effectively self-declaring its need for a higher-level project lifecycle/ methodology from somewhere else. The paper concludes that PRINCE2 is quite poorly suited to managing engineering infrastructure projects and identifies that some of the reasons for this are likely to also cause difficulty for many ICT projects as well

An integrated approach to supply chain risk analysis

Despite the increasing attention that supply chain risk management is receiving by both researchers and practitioners, companies still lack a risk culture. Moreover, risk management approaches are either too general or require pieces of information not regularly recorded by organisations. This work develops a risk identification and analysis methodology that integrates widely adopted supply chain and risk management tools. In particular, process analysis is performed by means of the standard framework provided by the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model, the risk identification and analysis tasks are accomplished by applying the Risk Breakdown Structure and the Risk Breakdown Matrix, and the effects of risk occurrence on activities are assessed by indicators that are already measured by companies in order to monitor their performances. In such a way, the framework contributes to increase companies' awareness and communication about risk, which are essential components of the management of modern supply chains. A base case has been developed by applying the proposed approach to a hypothetical manufacturing supply chain. An in-depth validation will be carried out to improve the methodology and further demonstrate its benefits and limitations. Future research will extend the framework to include the understanding of the multiple effects of risky events on different processe

Greening Consumer Electronics: Moving Away From Bromine and Chlorine

Presents case studies of seven electronics companies that have engineered environmental solutions that eliminate the use of most brominated and chlorinated chemicals that generate toxic materials. Discusses global standards and regulations

Managing engineering design in complex supply chains

The trend towards organising design, development and manufacture via supply chains, rather than predominantly in-house, poses major challenges for design management. Procurement methods based on adversarial competitive tendering are generally unsuited to complex engineering products requiring strong design and development coordination. Literature on ‘supplier partnerships’ has largely overlooked the implications for managing design and development. This paper reports the results of a major project that focuses upon this issue, concentrating on practical case studies – from British Rail, Netherlands Railways, Rolls Royce and British Coal – that involve the management of ‘devolved’ engineering design by large business organisations. A spectrum of approaches from in-house to fully devolved design is described. It is concluded that there does not appear to be a single best approach for managing devolved design, but that appropriate approaches for an organisation depend on its location in the supply chain and its ability to manage organisational change

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014

Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models

The adoption of mechanisms for reusing software in pervasive systems has not yet become standard practice. This is because the use of pre-existing software requires the selection, composition and adaptation of prefabricated software parts, as well as the management of some complex problems such as guaranteeing high levels of efficiency and safety in critical domains. In addition to the wide variety of services, pervasive systems are composed of many networked heterogeneous devices with embedded software. In this work, we promote the safe reuse of services in service-based systems using two complementary technologies, Service-Oriented Architecture and Software Product Lines. In order to do this, we extend both the service discovery and composition processes defined in the DAMASCo framework, which currently does not deal with the service variability that constitutes pervasive systems. We use feature models to represent the variability and to self-adapt the services during the composition in a safe way taking context changes into consideration. We illustrate our proposal with a case study related to the driving domain of an Intelligent Transportation System, handling the context information of the environment.Work partially supported by the projects TIN2008-05932, TIN2008-01942, TIN2012-35669, TIN2012-34840 and CSD2007-0004 funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER; P09-TIC-05231 and P11-TIC-7659 funded by Andalusian Government; and FP7-317731 funded by EU. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Design management: changing roles of the professions

This paper sets out to explore how recent changes in procurement in construction have affected the roles that professions play in the design process. It discusses how professions that traditionally took the role of design manager now find themselves participating within previously unforeseen contexts, working in multidisciplinary teams led by contractors and with changed responsibilities at the design stage. Supply chain members who were not previously involved during the early project phases are being engaged at the earliest phases of the project life cycle and even taking leadership roles while designers sometimes work as supply chain partners. A study of design in construction and other sectors shows that in dealing with design management issues it is critical to deepen appreciation for the unique characteristics of design and the design process. The paper argues that contractors and designers taking on design management roles in a dynamic industry seeking to explore best practice and innovative approaches to procurement and in the delivery of projects need to acquire new skills, management education and develop the necessary qualities

Boundary Objects and their Use in Agile Systems Engineering

Agile methods are increasingly introduced in automotive companies in the attempt to become more efficient and flexible in the system development. The adoption of agile practices influences communication between stakeholders, but also makes companies rethink the management of artifacts and documentation like requirements, safety compliance documents, and architecture models. Practitioners aim to reduce irrelevant documentation, but face a lack of guidance to determine what artifacts are needed and how they should be managed. This paper presents artifacts, challenges, guidelines, and practices for the continuous management of systems engineering artifacts in automotive based on a theoretical and empirical understanding of the topic. In collaboration with 53 practitioners from six automotive companies, we conducted a design-science study involving interviews, a questionnaire, focus groups, and practical data analysis of a systems engineering tool. The guidelines suggest the distinction between artifacts that are shared among different actors in a company (boundary objects) and those that are used within a team (locally relevant artifacts). We propose an analysis approach to identify boundary objects and three practices to manage systems engineering artifacts in industry