365 research outputs found
Knowledge management solutions and selection tool for engineering organisations
It is widely accepted that engineering research, design, development and manufacturing
processes are highly reliant upon the valuable knowledge, experiences and skills stored
within the company's systems, processes, documents and employees. If these key
knowledge resources can be identified, maintained and efficiently controlled, prior
successes and failures can be capitalised upon, best practices can be captured and
transferred and new solutions can be developed with minimal duplication of efforts and
without unnecessary replication of prior work.
Away from manufacturing and engineering organisations, in the broader business world,
exists an array of solutions, tools and techniques developed specifically to facilitate the
management of knowledge and experience these are collectively labelled as Knowledge
Management (KM) tools and solutions. Such solutions, tools and techniques have
achieved widespread recognition for their capabilities and consequent importance in
enhancing processes across a variety of business applications and contexts. However
their relevancy, applicability and relative merits in particular manufacturing and
mechanical engineering (MME) contexts have generally not been identified or
investigated.
This thesis reviews and presents a large number of diverse KM solutions and
implementations across industries and organisations and creates a new and unique
single KM solutions space in which these solutions are characterised. The KM solution
space is subsequently utilised by a new KM methodology and support tool that
facilitates and demonstrates the enhancement of mechanical and manufacturing
engineering processes through analysis followed by selection and implementation of the
most appropriate existing KM solutions. The KM Tool is demonstrated via three
industrial case studies detailing the process concerns and associated improvements
identified and implemented.
The KM Solution Space developed during this research has shown that there is
significant opportunity to improve mechanical and manufacturing engineering processes
through the adoption of appropriate KM solutions from the broader business world. The
KM Tool developed via this research facilitates this identification and adoption of the
most appropriate KM solution. In addition to the MME processes covered by the scope
of this research there is additional scope to extend the use of the KM Tool and KM
Solution Space to other business areas that have not yet had extensive exposure to KM
Board of Directors Meeting Minutes (September 12, 2017)
This file contains the minutes from the Des Moines Area Community College Board meeting held on September 12, 2017
CLASSIFYING AND RESPONDING TO NETWORK INTRUSIONS
Intrusion detection systems (IDS) have been widely adopted within the IT community, as
passive monitoring tools that report security related problems to system administrators.
However, the increasing number and evolving complexity of attacks, along with the
growth and complexity of networking infrastructures, has led to overwhelming numbers of
IDS alerts, which allow significantly smaller timeframe for a human to respond. The need
for automated response is therefore very much evident. However, the adoption of such
approaches has been constrained by practical limitations and administrators' consequent
mistrust of systems' abilities to issue appropriate responses.
The thesis presents a thorough analysis of the problem of intrusions, and identifies false
alarms as the main obstacle to the adoption of automated response. A critical examination
of existing automated response systems is provided, along with a discussion of why a new
solution is needed. The thesis determines that, while the detection capabilities remain
imperfect, the problem of false alarms cannot be eliminated. Automated response
technology must take this into account, and instead focus upon avoiding the disruption of
legitimate users and services in such scenarios. The overall aim of the research has
therefore been to enhance the automated response process, by considering the context of an
attack, and investigate and evaluate a means of making intelligent response decisions.
The realisation of this objective has included the formulation of a response-oriented
taxonomy of intrusions, which is used as a basis to systematically study intrusions and
understand the threats detected by an IDS. From this foundation, a novel Flexible
Automated and Intelligent Responder (FAIR) architecture has been designed, as the basis
from which flexible and escalating levels of response are offered, according to the context
of an attack. The thesis describes the design and operation of the architecture, focusing
upon the contextual factors influencing the response process, and the way they are
measured and assessed to formulate response decisions. The architecture is underpinned by
the use of response policies which provide a means to reflect the changing needs and
characteristics of organisations.
The main concepts of the new architecture were validated via a proof-of-concept prototype
system. A series of test scenarios were used to demonstrate how the context of an attack
can influence the response decisions, and how the response policies can be customised and
used to enable intelligent decisions. This helped to prove that the concept of flexible
automated response is indeed viable, and that the research has provided a suitable
contribution to knowledge in this important domain
Is empathy the missing link in teaching business ethics? A course-based educational intervention with undergraduate business students
Past approaches to teaching ethics have been rooted primarily within the cognitive developmental tradition, with the focus on developing moral reasoning. Recent studies in cognitive neuroscience and social psychology have challenged this emphasis, highlighting the primacy of the emotion in driving moral decision-making. This study proposed that empathy may be an appropriate construct for integrating both processes, and that an moral education intervention that focused on empathetic perspective-taking based on Martin Hoffman\u27s work may prove effective in both advancing moral reasoning and empathy. This approach was applied using a quasi-experimental design with undergraduate business students (N = 181) within a semester-long business ethics course. It was predicted that the class section receiving the empathetic perspective-taking intervention would show more growth on both perspective-taking (Interpersonal Reactivity Index, PT subscale) and moral reasoning (Defining Issues Test-2) measures than the comparison groups receiving the principled moral reasoning approach. Results from repeated measures ANOVAs by group indicated statistically significant differences for the comparison group increases on moral reasoning (DIT-2 N2 score); no difference was seen in the intervention group on either moral reasoning or perspective-taking. The results, however, did indicated a significant difference by gender for the intervention group on one of the subscales, Empathetic Concern, with women increasing and men decreasing in empathetic concern. A discussion of the results offers specific suggestions for integrating empathy into business ethics courses, balancing moral reasoning with emotional engagement and addressing issues related to gender. Also, this study suggests the need for skill-based, context specific measures of empathy
A study of the consultant-client relationship: examining aspects of legitimation
This thesis provides an in-depth study of the consultant client relationship. It focuses on the phenomenon of legitimation which has been neglected in the prior literature. Legitimation is critical because it is responsible for signifying how and why knowledge claims come to be accepted or rejected between the client-consultant parties. The consultants' perceived value by the client is an outcome that is dependent on the economic and socio-political processes by which judgements are made. How legitimation takes place helps provides a new locus of understanding about the communication of business advice between consultants and clients. Such exploration helps generate novel insights for how value is created. Through the conduct of in-depth interviews with both consultants and clients, we managed to obtain comprehensive empirical data that helps challenge already held assumptions. Drawing on 64 interviews, with clients and consultants, and through the use of prior theoretical frameworks that are mainly drawn from the work by Suchman (1995) and Habermas (1984a, 1984b), we identify four modes of legitimation. Such modes are characterised in terms of their cognitive, pragmatic, moral and discursive nuances. We argue that each of the legitimatory categories indicate a separate set of conditions that need to be justified and which are driven by a distinct ideological character. Legitimation becomes a process in which implicit and explicit ideological values are mutually managed between the involved organisational actors. Our discussion helps open up a new field of understanding for the consultant client relationship that is relevant for both academics and practitioners
System simulation and modeling of electronics demanufacturing facilities
Over the last decade, pressure on the electronic industry has been increasing as concerns for product take-back, product stewardship and global warming have continued to grow. Various end-of-life management options are being expanded including recycling to recapture values from basic materials through reengineering and recovery of subassemblies and individual components for remanufacturing. While progress has been reported on life cycle assessment (LCA), disassembly planning, design for disassembly, and design for environment (DFE), very little research has been focused on demanufacturing from a systems perspective.
The objective of this thesis is to build an interface between the user who knows the demanufacturing operation and a software engine, which performs the simulation, collects detailed operational data, and displays results. This thesis bridges the gap between the requirement of hard core simulation knowledge and demanufacturing terminology to present a computerized software tool.
Arena, a commercially available discrete event simulation software, acts as an engine for performing these simulations. The developed software tool for demanufacturing contains objects necessary for facility layout, systematic workflow and simulation of the facility. Each object refers to a specific demanufacturing activity and uses detailed simulation logic behind its design to perform that activity. The user selects and locates these objects to layout the facility for a graphical representation of the demanufacturing operation. Objects provide a user screen to input necessary data for the complete description of the activity and its operational characteristics.
By simulating the facility for various scenarios, the demanufacturer can compare different options for improving operations, resource utilization, equipment and layout changes. To examine improvement options from an economic perspective a first-order model of demanufacturing costs has been developed and integrated with the simulation software. An activity based unit cost model is used to identify fixed and variable costs associated with each product demanufactured. A small electronics demanufacturing facility was observed and evaluated to validate the simulation modeling and operational logic.
The application illustrates the usefulness of demanufacturing system simulation tool to manage and improve the overall efficiency of facilities for economical operation. In summary, a computer-base tool for simulating demanufacturing facility from a systems perspective has been developed and validated. An activity based cost model has been integrated with the simulation to give demanufacturers the ability to examine the full operational and economic trade-offs associated with the business
Urban Transportation Institutional Grant. Research and Training Proposal.
Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota
Using and evaluating CASE tools : from software engineering to phenomenology
CASE (Computer-Aided Systems Engineering) is a recent addition to the long line of
"silver bullets" that promise to transform information systems development, delivering
new levels of quality and productivity. CASE is particularly intriguing because
information systems (IS) practitioners spend their working lives applying information
technology (IT) to other people's work, and now they are applying it to themselves.
CASE research to date has been dominated by accounts of tool development,
normative writings (for example practitioner success stories) and surveys recording
IT specialists' perceptions. There have been very few in-depth studies of tool use,
and very few attempts to quantify benefits, therefore the essence of the CASE process
remains largely unexplored, and the views of stakeholders other than the IT specialists
have yet to be heard.
The research presented here addresses these concerns by adopting a hybrid research
approach combining action research, grounded theory and phenoinenology and using
both qualitative and quantitative data in order to tell the story of a system developer's
experience in using CASE tools in three information systems projects for a major UK
car manufacturer over a four year period. The author was the lead developer on all
three projects. Action research is a learning process, the researcher is an explorer.
At the start of this project it was assumed that the tools would be the focus of the
work. As the research progressed it became evident that the tools were but part of
a richer organisational context in which culture, politics, history, external initiatives
and cognitive limitations played important roles. The author continued to record
experiences and impressions of tool use in the project diary together with quality and
productivity metrics. But the diary also became home to a story of organisational
developments that had not originally been foreseen.
The principal contribution made by the work is to identity the narrow positivistic
nature of CASE knowledge, and to show via the research stories the overwhelming
importance of organisational context to systems development success and how the
exploration of context is poorly supported by the tools. Sixteen further contributions
are listed in the Conclusions to the thesis, including a major extension to Wynekoop
and Conger's CASE research taxonomy, an identification of the potentially
misleading nature of quantitative IS assessment and further evidence of the limitations
of the "scientific" approach to systems development.
The thesis is completed by two proposals for further work. The first seeks to
advance IS theory by developing further a number of emerging process models of IS
development. The second seeks to advance IS practice by asking the question "How
can CASE tools be used to stimulate awareness and debate about the effects of
organisational context?", and outlines a programme of research in this area
Soma Series: Somatic Metaphors Evidenced in a series of medical transactions?
Aspects of the orthodox medical-gaze have long been the concern of
artists, theorists and Complementary Medical Practitioners. This research
explored an aspect of the pre-surgical transactional-interview related to
the 'quest for prosthesis', as a specific paradigm of the way the medicalgaze
implicitly disciplines its 'subjects'. A pragmatic feminist standpoint
approach was engaged in conjunction with an Ayurvedic/holistic
perspective, from which to observe and critique fieldwork and create
visual outcomes from it, as it was observed to somatically affect both
patients and medical team in an Orthopaedics Department of an NHS
hospital.
Soma-Series: Somatic Metaphors Evidenced as a Series of Medical
Transactions? parodically explored aspects of role-play and behavioural
patterns that were seen to manifest through body-language that rendered
the interaction as a simulation of events that were in themselves already
'artificial' as a result of the orthodox disciplines that engaged it. Threedimensional
images as interpretations of this 'evidence' were subsequently
transformed into a 'scripto-visual' interactive hypertext. Through visual
experimentation, new research was developed as www.soma-series.org.uk in
conjunction with an exhibition of selected images as Soma-Series: Ten
Constructs at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, U.K. [May 2002], for
its Ethics Committee; fieldwork participants and members of the public.
The thesis compared this 'evidenced-based' approach to art making with the
work by two contemporary women artists whose visual work also juxtaposed
socio-medical discourse with art-practice [Jane Prophet and Christine
Borland]. The outcomes as website 'artwork' anticipated opening up links
between aspects of socio-medical discourse, cyberspace and feminism.
Inviting audience response to the site was a central part of the research
paradigm, with a view to expanding the debate relating to quest for
prosthesis and its implications for notions of a 'bionic' body
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