Modelling framework of a traceability system of improve knowledge sharing and collaborative design.

International audienceIn collaborative design, the results of each activity imply modifications of different objects of the situation and are likely to affect the achievement of other activities. The use of collaborative tools enhances the capitalization process, especially at the stage of information collecting. Conversely, capitalized knowledge can also promote cooperation between actors regarding their situation in common. This paper develops a new modelling framework of a traceability system, based on the concept of work situation, to improve knowledge sharing and collaborative design. It aims at giving designers a collaborative tool to capture information of their work and, simultaneously, a view of the progress of their activity and of other inter-related activities

A requirements engineering framework for integrated systems development for the construction industry

Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) systems are computer environments through which collaborative working can be undertaken. Although many CIC systems have been developed to demonstrate the communication and collaboration within the construction projects, the uptake of CICs by the industry is still inadequate. This is mainly due to the fact that research methodologies of the CIC development projects are incomplete to bridge the technology transfer gap. Therefore, defining comprehensive methodologies for the development of these systems and their effective implementation on real construction projects is vital. Requirements Engineering (RE) can contribute to the effective uptake of these systems because it drives the systems development for the targeted audience. This paper proposes a requirements engineering approach for industry driven CIC systems development. While some CIC systems are investigated to build a broad and deep contextual knowledge in the area, the EU funded research project, DIVERCITY (Distributed Virtual Workspace for Enhancing Communication within the Construction Industry), is analysed as the main case study project because its requirements engineering approach has the potential to determine a framework for the adaptation of requirements engineering in order to contribute towards the uptake of CIC systems

WETICE 2004 Evaluating Collaborative Enterprises (ECE) Workshop - Final report

A summary of the fifth Evaluating Collaborative Enterprises (ECE) workshop which ran on June 14th at University of Modena, Italy. The overall theme of the workshop this year was evaluation within the software lifecyle rather than as a separate activity. Each of the five papers touched on this subject and the subsequent winner of Best Paper covered it thoroughly. Concerns about the level of interactivity within the workshop and WETICE itself prompted a format change to ``paired-paper'' sessions with plenty of discussion time. Several outstanding issus were identified during the discussion, including development of ``evaluation components'' alongside software components, the need to convince managers of the business case for evaluation and meta-evaluation of popular techniques with a view to avoiding studies that select inappropriate techniques or rely too heavily on one type of technique

Requirements engineering for computer integrated environments in construction

A Computer Integrated Environment (CIE) is the type of innovative integrated information system that helps to reduce fragmentation and enables the stakeholders to collaborate together in business. Researchers have observed that the concept of CIE has been the subject of research for many years but the uptake of this technology has been very limited because of the development of the technology and its effective implementation. Although CIE is very much valued by both industrialists and academics, the answers to the question of how to develop and how to implement it are still not clear. The industrialists and researchers conveyed that networking, collaboration, information sharing and communication will become popular and critical issues in the future, which can be managed through CIE systems. In order for successful development of the technology, successful delivery, and effective implementation of user and industry-oriented CIE systems, requirements engineering seems a key parameter. Therefore, through experiences and lessons learnt in various case studies of CIE systems developments, this book explains the development of a requirements engineering framework specific to the CIE system. The requirements engineering process that has been developed in the research is targeted at computer integrated environments with a particular interest in the construction industry as the implementation field. The key features of the requirements engineering framework are the following: (1) ready-to-use, (2) simple, (3) domain specific, (4) adaptable and (5) systematic, (6) integrated with the legacy systems. The method has three key constructs: i) techniques for requirements development, which includes the requirement elicitation, requirements analysis/modelling and requirements validation, ii) requirements documentation and iii) facilitating the requirements management. It focuses on system development methodologies for the human driven ICT solutions that provide communication, collaboration, information sharing and exchange through computer integrated environments for professionals situated in discrete locations but working in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary environment. The overview for each chapter of the book is as follows; Chapter 1 provides an overview by setting the scene and presents the issues involved in requirements engineering and CIE (Computer Integrated Environments). Furthermore, it makes an introduction to the necessity for requirements engineering for CIE system development, experiences and lessons learnt cumulatively from CIE systems developments that the authors have been involved in, and the process of the development of an ideal requirements engineering framework for CIE systems development, based on the experiences and lessons learnt from the multi-case studies. Chapter 2 aims at building up contextual knowledge to acquire a deeper understanding of the topic area. This includes a detailed definition of the requirements engineering discipline and the importance and principles of requirements engineering and its process. In addition, state of the art techniques and approaches, including contextual design approach, the use case modelling, and the agile requirements engineering processes, are explained to provide contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering to the readers. After building contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering in chapter 2, chapter 3 attempts to identify a scope and contextual knowledge and understanding about computer integrated environments and Building Information Modelling (BIM). In doing so, previous experiences of the authors about systems developments for computer integrated environments are explained in detail as the CIE/BIM case studies. In the light of contextual knowledge gained about requirements engineering in chapter 2, in order to realize the critical necessity of requirements engineering to combine technology, process and people issues in the right balance, chapter 4 will critically evaluate the requirements engineering activities of CIE systems developments that are explained in chapter 3. Furthermore, to support the necessity of requirements engineering for human centred CIE systems development, the findings from semi-structured interviews are shown in a concept map that is also explained in this chapter. In chapter 5, requirements engineering is investigated from different angles to pick up the key issues from discrete research studies and practice such as traceability through process and product modelling, goal-oriented requirements engineering, the essential and incidental complexities in requirements models, the measurability of quality requirements, the fundamentals of requirements engineering, identifying and involving the stakeholders, reconciling software requirements and system architectures and barriers to the industrial uptake of requirements engineering. In addition, a comprehensive research study measuring the success of requirements engineering processes through a set of evaluation criteria is introduced. Finally, the key issues and the criteria are comparatively analyzed and evaluated in order to match each other and confirm the validity of the criteria for the evaluation and assessment of the requirements engineering implementation in the CIE case study projects in chapter 7 and the key issues will be used in chapter 9 to support the CMM (Capability Maturity Model) for acceptance and wider implications of the requirements engineering framework to be proposed in chapter 8. Chapter 6 explains and particularly focuses on how the requirements engineering activities in the case study projects were handled by highlighting strengths and weaknesses. This will also include the experiences and lessons learnt from these system development practices. The findings from these developments will also be utilized to support the justification of the necessity of a requirements engineering framework for the CIE systems developments. In particular, the following are addressed. • common and shared understanding in requirements engineering efforts, • continuous improvement, • outputs of requirement engineering • reflections and the critical analysis of the requirements engineering approaches in these practices. The premise of chapter 7 is to evaluate and assess the requirements engineering approaches in the CIE case study developments from multiple viewpoints in order to find out the strengths and the weaknesses in these requirements engineering processes. This evaluation will be mainly based on the set of criteria developed by the researchers and developers in the requirements engineering community in order to measure the success rate of the requirements engineering techniques after their implementation in the various system development projects. This set of criteria has already been introduced in chapter 5. This critical assessment includes conducting a questionnaire based survey and descriptive statistical analysis. In chapter 8, the requirements engineering techniques tested in the CIE case study developments are composed and compiled into a requirements engineering process in the light of the strengths and the weaknesses identified in the previous chapter through benchmarking with a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to ensure that it has the required level of maturity for implementation in the CIE systems developments. As a result of this chapter, a framework for a generic requirements engineering process for CIE systems development will be proposed. In chapter 9, the authors will discuss the acceptance and the wider implications of the proposed framework of requirements engineering process using the CMM from chapter 8 and the key issues from chapter 5. Chapter 10 is the concluding chapter and it summarizes the findings and brings the book to a close with recommendations for the implementation of the Proposed RE framework and also prescribes a guideline as a way forward for better implementation of requirements engineering for successful developments of the CIE systems in the future

Semantic interoperability for an integrated product development process: a systematic literature review

International audienceGlobal competitiveness challenges manufacturing industry to rationalise different ways of bringing to the market new products in a short lead-time with competitive prices while ensuring higher quality levels and customisation. Industries need to effectively share heterogeneous information during Product Development Process (PDP) within and across their institutional boundaries to be competitive. However, problems with misinterpretation and mistakes have been identified during information exchange due to the semantic interoperability obstacles. Thus, this research proposes a systematic literature review to identify the main researches and the milestones reference works on semantic interoperability field. A rigorous methodology was conducted in different databases, covering the articles published in scientific journals from 2005 to 2015 as a preliminary study had indicated that the incidence of articles related to the subject was more frequent from the second half of the 2000s. The research structure consisted of four steps: Survey-searching, analysis and selection of recent researches; Categorization-categorization of the selected papers; References citation frequency analysis-the selected papers were analysed and the main researches and milestones references were identified; and Main researches critical analysis – the main researches were analysed for their contributions and limitations, their contributions and limitations, resulting in 14 selected scientific articles and 8 identified milestones references. It is evident that this field has interesting perspectives on future research opportunities on semantic interoperability of information issues across PDP, contributing to the new concepts of future factories

Integrated lifecycle requirements information management in construction

Effective management of information about client requirements in construction projects lifecycle can contribute to high construction productivity; within budget and schedule, and improve the quality of built facilities and service delivery. Traditionally, requirements management has been focused at the early stages of the construction lifecycle process where elicited client requirements information is used as the basis for design. Management of client requirements does not extend to the later phases. Client requirements often evolve and change dramatically over a facility’s life. Changing client requirements is one of the principal factors that contribute to delays and budget overruns of construction projects. This results in claims, disputes and client dissatisfaction. The problems of current requirements management process also include: lack of integrated and collaborative working with requirements; lack of integrated requirements information flow between the various heterogeneous systems used in the lifecycle processes, and between the multiple stakeholders; inefficient and ineffective coordination of changes within the lifecycle processes; manual checking of dependencies between changing requirements to facilitate assessment of cost and time impact of changes. The aim of the research is to specify a better approach to requirements information management to help construction organisations reduce operational cost and time in product development and service delivery; whilst increasing performance and productivity, and realising high quality of built facilities. In order to achieve the aim and the formulated objectives, firstly, a detailed review of literature on related work was conducted. Secondly, the research designed, developed and conducted three case studies to investigate the state-of-the-art of managing client requirements information. A combination of multiple data collection methods was applied which included observations, interviews, focus group and questionnaires. Following this, the data was analysed and problems were identified; the necessity for a lifecycle approach to managing the requirements information emerged. (Continues...)

An approach to control collaborative processes in PLM systems

Companies that collaborate within the product development processes need to implement an effective management of their collaborative activities. Despite the implementation of a PLM system, the collaborative activities are not efficient as it might be expected. This paper presents an analysis of the problems related to the collaborative work using a PLM system. From this analysis, we propose an approach for improving collaborative processes within a PLM system, based on monitoring indicators. This approach leads to identify and therefore to mitigate the brakes of the collaborative work