The adoption and use of Through-life Engineering Services within UK Manufacturing Organisations

Manufacturing organisations seek ever more innovative approaches in order to maintain and improve their competitive position within the global market. One such initiative that is gaining significance is ‘through-life engineering services’. These seek to adopt ‘whole life’ service support through the greater understanding of component and system performance driven by knowledge gained from maintenance, repair and overhaul activities. This research presents the findings of exploratory research based on a survey of UK manufacturers who provide through-life engineering services. The survey findings illustrate significant issues to be addressed within the field before the concept becomes widely accepted. These include a more proactive approach to maintenance activities based on real-time responses; standardisation of data content, structure, collection, storage and retrieval protocols in support of maintenance; the development of clear definitions, ontologies and a taxonomy of through-life engineering services in support of the service delivery system; lack of understanding of component and system performance due to the presence of ‘No Fault Found’ events that skew maintenance metrics and the increased use of radio-frequency identification technology in support of maintenance data acquisition

Principles in Patterns (PiP) : Project Evaluation Synthesis

Evaluation activity found the technology-supported approach to curriculum design and approval developed by PiP to demonstrate high levels of user acceptance, promote improvements to the quality of curriculum designs, render more transparent and efficient aspects of the curriculum approval and quality monitoring process, demonstrate process efficacy and resolve a number of chronic information management difficulties which pervaded the previous state. The creation of a central repository of curriculum designs as the basis for their management as "knowledge assets", thus facilitating re-use and sharing of designs and exposure of tacit curriculum design practice, was also found to be highly advantageous. However, further process improvements remain possible and evidence of system resistance was found in some stakeholder groups. Recommendations arising from the findings and conclusions include the need to improve data collection surrounding the curriculum approval process so that the process and human impact of C-CAP can be monitored and observed. Strategies for improving C-CAP acceptance among the "late majority", the need for C-CAP best practice guidance, and suggested protocols on the knowledge management of curriculum designs are proposed. Opportunities for further process improvements in institutional curriculum approval, including a re-engineering of post-faculty approval processes, are also recommended

A collaborative-project memory tool for participatory planning

Technology is more and more providing planners and designer with tools and methods to collect and communicate spatial data and assist spatial analysis. When we think about new technologies supporting planning we mainly think about GIS, urban modelling, simulation models and virtual reality. But many other challenges to the planning practice need for tools to support and improve planning activities. In this paper we discuss the need of new tools to support knowledge representation and knowledge sharing in participatory planning processes. The paper describes the use of a hypermedia and sensemaking tool (Compendium) to structure the knowledge produced in a real participatory planning process. In the present application Compendium has been used not for real-time capturing but for a post-hoc analysis of a real participatory planning experience. Compendium has been used to represent and reconstruct the group memory of consultation meetings in order to allow both the planning team and the citizens to navigate into the contents of those meetings. Moreover the paper describes the main features and potential of the use of Compendium in Participatory Planning domain, and it describes the results of the group memory reconstruction. Finally the case study opens reflections on the need of new planning technologies supporting participatory knowledge generation, representation and management

A modified flower pollination algorithm and carnivorous plant algorithm for solving engineering optimization problem

Optimization in an essential element in mechanical engineering and has never been an easy task. Hence, using an effective optimiser to solve these problems with high complexity is important. In this study, two metaheuristic algorithms, namely, modified flower pollination algorithm (MFPA) and carnivorous plant algorithm (CPA), were proposed. Flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is a biomimicry optimisation algorithm inspired by natural pollination. Although FPA has shown better convergence than particle swarm optimisation and genetic algorithm in the pioneering study, improving the convergence characteristic of FPA still needs more work. To speed up the convergence, modifications of: (i) employing chaos theory in the initialisation of initial population to enhance the diversity of the initial population in the search space, (ii) replacing FPA’s local search strategy with frog leaping algorithm to improve intensification, and (iii) integrating inertia weight into FPA’s global search strategy to adjust the searching ability of the global strategy, were presented. CPA, on the other hand, was developed based on the inspiration from how carnivorous plants adapt to survive in harsh environments. Both MFPA and CPA were first evaluated using twenty-five well-known benchmark functions with different characteristics and seven Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2017 test functions. Their convergence characteristic and computational efficiency were analysed and compared with eight widely used metaheuristic algorithms, with the superiority validated using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The applicability of MFPA and CPA were further examined on eighteen mechanical engineering design problems and two challenging real-world applications of controlling the orientation of a five-degrees-of-freedom robotic arm and moving-object tracking in a complicated environment. For the optimisation of classical benchmark functions, CPA was ranked first. It also obtained the first rank in CEC04 and CEC07 modern test functions. Both CPA and MFPA showed promising results on the mechanical engineering design problems. CPA improved over the particle swarm optimisation algorithm in terms of the best fitness value by 69.40-95.99% in the optimisation of the robotic arm. Meanwhile, MFPA demonstrated a better tracking performance in the considered case studies by at least 52.99% better fitness function evaluation and fewer number of function evaluations as compared with the competitors

Confidence modelling in DiGMapGB-50 for customer needs

This report reviews and tests recent internal research on establishing an efficient, reliable method of creating an indicator layer of confidence in the DiGMapGB-50 data, using expert elicitation. This report provides an overview of work from earlier studies by the BGS with a follow up test based on recommendations (Lee, et al., 2011). The focus of this study was the development and implementation of the follow up procedure which is described in detail. Recommendations for further development of the methodology are provided alongside a proposed way forward

Factors of Adoption and Diffusion of Knowledge Management Systems in Australia: a structural equation modelling approach

This study investigates the factors influencing the adoption and diffusion of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) in Australia. The study uses a mixed methodology approach. The research was carried out in three stages: field study, pilot survey, and national survey (top 1,500 companies). The data of the national survey was analysed through Structural Equation Modelling approach (LISREL). Results indicate that “Individual factors” and “Task complexity” are the significant factors which influence the “Perceived usefulness” of KMS, which in turn significantly influences the “Intention” to adopt KMS and its diffusion process. Some unexpected results are also revealed. The results provide practical suggestions to those companies that are embarking on the adoption and diffusion of knowledge management systems in Australia or elsewhere

Technology Acquisition among Asian Firms and Technology Clusters in the United States

This paper examines the nature of reverse technology transfer between Asian firms and their subsidiaries in the United States (US). Traditional models of technology transfer suggest that industrializing Asian firms access international technology and knowledge through local spillovers from the activities of foreign firms located in Asia. In this research, we propose a new model of technology development where Asian subsidiaries locate in targeted geographical areas in the US with the objective of acquiring both tacit and codifiable knowledge. Acquisition patterns involve a combination of interactions between suppliers and customers, and, human resource dynamics in the US. Industrial prototypes and knowledge are then transferred back to parent firms in Asia. This pattern of technology development among industrializing Asian firms suggests that a category of subsidiaries is emerging that plays a far more developmental role than the literature currently acknowledges. It also points to shifts in firm strategy in terms of international patterns of technology transfer from learning-by-doing to learning-by-interacting.

A review of ten years of implementation and research in aligning learning design with learning analytics at the Open University UK

There is an increased recognition that learning design drives both student learning experience and quality enhancements of teaching and learning. The Open University UK (OU) has been one of few institutions that have explicitly and systematically captured the designs for learning at a large scale. By applying advanced analytical techniques on large and fine-grained datasets, the OU has been unpacking the complexity of instructional practices, as well as providing conceptual and empirical evidence of how learning design influences student behaviour, satisfaction, and performance. This study discusses the implementation of learning design at the OU in the last ten years, and critically reviews empirical evidence from eight recent large-scale studies that have linked learning design with learning analytics. Four future research themes are identified to support future adoptions of learning design approaches