A Smart Products Lifecycle Management (sPLM) Framework - Modeling for Conceptualization, Interoperability, and Modularity

Autonomy and intelligence have been built into many of today’s mechatronic products, taking advantage of low-cost sensors and advanced data analytics technologies. Design of product intelligence (enabled by analytics capabilities) is no longer a trivial or additional option for the product development. The objective of this research is aimed at addressing the challenges raised by the new data-driven design paradigm for smart products development, in which the product itself and the smartness require to be carefully co-constructed. A smart product can be seen as specific compositions and configurations of its physical components to form the body, its analytics models to implement the intelligence, evolving along its lifecycle stages. Based on this view, the contribution of this research is to expand the “Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)” concept traditionally for physical products to data-based products. As a result, a Smart Products Lifecycle Management (sPLM) framework is conceptualized based on a high-dimensional Smart Product Hypercube (sPH) representation and decomposition. First, the sPLM addresses the interoperability issues by developing a Smart Component data model to uniformly represent and compose physical component models created by engineers and analytics models created by data scientists. Second, the sPLM implements an NPD3 process model that incorporates formal data analytics process into the new product development (NPD) process model, in order to support the transdisciplinary information flows and team interactions between engineers and data scientists. Third, the sPLM addresses the issues related to product definition, modular design, product configuration, and lifecycle management of analytics models, by adapting the theoretical frameworks and methods for traditional product design and development. An sPLM proof-of-concept platform had been implemented for validation of the concepts and methodologies developed throughout the research work. The sPLM platform provides a shared data repository to manage the product-, process-, and configuration-related knowledge for smart products development. It also provides a collaborative environment to facilitate transdisciplinary collaboration between product engineers and data scientists

Research and Development Workstation Environment: the new class of Current Research Information Systems

Against the backdrop of the development of modern technologies in the field of scientific research the new class of Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) and related intelligent information technologies has arisen. It was called - Research and Development Workstation Environment (RDWE) - the comprehensive problem-oriented information systems for scientific research and development lifecycle support. The given paper describes design and development fundamentals of the RDWE class systems. The RDWE class system's generalized information model is represented in the article as a three-tuple composite web service that include: a set of atomic web services, each of them can be designed and developed as a microservice or a desktop application, that allows them to be used as an independent software separately; a set of functions, the functional filling-up of the Research and Development Workstation Environment; a subset of atomic web services that are required to implement function of composite web service. In accordance with the fundamental information model of the RDWE class the system for supporting research in the field of ontology engineering - the automated building of applied ontology in an arbitrary domain area, scientific and technical creativity - the automated preparation of application documents for patenting inventions in Ukraine was developed. It was called - Personal Research Information System. A distinctive feature of such systems is the possibility of their problematic orientation to various types of scientific activities by combining on a variety of functional services and adding new ones within the cloud integrated environment. The main results of our work are focused on enhancing the effectiveness of the scientist's research and development lifecycle in the arbitrary domain area.Comment: In English, 13 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, added references in Russian. Published. Prepared for special issue (UkrPROG 2018 conference) of the scientific journal "Problems of programming" (Founder: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Software Systems of NAS Ukraine

A Threesome Dance of Agency: Mangling the Sociomateriality of Technological Regimes in Digital Innovation

In this paper, we develop a sociomaterial perspective for appreciating tensions between different technological regimes in digital innovation. Our case study research specifically looks at the tension between the deep-rooted component-based logic of two automakers’ innovation practices and their attempt to introduce a new software architecture based on service orientation. Our evidence suggests that digital architectures need to materialize and be shaped in a dialectical way in the mangle of both existing regimes. We argue that the threesome dance of physical material agency, digital material agency and human agency can explain this finding and yield implications for our understanding of digital innovation in the traditional industries. Digital innovation is a result of a dialectical process, resolving various elements of resistance, subjection, and accommodation across the three types of agency

Network strategies for the new economy

In this paper we argue that the pace and scale of development in the information and communication technology industries (ICT) has had and continues to have major effects on the industry economics and competitive dynamics generally. We maintain that the size of changes in demand and supply conditions is forcing companies to make significant changes in the way they conceive and implement their strategies. We decompose the ICT industries into four levels, technology standards, supply chains, physical platforms, and consumer networks. The nature of these technologies and their cost characteristics coupled with higher degrees of knowledge specialisation is impelling companies to radical revisions of their attitudes towards cooperation and co-evolution with suppliers and customers. Where interdependencies between customers are particularly strong, we anticipate the possibility of winner-takes-all strategies. In these circumstances industry risks become very high and there will be significant consequences for competitive markets

Becoming a keystone: How incumbents can leverage technological change to create ecosystems

The proliferation of digital technology and automation in the 21st century has created a need to\ua0revisit established theories on value creation. Exponential advances in Internet of Things (IoT)\ua0technologies are dismantling firm- and industry-specific value creation processes. The firms\ua0developing digital technology-based products and services typically participate in broad\ua0networks, which allows them to integrate distinct systems and technologies to produce a focal\ua0value proposition. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how incumbents can leverage\ua0technological change to create an innovation ecosystem.\ua0The concept of an innovation ecosystem is a powerful analogy to explain value co-creation in\ua0a network. In general, ecosystems are broad cooperative networks, in which the actors coalesce\ua0organically and co-evolve through the construction of a value proposition. Although several\ua0scholars have studied value co-creation in an ecosystem, few have explored the process of\ua0ecosystem emergence. Also, extant research on ecosystem primarily investigates orchestration\ua0capabilities from the perspective of technology firms or new entrants that emerge within an\ua0ecosystem. Few empirical studies investigate how incumbent firms can co-create value and\ua0develop capabilities to orchestrate an ecosystem as a keystone actor.In this context, this thesis investigates a manufacturing firm’s efforts to develop a new\ua0technology. The research was designed as an ethnographic in-depth case study of Volvo Car\ua0Group, an incumbent in the automotive industry. The thesis employs a qualitative abductive\ua0research approach to explore the collaborations related to the development of AD technology,\ua0a discontinuous technological change for incumbent automotive firms. Based on a four-year\ua0longitudinal case study and findings from four papers, the thesis makes important contributions\ua0to scholarly understanding of ecosystem emergence in traditional industries.This thesis makes three main contributions to literature on innovation ecosystems: (1) it\ua0describes ‘layered modularity’ as a design mechanism that facilitates joint value creation\ua0leading to the emergence of an innovation ecosystem, (2) it shows how developing physical\ua0products (such as devices or hardware platforms) and digital systems (such as IoT technologies\ua0or software) in distinct layers allows intertwining of divergent innovation activities anddevelopment methods, (3) it distinguishes between three distinct activities – cooperation,\ua0coordination and competition – that incumbents firms need to manage in order to become a\ua0keystone actor and orchestrate the ecosystem. The findings presented in this thesis have\ua0important implications for manufacturing firms looking to leverage a DTC to create new\ua0ecosystems

Remixing Cinema: The case of the Brighton Swarm of Angels

Disintermediation, web 2.0, distributed problem solving, collaborative creation/art, user-centred innovation, creative common

Team to Market (T2M): Creating High Performance Teams in the Digital Age

1. Teams are the essential means of product or service delivery and the fundamental building blocks of modern organisations. An effective team can produce results far outperforming a collection of even the most talented individuals when team members coalesce and jell into a single, well-functioning, fully-aligned organism. This report advances the notion of “Team to Market” (T2M) to help business leaders and knowledge workers understand, create and lead high performance teams in the digital age

Digitalization and Innovation

Developments in digital technology offer new opportunities to design new products and services. However, creating such digitalized products and services often creates new problems and challenges to firms that are trying to innovate. In this essay, we analyze the impact of digitalization of products and services on innovations. In particular, we argue that digitalization of products will lead to an emergence of new layered product architecture. The layered architecture is characterized by its generative design rules that connect loosely coupled heterogeneous layers. It is pregnant with the potential of unbounded innovations. The new product architecture will require organizations to adopt a new organizing logic of innovation that we dubbed as doubly distributed innovation network. Based on this analysis, we propose five key issues that future researchers need to explore.innovation, innovation, product architecture, design rules

Third Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications, part 2

Topics relative to the application of artificial intelligence to space operations are discussed. New technologies for space station automation, design data capture, computer vision, neural nets, automatic programming, and real time applications are discussed