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Development of an online collaborative working environment for design and manufacturing
This research is to develop a novel collaborative working environment (CWE) for manufacturing and design using advanced Web/Internet technologies such as Web Service, Grid Service and other related software tools/packages. To achieve the above, the following research modules are developed by the author: A service oriented framework for computer aid design, which acts as an online collaboration system, has been developed with the utilisation of the latest technology, Web Service. The concept of Service-Oriented Architecture has been implemented in the framework. Users from anywhere in the world can join the design process from their PCs, no matter what operation system they are using. The service-oriented system has the capability of going through firewalls and can afford multi-users due to the characteristics of Web service. Also the loose-coupling structure makes the system very easy to be updated. Another module for the CWE is to solve the software sharing problem when the platform is used among several geographically dispersed users or organisations. A software package bank system has been developed, which utilised the ideology of service oriented approach and successfully solved traditional problems in this field. Based on the outcomes mentioned above, the research finally developed a more powerful infrastructure using Grid service, which is a further development of Grid computing and Web service. The Grid service is considered to be the most important future solvent for Internet
Can Convergence of Innovation Catalyse Economic Growth?
Big ideas offer big dividends but have stormy beginnings. Even worse is when people cannot visualise the future because their imagination is bent out of focus by short-term ROI or resistance to change status quo! Systemic vision requires individuals who can visualize future issues with dynamic and analytical convergence which balances the odds of probabilistic decision making in a generally uncertain world. It is such âinclusive' and out-of-the-box thinking that is uncommon because institutions still offer prizes for depth of expertise, almost exclusively. Erudite scholars such as Murray Gell-Mann and Nicholas Negroponte, continue to comment on the need for individuals with âhorizontalâ understanding. But, academic status quo and paucity of such enlightened views are discouraging individuals to pursue a broad spectrum of âhorizontalâ understanding. In "Darwin's Middle Road" that Stephen Jay Gould wrote for his monthly column in the Natural History magazine, Gould once said, "if genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields."This article is about convergence and why not. How about a ride to space in an elevator? Why not? A single nanotube could stretch from earth to the stratosphere and be able to support its own weight. This fact spurred NASA to review ideas proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1895) a Russian visionary and Arthur C. Clarke in The Fountains of Paradise (1978). The idea is to build an elevator (lift) that will travel 60,000 miles from the earthâs surface into space carrying cargo and humans. It is predicted that the âspace elevatorâ will lower the cost of positioning a satellite in space from 100 per pound. NASA provided 6 to 2 billion. The estimated cost of building and operating the international Space Station is expected to exceed $100 billion. Those who are teenagers today, may wish to book a suite in that elevator to space, to celebrate their 50th marriage anniversary!MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation
http://supplychain.mit.edu/shoume