An Organizational Maturity Model of Software Product Line Engineering

Software product line engineering is an inter-disciplinary concept. It spans the dimensions of business, architecture, process, and the organization. Some of the potential benefits of this approach include cost reduction, improvements in product quality and a decrease in product development time. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents an organizational maturity model of software product line engineering for evaluating the maturity of organizational dimension. The model assumes that organizational theories, behavior, and management play a critical role in the institutionalization of software product line engineering within an organization. Assessment questionnaires and a rating methodology comprise the framework of this model. The objective and design of the questionnaires are to collect information about the software product line engineering process from the dual perspectives of organizational behavior and management. Furthermore, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results using the organizational maturity model presented in this paper

An integrated total quality management model for the Ghanaian construction industry

D.Phil. (Engineering Management)Abstract: This research project investigated and modelled Total Quality Management (TQM) for the Ghanaian construction industry. The primary aim of the research was to model the extent to which Leadership/Top Management features, Company Supplier Quality Management features, Client Focus and Involvement features, Company Quality System Evaluation features, Company Vision and Plan Statement features, Product Design Management features, Product Selection Management features, Construction Process Management and Improvement features, and Construction Employees’ Involvement and Motivation features predict TQM for the construction industry, these factors being classified as the exogenous variables. Mixed-methods research which involved both Qualitative and Quantitative approaches was adopted for the study. Empirical data was collected through a Delphi study and a field questionnaire survey. Analysis of results from the Delphi study was done with Microsoft Excel to output descriptive statistics. A conceptual integrated TQM for the Ghanaian construction industry model was based on the theory developed from literature review findings and the Delphi study. A questionnaire survey was conducted among the top management working in the construction industry in Ghana. From the 641 sample questionnaires, 536 questionnaires were returned which represents 83.62 per cent. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on the initial eight-factor constructs and their variables to determine their reliability for their inclusion in the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Nine-factor constructs were realized after the EFA factor loading test. Further, CFA was conducted on these nine-factor constructs using structural equation modelling (SEM) software with Eqations (EQS) version 6.2 software programme to validate and determine their reliability and inclusion in the final model. Findings from the literature on TQM studies revealed the theory that TQM implementations and practices and the latent variables lead to TQM in the construction industry. Findings from the Delphi study revealed that several factors (Leadership/Top Management features, Company Supplier Quality Management features, Client Focus and Involvement features, Company Quality System Evaluation features, Company Vision and Plan Statement features, Product Selection and Design Management features, Construction Process Management and Improvement features, and Construction Employees’ Involvement and Motivation features) were considered to be the most important determinants of TQM in the Ghanaian construction industry. Both findings revealed that TQM could be considered as an eight-factor model defined by the influence of TQM practices and experts in construction..

Utilization of Alkin-WP-Based Digital Library Evaluation Software as Evaluation Tool of Digital Library Effectiveness

One source of learning in universities is a digital library. In the era of industry 4.0, most universities have implemented digital libraries in supporting the learning process. However, the reality shows that digital library management is still ineffective. Therefore, the implementation of digital libraries needs to be evaluated for determining the digital library effectiveness used as learning resources in supporting the learning process in universities. Many evaluation tools are used to evaluate the effectiveness of digital libraries but have not provided accurate recommendation results to support decision-making. This research presents an innovation in the form of an evaluation tool that can be used to evaluate the digital library effectiveness in universities. That evaluation tool is called the Alkin-WP-based digital library evaluation software. This software is a desktop platform that contains aspects of measuring the digital library effectiveness by referring to the components of the Alkin evaluation model and the WP (Weighted Product) method. This research aimed to show the effectiveness level of the utilization of Alkin-WP-based digital library evaluation software. This research method was R & D (Research & Development) which refers to the ten development stages of the Borg and Gall model. In this research, development was focused only on a few stages, included: usage trials, final product revision, dissemination, and implementation. The subjects involved in assessing the implementation/utilization of the Alkin-WP-based digital library evaluation software were 35 people, in the usage trials were six people, in product revision were three people, and at the stage of dissemination were 15 people. The tools used to collect data were questionnaires and interview guidelines. The data analysis technique used was descriptive quantitative. The effectiveness level of utilizing the Alkin-WP-based digital library evaluation software was 88.34%. It showed that the evaluation software had effective. The impact of this research results on the scientific field of educational evaluation is being able to show the existence of a new evaluation tool based on educational evaluation and artificial intelligence. That evaluation tool can easier for library heads to make policies for revamping digital library services based on accurate recommendations. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01308 Full Text: PD

Strategic Analysis of the Enterprise Mobile Device Management Software Industry

This paper analyzes the enterprise mobile device management industry and evaluates three strategic alternatives by which an established computer systems management software manufacturing company can enter this industry. The analysis of the three strategic alternatives to build, buy or partner in order to bring to market an enterprise mobile device management product offering delves into an examination of the company’s existing position and performance; conducts an external analysis of the enterprise mobile device management industry by exploring key competitors, customer segments, sources of advantage, and analysis of the Five Forces; evaluates relative positions of determined strategic alternatives, and probes their respective feasibility. The project concludes by recommending the option of a non-equity-based licensing alliance with an established pure-play enterprise mobile device management software manufacturer and identifies three potential partner candidates for further technical evaluation

Evaluating the quality of planning in new product development projects

The research and development industry shifts significant resources, from physical products to software. This is triggered by the need to stay competitive in a tough market. However, the poor performance of new product development in the field of software development may restrict this trend. Following a research stream that focuses on NPD planning, we introduce the quality of planning evaluation model (QPEM) and a knowledge base for improving the quality of planning evaluation. QPEM suggests planning quality should be evaluated using two distinct and complementary approaches of top-down and bottom-up for enhancing the accuracy of planning: a) an established measure that assesses 16 planning products and b) a novel measure that assesses 55 factors that affect project performance. This second measure uses cognitive maps, which is a methodology based on expert knowledge that graphically describes the behaviour of a system, and represents the project manager’s know-how and R&D Management Conference 2017, 1 - 5 July 2017, Leuven, Belgium characteristics, technological expertise, top management support, enterprise environmental factors, and the quality of methods and tools in a form that corresponds closely with humans’ perceptions. The alignment between these two approaches is demonstrated through multiple case studies

Evaluating the quality of planning in new product development projects

The research and development industry shifts significant resources, from physical products to software. This is triggered by the need to stay competitive in a tough market. However, the poor performance of new product development in the field of software development may restrict this trend. Following a research stream that focuses on NPD planning, we introduce the quality of planning evaluation model (QPEM) and a knowledge base for improving the quality of planning evaluation. QPEM suggests planning quality should be evaluated using two distinct and complementary approaches of top-down and bottom-up for enhancing the accuracy of planning: a) an established measure that assesses 16 planning products and b) a novel measure that assesses 55 factors that affect project performance. This second measure uses cognitive maps, which is a methodology based on expert knowledge that graphically describes the behaviour of a system, and represents the project manager’s know-how and R&D Management Conference 2017, 1 - 5 July 2017, Leuven, Belgium characteristics, technological expertise, top management support, enterprise environmental factors, and the quality of methods and tools in a form that corresponds closely with humans’ perceptions. The alignment between these two approaches is demonstrated through multiple case studies

Lean requirements traceability automation enabled by model-driven engineering

Background: The benefits of requirements traceability, such as improvements in software product and process quality, early testing, and software maintenance, are widely described in the literature. Requirements traceability is a critical, widely accepted practice. However, very often it is not applied for fear of the additional costs associated with manual efforts or the use of additional tools. Methods: This article presents a “low-cost” mechanism for automating requirements traceability based on the model-driven paradigm and formalized by a metamodel for the creation and monitoring of traces and an integration process for traceability management. This approach can also be useful for information fusion in industry insofar that it facilitates data traceability. Results: This article extends an existing model-driven development methodology to incorporate traceability as part of its development tool. The tool has been used successfully by several companies in real software development projects, helping developers to manage ongoing changes in functional requirements. One of those projects is cited as an example in the paper. The authors’ current work leads them to conclude that a model-driven engineering approach, traditionally used only for the automatic generation of code in a software development process, can also be used to successfully automate and integrate traceability management without additional costs. The systematic evaluation of traceability management in industrial projects constitutes a promising area for future work.Junta de Andalucía AT17-5904-USEJunta de Andalucía US-1251532Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades PID2019-105455GB-C3

แนวทางการจัดการอุตสาหกรรมเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูปสู่ความยั่งยืน

Guidelines to Garment Industry Management for Sustainableบทคัดย่อ อุตสาหกรรมสิ่งทอเป็นหนึ่งในปัจจัยสำคัญสำหรับผู้บริโภคซึ่งมีการแข่งขันทางธุรกิจสูงโดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งอุตสาหกรรมเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูปของไทย การวิจัยครั้งนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาแนวทางการจัดการอุตสาหกรรมเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูปสู่ความยั่งยืน แล้วนำมาพัฒนาเป็นแบบจำลองสมการโครงสร้าง ดำเนินการวิจัยทั้งเชิงคุณภาพและเชิงปริมาณ สำรวจข้อมูลเชิงปริมาณจากผู้ประกอบการธุรกิจอุตสาหกรรมเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูป กลุ่มอุตสาหกรรมตัดเย็บผ้าทอ และกลุ่มอุตสาหกรรมตัดเย็บผ้าถัก จำนวน 500 ราย ผลการวิจัย พบว่า แนวทางการจัดการอุตสาหกรรมเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูปสู่ความยั่งยืน ด้านการจัดการการตลาด ได้แก่ สำรวจความต้องการของผู้บริโภคเพื่อนำมาเป็นข้อมูลประกอบในการออกแบบผลิตภัณฑ์ ด้านการจัดการนวัตกรรม ได้แก่ นำเทคโนโลยีสารสนเทศที่ทันสมัยทั้ง Hardware และ Software มาใช้ในการออกแบบผลิตภัณฑ์ ด้านการจัดการทรัพยากร ได้แก่ จัดหาเครื่องจักรที่ทันสมัยที่เป็นมิตร กับสิ่งแวดล้อมเพื่อนำมาใช้ในการผลิตเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูป และด้านการจัดการผลิต ได้แก่ องค์กรมีการควบคุมคุณภาพการผลิตให้เป็นไปตามมาตรฐานสากล ผลการทดสอบสมมติฐาน พบว่า กลุ่มธุรกิจ ขนาดกลางและขนาดย่อมกับกลุ่มธุรกิจขนาดใหญ่ให้ความสำคัญต่อแนวทางการจัดการอุตสาหกรรมเสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูปสู่ความยั่งยืนไม่แตกต่างกัน อย่างมีนัยสำคัญทางสถิติที่ระดับ .05 ผลการวิเคราะห์แบบจำลองสมการโครงสร้างที่ได้พัฒนาขึ้น พบว่า ผ่านเกณฑ์การประเมิน มีความสอดคล้องกลมกลืนกับข้อมูลเชิงประจักษ์ โดยมีค่าความน่าจะเป็นของไคสแควร์เท่ากับ .077 ค่าไคสแควร์สัมพันธ์เท่ากับ 1.181 ค่าดัชนีวัดระดับความสอดคล้องเท่ากับ .966 และค่าดัชนีราก ของค่าเฉลี่ยกำลังสองของการประมาณค่าความคลาดเคลื่อนเท่ากับ .019 ผลการทดสอบสมมติฐานของแบบจำลอง พบว่า องค์ประกอบด้านการจัดการตลาดส่งอิทธิพลทางตรงต่อองค์ประกอบด้านการจัดการทรัพยากร องค์ประกอบด้านการจัดการนวัตกรรมส่งอิทธิพลทางตรงต่อองค์ประกอบด้านการจัดการตลาด และองค์ประกอบด้านการจัดการผลิตส่งอิทธิพลทางตรงต่อองค์ประกอบการจัดการนวัตกรรม และ องค์ประกอบด้านการจัดการทรัพยากร อย่างมีนัยสำคัญทางสถิติที่ระดับ .001 คำสำคัญ เสื้อผ้าสำเร็จรูป / ความยั่งยืน / การจัดการอุตสาหกรรมAbstract Textile industry is one of the important factors for consumers. Which has high business competition, especially the garment industry in Thailand.This study had purpose to find guidelines  to garment industry management for sustainable that the guidelines will be placing to develop a structure equation model . Quantitative and qualitative research methods were employed in this study . The quantitative data were obtained from interviewing 500 people with the owner and CEO of garment business industry , including weaving garment industry and knitting garment industry . The findings indicated that guidelines  to garment industry management for sustainable consisted of 4 aspects that marketing management would be have survey consumer needs to be supplementary information in product design.Innovation management had to take IT information technology with hardware and software for make product design. Resources management had to find new machines and new technology for matching with the production line and Manufacturing management had to quality control of product following the world standard. The hypothesis test showed that business of medium and small size with the large business size not similarly placed an importance on  guidelines  to garment industry management for sustainable with the statistical significance of this was set at .05 The analysis of the developed structure equation model showed that it was in accordance and harmony with the empirical data and passed the evaluation criteria. Its Chi-square probability level , relative Chi-square , goodness of fit index and root mean square error of approximation were .077 , 1.181 , .966 and .019 respectively. the statistical significance of this was set at .001 Keywords: garment / sustainable / industry managemen

Fuzzy controller hardware implementation for an EV\u27s HESS energy management

The recent technological advances related to embedded systems, and the increased requirements of the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry, lead to the evolution of design and validation methodologies applied to complex systems, in order to design a product that respects the requirements defined according to its performance, safety, and reliability. This research paper presents a design and validation methodology, based on a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) approach, including a software platform represented by Matlab/ Simulink and a real-time STM32 microcontroller used as a hardware platform. The objective of this work is to evaluate and validate an Energy Management System (EMS) based on Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC), developed in C code and embedded on an STM32 microcontroller. The developed EMS is designed to control, in real-time, the energy flow in a hybrid energy storage system (HESS), designed in an active topology, made of a Li-ion battery and Super-Capacitors (SC). The proposed HESS model was organized using the Energetic Macroscopic Representation (EMR) and constructed on Matlab/Simulink software platform. The evaluation and validation of the developed algorithm were performed by comparing the HIL and simulation results under the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC)

Working in IT projects – Options and Limits of Work Design

Flexible forms of work like project work are gaining importance in industry and services. Looking at the research on project work, the vast majority of present literature is on project management, but increasingly, problems concerning the quality of work and the efficiency of project teams become visible. The question now is how project work can be structured in order to simultaneously provide efficient and flexible work and healthy working conditions ensuring the development of human resources for a long time. Selected results of publicly funded research into project work will be presented based on case studies in 7 software development /IT consulting project teams (N=34). A set of different methods was applied: interviews with management/project managers, group interviews on work constraints, a monthly diary about well-being and critical incidences in the course of the project, and a final evaluation questionnaire on project outcomes focusing on economic and health aspects. Findings reveal that different types of projects exist with varying degree of team members’ autonomy and influence on work structuring. An effect of self-regulation on mental strain could not be found. The results emphasize, that contradicting requirements and insufficient organizational resources with respect to the work requirements lead to an increased work intensity or work obstruction. These contradicting requirements are identified as main drivers for generating stress. Finally, employees with high values on stress for more than 2 months have significantly higher exhaustion rates than those with only one month peaks. Structuring project work and taking into account the dynamics of project work, there is a need for an active role of the project team in contract negotiation or the detailed definition of work – this is not only a question of individual autonomy but of negotiation the range of option for work structuring. Therefore, along with the sequential definition of the (software) product, the working conditions need to be re-defined.Working conditions; human resources; work organisation