Knowledge Creation Within the Automobile Industry

Research has identified the enabling factors and inhibitors for successfully implementing knowledge creation and accomplishing its strategic objectives. It is important to understand how these factors interact with each other to improve or inhibit performance. This empirical research presents a framework for finding the fundamental relations between these factors. It proposes strategies for implementing knowledge creation initiatives. The framework mainly focuses on the "what factor" with respect to people and identifies the vital characteristics for the knowledge creation process. It mainly illustrates the parameters of knowledge transfer, which supports knowledge creation, thereby improving organizational performance

Systematic and Continuous Business Model Development: Design of a Repeatable Process Using the Collaboration Engineering Approach

Due to permanent changes, companies constantly need to contend with new challenges. Developing and improving business models can help to adapt to constantly changing environmental conditions and to achieve competitiveness. Because most innovative developments are not the result of a single inventor, we used Collaboration Engineering to elaborate a systematic process design for business model development. To ensure an effective process design, we turned to existing knowledge by including theoretical and practical requirements of business model development. Additionally, in order to guarantee the high quality of the process, we evaluated the systematic process on the basis of a multilevel and iterative evaluation. Our evaluation clearly indicates results equivalent to expert-based business model development. Accordingly, the process design enables a continuous and recurring business model development without the ongoing support of professional facilitators

Collaboration Engineering: Reflections on 15 Years of Research & Practice

Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an approach for the design and deployment of repeatable collaborative work practices that can be executed by practitioners without the ongoing support of external collaboration professionals. Research on CE started in the early 2000s with studies on ways to transfer professional collaboration expertise to novices using a pattern language called thinkLets. Subsequent research focused the development of theories to explain key phenomena, the development of a structured design methodology, training methods, technology support, design theories, and various field and experimental studies focusing on specific aspects of the CE approach. This paper provides an overview of the different phases and key contributions of CE research and looks ahead at the research opportunities that are emerging as our society, organizations, technologies, and the nature of collaboration evolve

OCRA – An ontology for collaborative robotics and adaptation

Industrial collaborative robots will be used in unstructured scenarios and a large variety of tasks in the near future. These robots shall collaborate with humans, who will add uncertainty and safety constraints to the execution of industrial robotic tasks. Hence, trustworthy collaborative robots must be able to reason about their collaboration’s requirements (e.g., safety), as well as the adaptation of their plans due to unexpected situations. A common approach to reasoning is to represent the knowledge of interest using logic-based formalisms, such as ontologies. However, there is not an established ontology defining notions such as collaboration or adaptation yet. In this article, we propose an Ontology for Collaborative Robotics and Adaptation (OCRA), which is built around two main notions: collaboration, and plan adaptation. OCRA ensures a reliable human-robot collaboration, since robots can formalize, and reason about their plan adaptations and collaborations in unstructured collaborative robotic scenarios. Furthermore, our ontology enhances the reusability of the domain’s terminology, allowing robots to represent their knowledge about different collaborative and adaptive situations. We validate our formal model, first, by demonstrating that a robot may answer a set of competency questions using OCRA. Second, by studying the formalization’s performance in limit cases that include instances with incongruent and incomplete axioms. For both validations, the example use case consists in a human and a robot collaborating on the filling of a tray.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Conceptual Model for VMI in Reverse Supply Chains

The importance and role of reverse supply chain in gaining competitive advantage has been recognized especially in recent years. However the high costs of implementing and installing these chains works as an impediment for managers. Collaboration as a key to success in supply chains can be a way to decrease the costs and make reverse supply chains economically attractive. This paper proposes a conceptual model for collaboration between reverse supply chains in accordance with VMI in forward supply chains. Firstly a conceptual model is defined by introducing members and assumptions needed for that. Then a collaborative process for collection and routing between members of these chains and a heuristic method using modified tabu search for finding the best routs are defined. Finally an example is solved for some separate reverse supply chains once in the case of isolated chains and then for the collaboration between them in the suggested form of this paper

Modelling for data management & exchange in Concurrent Engineering - A case study of civil aircraft assembly line

This research aims to improve the dataflow performance of the Concurrent Engineering (CE) practice in the detail design stage of the aircraft Assembly Line (AL) in the C919 aircraft project. As the final integrator of the aircraft, Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Company Ltd. (SAMC) is responsible for developing the AL with global suppliers. Although CE has been implemented in AL projects to shorten lead time, reduce development cost and improve design quality, the lack of experience and insufficient infrastructure may lead to many challenges in cooperation with distributed suppliers, especially regarding data management/exchange and workflow control. In this research, the particular CE environment and activities in SAMC AL projects were investigated. By assessing the CE performance and benchmarking, the improvement opportunities are identified, and then an activity-oriented workflow and dataflow model is established by decomposing the work process to detail levels. Based on this model, a Product Data Management (PDM) based support platform is proposed to facilitate data management/exchange in dynamic workflow to improve work efficiency and interoperability. This solution is mocked-up on the Siemens Teamcenter 8.1 PLM(Product Lifecycle Management) software and its feasibility is checked. The mock-up is evaluated by SAMC experts and suppliers. The feedback shows the acceptance of the model by experts and the urgency of improving data/work flow design before PLM implementing. The result of this research is useful for enterprises in similar environments transiting from pre-PLM to implementing PLM and who wanting to strengthen CE in the new product development

Theoretical foundations for collaboration engineering

Collaboration is often presented as the solution to numerous problems in business and society. However, collaboration is challenging, and collaboration support is not an off-the-shelf-product. This research offers theoretical foundations for Collaboration Engineering. Collaboration Engineering is an approach to design and deploy high value recurring collaborative work practices that can be transferred to practitioners to execute for themselves without ongoing support from (external) professionals. We present a theory on the quality of a collaboration process design for Collaboration Engineering and offer support to design and transfer such process designs. Evaluating the supporting concepts, we found that practitioners that facilitated collaboration processes could achieve similar quality as professional facilitators. Our design approach, theory, and collaboration process building blocks (called thinkLets) can be used to develop new collaboration support systems, and can be used to transfer collaboration support skills. ThinkLets also offer a framework for research on patterns of collaboration at a higher level of detail, which will allow us to gain new insights in predictable, effective and efficient tools and techniques for collaboration support.Technology, Policy and Managemen