Towards Experience Management for Very Small Entities

International audienceThe ISO/IEC 29110 standard: Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities, provides several Process Reference Models applicable to the vast majority of very small entities (defined by the ISO as "an entity (enterprise, organization, department or project) having up to 25 people") which do not develop critical software and share typical situational factors. An ISO/IEC 29110 pilot project has been established between the Software Engineering group at Brest University and a 14-employee company with the aim of establishing an engineering discipline for a new Web-based project. As the project proceeded, it became apparent that setting up the ISO/IEC 29110 standard has to be performed in two steps: 1) provide self-training materials to the VSE employees on this new standard; and 2) support good practices with a simple Experience Management system which is compatible with the ISO/IEC 29110 standard. This paper reports the lessons learned about training from the pilot project, and addresses the research issues associated with the Experience Management system

A Balanced Theory of Knowledge Management in Software Process Improvement

This research employs a social network analysis (SNA) approach to study the longitudinal changes in co-authorship and affiliations of authors, who published in the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) from 2001 to 2011. The research explores the structural patterns of co-authorship at the institution and individual author levels, and found research collaboration tend to occur between authors in the same regions and institutions. Descriptive findings further revealed key authors with rich and diverse co-authorship ties, as well as the tendency of authors to collaborate in silos within institutions. A longitudinal SNA method was performed to statistically deduce the changing patterns of co-authorship and affiliations from a sample of the authors in this 11-year period, which complements the descriptive findings. The discussion of our findings results in recommendations to improve the ACIS community’s productivity and in directions for future studies concerning the applications of SNA in examining research collaboration

The Change Management Process for Automation Implementations

The objective of this thesis is to identify change management processes in manufacturing and, if they exist, identify challenges and opportunities for improvement. There are many changes encountered in manufacturing as the advances of automation are integrated within production. For this reason, a change management process is required to effectively and efficiently implement these changes. To research this, a case study was conducted at a large manufacturing firm (more than ten-thousand employees). The facility studied produces low volume (~one per week), high complexity (~million components) products. The case study spanned six months, in which sixteen interviews were conducted with nine people from three different functional groups. The case study focused on a change to production, which was an automated machine that was implemented in the facility. This was not a change to the product, but a newly configured production station resulting in a decrease in automation level (bringing more manual activity into the task). The previous manufacturing method was fully automated but was not robust. Therefore, the change was to increase the human-robot cooperation in the robotic system. This study investigated the change process for this newly implemented automation. This was identified as a good case example to study due to several reasons. First, this was implemented within the past five years, which meant that people involved in the change process were still present. In addition to this, since the machine was still in operation it meant the propagation effects were stable and the changes were kept. Another reason this was a good example, was because this was a large-scale investment (~million dollars). This meant the return on investment (ROI) was high, leading to more attention to detail and higher resource allocation. From a research perspective, these reasons ensure the process was a critical case for study. Many change management processes align with the following high-level process: identify opportunity, gather approval to find a solution, form teams to solve, discover a solution, review, deploy a solution, and measure the solution. The change management process identified through the interviews followed this general pattern. In this model, thirty-four tasks were identified. Through a series of follow-up interviews, the process model was validated. However, obstacles were identified throughout some of the tasks in the process that encountered many changes. To explore this, a collaborative design resistance model was applied to see whether the model could accurately identify the tasks of highest resistance. The resistances were applied to the objective data from the interviews, such as team size and communication, and then compared to the subjective obstacles. From this, it was determined that the resistance model accurately predicted the challenges throughout the process. This research resulted in a mapped change management process for typical automation implementations. It additionally helped discover opportunities for making these implementations more efficient by mitigating the resistances. Motivated from this study, the following are some opportunities that were discovered for future work: conducting workshops to have participants build the change process model, studying the process at a small-medium enterprise, studying the process at a company with product change (high volume, low complexity)

Sustainable development strategies for product provision and manufacturing approaches

Manufacturing firms are under many pressures both financially and competitive which focus attention on the performance of their manufacturing processes. In this paper the opportunities for improving the environmental impact of products within the constraints of existing manufacturing infrastructure are examined. Approaches which support sustainability in two aspects are proposed, firstly, the provision of products to the users in ways which extend the product life and secondly, manufacturing approaches which reduce resource usage. The provision and manufacture of products in ways that are truly sustainable are inhibited by three issues: firstly, decisions are predominantly made solely from the perspective of the “vendor” (and do not consider the wider perspective); secondly, that generally the scope of business planning is still rooted in production/manufacturing costs (and not consumption costs) and thirdly, the current performance measures (e.g. KPIs) mainly focus on profitability. The rationale for this conference paper is the argument that there is a need to raise the awareness during the earliest stages of business planning that there may be alternative approaches which are more sustainable. The concepts presented here will underpin further research into performance measures which encompass sustainability and resulting business planning implications

Simulation-Based Countermeasures Towards Accident Prevention : Virtual Reality Utilization in Industrial Processes and Activities

Despite growing industrial interests in fully immersive virtual reality (VR) applications for safety countermeasures, there is scanty research on the subject in the context of accident prevention during manufacturing processes and plant maintenance activities. This dissertation aims to explore and experiment with VR for accident prevention by targeting three workplace safety countermeasures: fire evacuation drills, hazard identification and risk assessments (HIRA), and emergency preparedness and response (EPR) procedures. Drawing on the virtual reality accident causation model (VR-ACM) (i.e., 3D modelling and simulation, accident causation, and safety drills) and the fire evacuation training model, two industrial 3D simulation models were utilized for the immersive assessment and training. These were a lithium-ion battery (LIB) manufacturing factory and a gas power plant (GPP). In total, five studies (publications) were designed to demonstrate the potential of VR in accident prevention during the manufacturing processes and maintenance activities at the facility conceptual stages. Two studies were with the LIB factory simulation to identify inherent hazards and assess risks for redesigning the factory to ensure workplace safety compliance. The other three studies constituted fire hazard identifications, emergency evacuations and hazard control/mitigations during the maintenance activity in the GPP simulation. Both study models incorporated several participants individually immersed in the virtual realm to experience the accident phenomena intuitively. These participants provided feedback for assessing the research objectives. Results of the studies indicated that several inherent hazards in the LIB factory were identified and controlled/mitigated. Secondly, the GPP experiment results suggested that although the maintenance activity in the virtual realm increased the perception of presence, a statistically significant delay was recorded at the pre-movement stage due to the lack of situational safety awareness. Overall, the study demonstrates that participants immersed in a VR plant maintenance activity and manufacturing factory process simulation environments can experience real-time emergency scenarios and conditions necessary for implementing the essential safety countermeasures to prevent accidents.Vaikka kiinnostus virtuaalitodellisuuden (VR) käyttöön turvallisuuden varotoimissa teollisuudessa on kasvanut, tutkimuksia ei ole juurikaan tehty onnettomuuksien ehkäisystä valmistus- ja kunnossapitotoiminnassa. Tämän väitöskirjan tavoitteena on tutkia ja kokeilla VR:ää tapaturmien ehkäisyssä kohdistuen kolmeen työpaikan turvallisuuden varotoimeen: paloharjoitukset, riskien arvioinnit sekä hätätilanteiden valmiusmenettelyt ja toimintasuunnitelmat (EPR). Kokemuksellisessa ja uppouttavassa koulutuksessa hyödynnettiin kahta teollisuuden 3D-simulointimallia, jotka nojautuvat virtuaalitodellisuuden onnettomuuksien aiheutumismalliin (VR-ACM) (eli 3D-mallinnus- ja simulointi, onnettomuussyy- ja turvallisuuskoulutus) sekä paloharjoitusmalliin. Nämä 3D-simulointimallit ovat litiuminoniakkuja (LIB) valmistava tehdas, joka rakennettiin Visual Components 3D-simulointiohjelmistolla (versio 4.0) ja kaasuvoimala (GPP) Unrealin reaaliaikaisella pelimoottorilla (versio 4.2). Yhteensä viisi tutkimusta (julkaisua) suunniteltiin havainnollistamaan VR:n potentiaalia tapaturmien ehkäisyssä valmistusprosessin layout-suunnittelun ja tehtaan konseptivaiheissa tehtävän kunnossapidon aikana. Kaksi tutkimusta tehtiin LIB-tehdassimulaatiolla vaarojen tunnistamiseksi sekä riskien arvioimiseksi. Tutkimukset tehtiin tehtaan uudelleensuunnittelua varten, työturvallisuuden noudattamisen varmistamiseksi. Muut kolme tutkimusta käsittelevät palovaaran tunnistamista, hätäevakuointia ja riskien vähentämistä huoltotoiminnan aikana GPP-simulaatiossa. Molemmissa tutkimusmalleissa oli useita virtuaalimaailmaan uppoutuneita osallistujia, jotka saivat kokea onnettomuudet yksilöllisesti ja intuitiivisesti. Osallistujat antoivat palautetta kokeen jälkeisessä kyselyssä. Kyselyn tuloksien avulla LIB-tehtaassa tunnistettiin ja lievennettiin useita vaaroja. GPP-kokeilun tulokset viittasivat siihen, että vaikka ylläpitotoiminta virtuaalimaailmassa lisäsi teleläsnäoloa, tilastollisesti merkittävä viive kirjattiin liikettä edeltävässä vaiheessa turvallisuustietoisuuden puuteen vuoksi. Kaiken kaikkiaan tutkimus osoittaa, että VR-laitoksen kunnossapitotoimintaan ja tuotantotehtaan prosessisimulaatioympäristöihin uppoutuvat osallistujat voivat kokea reaaliaikaisia hätäskenaarioita ja olosuhteita, jotka ovat välttämättömiä olennaisten turvallisuustoimien toteuttamiseksi.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Data-driven agile requirements elicitation through the lenses of situational method engineering

Ubiquitous digitalization has led to the continuous generation of large amounts of digital data, both in organizations and in society at large. In the requirements engineering community, there has been a growing interest in considering digital data as new sources for requirements elicitation, in addition to stake-holders. The volume, dynamics, and variety of data makes iterative requirements elicitation increasingly continuous, but also unstructured and complex, which current agile methods are unable to consider and manage in a systematic and efficient manner. There is also the need to support software evolution by enabling a synergy of stakeholder-driven requirements elicitation and management with data-driven approaches. In this study, we propose extension of agile requirements elicitation by applying situational method engineering. The research is grounded on two studies in the business domains of video games and online banking.The work presented in this paper is partially funded by the DOGO4ML Spanish research project, PID2020-117191RB-I00.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

An Approach to Reduce Commissioning and Ramp-up time for Multi-variant Production in Automated Production Facilities

A key requirement for future production facilities is to perform new production processes in a flexible and adaptive way with available and known resources. In this context, a comprehensive description (ontology) of involved components has a high significance. If certain technological aspects are missing during a production process, the production control should respond in a dynamic, versatile and adaptive (agile) manner to the overall value network. The possibility to describe the requirements of products for the necessary processes in the same namespace like the requirements of the necessary processes for the resources is a prerequisite to enable this behavior. Afterwards the different requirements will be placed in relation to the respective requirements. The aim is to define the necessary processes for the production based on the description of the product and the known resources in an agile way. Due to this a framework for a comprehensive description of automated production facilities, products and processes is described in this paper. The idea is that based on this framework a production facility can change the produced products without dedicated commissioning and ramp-up phases

Multi-Approach Formulation in Dynamic Personality-Situation Interaction for Personnel Selection

The purpose of personnel selection is to measure knowledge, skills, and abilities that are necessary to perform a job effectively. The process involves various assessments, including personality assessment. This conceptual paper discussed the potential of using a learning factory to develop multiple simulations for assessment center activities in assessing personality in different situations. Although traditional personality assessment contributes to the effectiveness of selection decisions and prediction, it tended to ignore that trait-related behaviors may differ across situations. Study on dynamic personality is essential as empirical studies showed that within-person fluctuations in personality states relate to a variety of work outcomes, including job performance. To further understand this fundamental issue, this paper discussed further how personality–situation interplay influences performance by using a learning factory assessment center method. This study also discussed how the adaptation of exploratory mixed methods approach could be used. The mixed exploratory methods are suitable as this topic is related to fundamental research and empirical study, besides the investigation on this area is still limited. This paper could benefit other researchers, industry players, and policymakers in understanding better how dynamic personality may influence performance, especially in the activities related to Industry 4.0