Managing knowledge for capability engineering

The enterprises that deliver capability are trying to evolve into through-life businesses by shifting away from the traditional pattern of designing and manufacturing successive generations of products, towards a new paradigm centred on support, sustainability and the incremental enhancements of existing capabilities from technology insertions and changes to process. The provision of seamless through-life customer solutions depends heavily on management of information and knowledge between, and within the different parts of the supply chain enterprise. This research characterised and described Capability Engineering (CE) as applied in the defence enterprise and identified to BAE Systems important considerations for managing knowledge within that context. The terms Capability Engineering and Through Life Capability Management (TLCM), used synonymously in this thesis, denote a complex evolving domain that requires new approaches to better understand the different viewpoints, models and practices. The findings and novelty of this research is demonstrated through the following achievements: Defined the problem space that Requirements Engineers can use in through-life management projects. Made a contribution to the development of models for Systems Architects to enable them to incorporate ‘soft’ systems within their consideration. Independently developed a TLCM activity model against which BAE Systems validated the BAE Systems TLCM activity model, which is now used by UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Developed, and published within INCOSE1, the INCOSE Capability Engineering ontology. Through the novel analysis of a directly applicable case study, highlighted to Functional Delivery Managers the significance of avoiding the decoupling of information and knowledge in the context of TLCM. Through experimentation and knowledge gained within this research, identified inadequacies in the TechniCall (rapid access to experts) service which led to the generation of requirements for an improved service which is now being implemented by BAE Systems. The results showed that managing knowledge is distinct when compared to information management. Over-reliance on information management in the absence of tacit knowledge can lead to a loss in the value of the information, which can result in unintended consequences. Capability is realised through a combination of component systems and Capability Engineering is equivalent to a holistic perspective of Systems Engineering. A sector-independent Capability Engineering ontology is developed to enable semantic interoperability between different domains i.e. defence, rail and information technology. This helped to better understand the dependencies of contributing component systems within defence, and supported collaboration across different domains. Although the evaluation of the ontology through expert review has been accomplished; the ontology, KM analysis framework and soft systems transitioning approach developed still need to undergo independent verification and validation. This requires application to other case studies to check and exploit their suitability. This Engineering Doctorate research has been disseminated through a number of peer reviewed publications

A conceptual approach to support through-life business transformation in an aerospace and defence context

Through Life Capability Management (TLCM) is a complex evolving domain that requires a new approach to better understand the different viewpoints, models and practices within various enterprises to support a future conceptual model development. This research applied Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to identify the activities necessary to transform an existing aerospace and defence business model to one that would support TLCM. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts and stakeholders across a range of different relevant functions and organisations to identify the activities required to support conceptual model development. A bottom-up approach was used to provide a TLCM ontology and a top-down approach was proposed to develop the root definitions derived from the experts' perception of TLCM. The benefits and drawbacks of using SSM including the human-activity system and mapping the activities onto a TLCM cube (architectural) model are discussed

An incremental hybridisation of heterogeneous case studies to develop an ontology for capability engineering

An analysis of perspectives for “capability engineering” has been conducted by the INCOSE UK Capability Working Group (CWG). This paper is a continuation of this study led by the CWG ontology work stream that aims to develop a single shared ontology for the concept of capability engineering to enable semantic interoperability and to support a formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation. Case study material from the different domains of rail, defence and information services was used. The ontology development was executed in three phases; (1) pre-analysis, (2) ontology modelling and (3) post-analysis. The pre-analysis involved literature reviews, requirements specification, systems engineering process utilisation; and resource identification i.e. examination of the case study material. The ontology modelling phase comprised information extraction and classification in addition to modelling and code representation using a mark-up tool, MS Excel and Protégé. The post-analysis involved validation workshops through using expert focus groups

Systems of systems engineering thesaurus approach: from concept to realisation

The developing discipline of Systems of Systems Engineering (SoSE) is gaining attention in an increasingly broad range of domains; however, each domain comes with its own set of terms and concepts so that there may be confusion between different domains ostensibly engaged in similar challenges. SoSE is faced with concept multiplicity (one term, more than one concept) and term multiplicity (one concept, more than one term). It is unrealistic to expect long-established domains to simply change ontology to match with other domains, but a means of recognising related concepts and terms across domains and across industrial sectors will enable more rapid progress to be made in the development of SoSE. The approach taken to generating a thesaurus, through which such relationships can be documented, is presented. The approach is essentially consultative among SoSE experts and the current version of the thesaurus is available online. A combination of problem statement definition and logical decomposition has been used; the method is described and application is illustrated using well-known term

Systems of systems engineering: A research imperative

Systems of Systems Engineering constitutes a major challenge for the 21st Century and research into this topic has become an imperative. The Support Action, T-AREA-SoS has been initiated by the European Commission to develop a research agenda in Systems of Systems (SoS) that will inform future investment in this area. Through an extensive consultation and review, a number of SoS capability gaps have been identified. Through structuring and subsequent consultation, these have been developed into twelve research themes the detailed areas of which are mapped to the three SoS characteristics of control, evolution, and emergent behaviour. A framework is presented through which researchers can develop a research campaign in SoS. © 2013 IEEE

A conceptual approach to support through-life business transformation in an aerospace and defence context

Through Life Capability Management (TLCM) is a complex evolving domain that requires a new approach to better understand the different viewpoints, models and practices within various enterprises to support a future conceptual model development. This research applied Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to identify the activities necessary to transform an existing aerospace and defence business model to one that would support TLCM. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts and stakeholders across a range of different relevant functions and organisations to identify the activities required to support conceptual model development. A bottom-up approach was used to provide a TLCM ontology and a top-down approach was proposed to develop the root definitions derived from the experts' perception of TLCM. The benefits and drawbacks of using SSM including the human-activity system and mapping the activities onto a TLCM cube (architectural) model are discussed

The risk of information management without knowledge management: a case study

This paper appraises the criticism that "Knowledge Management (KM) is little more than re-packaged Information Management (IM)" through analysis of the relationships and inconsistencies between IM and KM. This is supported by a case study of the loss of an UK Royal Air Force aircraft known as 'Nimrod' as reported in the Haddon-Cave Independent Review.The first part discusses the research methodology adopted and analyses the literature including the theoretical characteristics and practical aspects of IM and KM. This is supported by logical models and relationship tables for comparison. The second part develops an analytical framework by applying evaluation criteria, based on principles for Through Life Management of information, to a case study to address the statement that "information is inadequate without knowledge."The logical models and case study insertions uncovered important conclusions: (1) KM is frequently confused with IM and reliance on IM only can sometimes result in a disaster; (2) it is imperative to understand the distinctions between IM and KM as "management of knowledge" is concerned with socio-technical, hence human, aspects to a greater extent than IM; (3) IM should be considered as a prerequisite to engaging KM; and (4) KM should be perceived as the creation and management of knowledge as a human centred attribute that involves a learning and transformation process.This paper systematically applies the derived logical models and analysis framework to a case study to better understand and illustrate the implications of Through Life Management of information and knowledge