A methodology for the distributed and collaborative management of engineering knowledge

The problems of collaborative engineering design and management at the conceptual stage in a large network of dissimilar enterprises was investigated. This issue in engineering design is a result of the supply chain and virtual enterprise (VE) oriented industry that demands faster time to market and accurate cost/manufacturing analysis from conception. Current tools and techniques do not completely fulfil this requirement due to a lack of coherent inter-enterprise collaboration and a dearth of manufacturing knowledge available at the concept stage. Client-server and peer to peer systems were tested for communication, as well as various techniques for knowledge management and propagation including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and expert systems. As a result of system testing, and extensive literature review, several novel techniques were proposed and tested to improve the coherent management of knowledge and enable inter-enterprise collaboration. The techniques were trialled on two engineering project examples. An automotive Tier-1 supplier which designs products whose components are sub­contracted to a large supply chain and assembled for an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) was used as a test scenario. The utility of the systems for integrating large VEs into a coherent project with unified specifications were demonstrated in a simple example, and problems associated with engineering document management overcome via re-usable, configurable, object oriented ontologies propagated throughout the VE imposing a coherent nomenclature and engineering product definition. All knowledge within the system maintains links from specification - concept - design - testing through to manufacturing stages, aiding the participating enterprises in maintaining their knowledge and experience for future projects. This potentially speeds the process of innovation by enabling companies to concentrate on value-added aspects of designs whilst ‘bread-and-butter’ expertise is reused. The second example, a manufacturer of rapid-construction steel bridges, demonstrated the manufacturing dimension of the methodology, where the early stage of design, and the generation of new concepts by reusing existing manufacturing knowledge bases was demonstrated. The solution consisted of a de-centralised super-peer net architecture to establish and maintain communications between enterprises in a VE. The enterprises are able to share knowledge in a common format and nomenclature via the building-block shareable super-ontology that can be tailored on a project by project basis, whilst maintaining the common nomenclature of the ‘super-ontology’ eliminating knowledge interpretation issues. The two-tier architecture developed as part of the solution glues together the peer-peer and super-ontologies to form a coherent system for internal knowledge management and product development as well as external virtual enterprise product development and knowledge management. In conclusion, the methodology developed for collaboration and knowledge management was shown to be more appropriate for use by smaller enterprises collaborating in a large Virtual Enterprise than PLM technology in terms of: usability, configurability, cost of system and individual control over intellectual property rights

A Design Environment for Product Knowledge Management and Data Exchange

This paper reports on a distributed design environment under development for product knowledge management and information exchange. The system is able to use the company’s existing base of knowledge and to push the manufacturing knowledge higher up into the design chain to reduce the need for costly and time consuming reworks and engineering changes. The design environment uses a knowledge based system Protégé and enables data/knowledge exchange through International Standards for Product Model Exchange (ISO STEP) and the Resource Description Framework

Advanced Tools and Technologies for Collaborative Product Development and Knowledge Management

The shortcomings of the current state-of-the-art in distributed / collaborative product development of engineering products from concept to production are: A lack of an integrated interface for the full spectrum of functions needed by complex conceptual design for manufacture and assembly; and management and re-use of concept design knowledge within an integrated design environment. Recommendations are given on the integration of these disparate technologies for the benefit of collaborative work teams to enable them to use a seamlessly integrated interface to develop, review, analyse and reuse engineering and manufacturing knowledge and models within the enterprise and the supply chain. A proposed methodology and a functional description of such a system is presented. The system utilises the Protégé-2000 expert system on top of the Windchill data management / collaboration software. International Standard for the Exchange of Product model data – STEP is to be used for machining feature definition

Workflow Activity Task Controller: an Approach to Distribute Knowledge and Information in Collaborative Product Development

This paper presents a theoretical approach to workflow process management using well established PDM functions for controlling knowledge and information to support collaborative product development processes within the WWW. The new methodology is called Workflow Activity Task Controller (WATC) that can securely distribute design and manufacturing knowledge to support process planning with information exchange during the early stages of the product development phases. Most specifically, WATC uses the methods described herein to link the workflow management of a PDM system with a knowledge-based system and a process planning system. In addition, this framework is flexible and adaptive and can be extended to adapt to a specific company’s needs. The objective and the intention of the development are to improve information flows, promote sharing of design and manufacturing knowledge and subsequently to maximise effectiveness of product development activities and task efficiency

Knowledge-Enriched Product Data Management to Support Aggregate Process Planning

This paper is proposed a novel method to disperse manufacturing knowledge through the application of a Product Data Management (PDM) system. The intention of this new development is to support aggregate process planning during the early product development phases. The objective of the methodology is that manufacturing knowledge can be captured and reused within a distributed and collaborative environment. In addition, this paper also emphasises the way in which manufacturing knowledge can be encapsulated in a domain- specific ontology called ‘manufacturing know-how’. Its semantics can be translated through the application of web-based technologies so that it would enrich the value of manufacturing knowledge being managed and promote the sharing of that knowledge within a distributed and collaborative environment

The Application of Web-based Technologies in Product Data Management and Manufacturing Systems Interoperability and Data Exchange

As the use of web-centric technology matures within the current market, one of the most widely used standardized data exchange formats is XML (Extensible Markup Language). This is due to the fact that XML-wrapped data can be used and understood by any application that is XML-enabled. This is one of the main factors this paper aims to exploit in order to tackle the problem of improving manufacturing product development in a distributed and collaborative environment within the World-Wide-Web. The objective of this paper is to investigate how XML and the proposed standard XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) can be used as the mediation for associating a commercially available Product Data Management (PDM) system and a manufacturing system, which consists of manufacturing and design domains. In particular, the focus of this paper is to emphasise the way in which systems interoperate and deliver data solutions to enterprise information challenges

Funding Our Culture

Many successive governments have funded the arts, cultural activities and heritage. Every now and then someone asks why or says it is not governments’ business. But their voices evaporate into the ether. The questions are not whether there should be state funding but what taxpayers should fund, how much, how and on what criteria. Governments have answered the ‘what’ and the ‘how much’ with their chequebooks and have de facto answered the ‘how’. But on each count there has been much criticism. And the criteria are murky: sometimes funding is on thinly disguised pork-barrel principles. Shouldn’t it be more rigorous? The Public Finance Act is more than 10 years old. These are the days of fiscal prudence, value for money and attention to outcomes. Departments are supposed to tie their spending to a specified goal. Isn’t it time clear rules were stated by which arts, culture and heritage funding is allocated? Moreover, the range of activities to which funding is directed is very wide: national and cultural identity, heritage and preservation, access to and participation in cultural activities, community development, quality of life and artistic productions. Each is treated separately, with no discernible overall strategy. Funding often follows the ‘fly-paper’ principle: what was funded last year or 10 years ago will be funded again this year.To discuss these issues and look for ways forward, the Institute of Policy Studies convened on 24 and 31 March 2000 four half-day roundtable forums with invited specialists, The forums were sponsored principally by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and also by Creative New Zealand, the New Zealand Film Commission and the Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa. They were not intended to produce definitive recommendations; rather, to explore ideas. The forums adopted as a basis for their discussions a restricted definition of culture, the one used by the Ministry in its 1999 publication, The Government’s Role in the Cultural Sector: A Survey of the Issue: “celebrating, promoting or preserving our cultural heritage and the arts”. Though the forums also kept in the back of the mind the wider sense the Ministry also used of “every kind of phenomenon which gives a significance and integrity to our way of life” and occasionally referred to this wider concept of culture, the business end of the discussion was on the narrower definition. This did not, however, restrict discussion to ‘high culture’. The themes that emerged from the forums are outlined in this brief. They are a report by the programme director of wide-ranging and at times vigorous conversations, including their salient points. In this report are also recorded many expressions of opinion, some by individuals, some by several participants, often contested. No opinion or statement should be taken as a conclusion or position of the forums or any individual participant but only as ideas for debate. Nevertheless, as a background against which to set these distillations, perhaps two baselines might be suggested: • Funding policy should have the whole population in mind, not just those involved in or particularly interested in arts, culture and heritage. • Funding should be only for ‘externalities’, the benefits to society of an artistic, cultural or heritage activity These two baselines presume that governments act on behalf of all the people and that any funds directed to an individual or a sector of society must in some way benefit the whole of society. If the benefit to the whole of society is low, the funding would logically also be low, and if no benefit to the whole of society can be identified then a government logically would not fund that activity. A third, operational, guideline might be that there should be no direct funding of individuals or performing arts companies. To say that, however, is not to say much. Assessing and quantifying ‘externalities’ is a complex exercise of judgment, unavoidably highly inexact and open to challenge on economic, sociological and political grounds, all of which are constantly shifting as society changes

Open Standard, Open Source and Peer to Peer Methods for Collaborative Product Development and Knowledge Management

Tools such as product data management (PDM) and its offspring product lifecycle management (PLM) enable collaboration within and between enterprises. Large enterprises have invariably been the target of software vendors for development of such tools, resulting in large entralized applications. These are beyond the means of small to medium enterprises (SME). Even after these efforts had been made, large enterprises face numerous difficulties with PLM. Firstly, enterprises evolve, and an evolving enterprise needs an evolving data management system. With large applications, such configuration changes have to be made at the server level by dedicated staff. The second problem arises when enterprises wish to collaborate with a large number of suppliers and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. Current applications enable collaboration using business-to-business (B2B) protocols. However, these do not take into account that disparate enterprises do not have unitary data models or workflows. This is a strong factor in reducing the abilities of large enterprises to participate in collaborative project

Integration of a Manufacturing Model with State-of-the-art PDM System

Product Data Management (PDM) systems and manufacturing models operate independently does not constitute powerful solution in a distributed and collaborative product development and manufacturing environment. In addition there is also lack of research issues addressing the implementation of conceptual design and process planning stage to utilise PDM system, which offering collaborative development in a World Wide Web. To ensure competitive advantage, comprehensive system integration is needed in order to support and enhance the product development and manufacturing activities. This paper focuses on research concerned with providing this level of support through the use of an in-house manufacturing model and a commercially available PDM system. In particular it focuses on fundamental concept of the overall system integration ideas and methodologies. The manufacturing model and PDM system are based upon, respectively, the CAPABLE Aggregate Process Planning System developed by Design and Manufacturing Group, University of Durham and PTC Windchill

An Agent-Based Model for Refined Cognitive Load and Reading Performance in Reading Companion Robot

This paper presents the importance of modeling dynamical behaviors of human cognitive states that serves as a core foundation in creating intelligent and responsive systems. It discusses in detail the development of a dynamical model of cognitive load and reading performance which acts as the central component of creating a reading companion robot. Simulations results show realistic behaviour patterns that adhere to the literature. Finally, the results produced from an automated verification approach to validate the internal correctness of the proposed model using Temporal Trace Language (TTL) are shown