Improving aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul: A novel text mining approach

Aircraft Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) feedback commonly includes an engineer’s complex text-based inspection report. Capturing and normalizing the content of these textual descriptions is vital to cost and quality benchmarking, and provides information to facilitate continuous improvement of MRO process and analytics. As data analysis and mining tools requires highly normalized data, raw textual data is inadequate. This paper offers a textual-mining solution to efficiently analyse bulk textual feedback data. Despite replacement of the same parts and/or sub-parts, the actual service cost for the same repair is often distinctly different from similar previously jobs. Regular expression algorithms were incorporated with an aircraft MRO glossary dictionary in order to help provide additional information concerning the reason for cost variation. Professional terms and conventions were included within the dictionary to avoid ambiguity and improve the outcome of the result. Testing results show that most descriptive inspection reports can be appropriately interpreted, allowing extraction of highly normalized data. This additional normalized data strongly supports data analysis and data mining, whilst also increasing the accuracy of future quotation costing. This solution has been effectively used by a large aircraft MRO agency with positive results

Generic unified modelling process for developing semantically rich, dynamic and temporal models

Models play a vital role in supporting a range of activities in numerous domains. We rely on models to support the design, visualisation, analysis and representation of parts of the world around us, and as such significant research effort has been invested into numerous areas of modelling; including support for model semantics, dynamic states and behaviour, temporal data storage and visualisation. Whilst these efforts have increased our capabilities and allowed us to create increasingly powerful software-based models, the process of developing models, supporting tools and /or data structures remains difficult, expensive and error-prone. In this paper we define from literature the key factors in assessing a model’s quality and usefulness: semantic richness, support for dynamic states and object behaviour, temporal data storage and visualisation. We also identify a number of shortcomings in both existing modelling standards and model development processes and propose a unified generic process to guide users through the development of semantically rich, dynamic and temporal models

A normative approach to multi-agent systems for intelligent buildings

Building Management Systems (BMS) are widely adopted in modern buildings around the world in order to provide high-quality building services, and reduce the running cost of the building. However, most BMS are functionality-oriented and do not consider user personalization. The aim of this research is to capture and represent building management rules using organizational semiotics methods. We implement Semantic Analysis, which determines semantic units in building management and their relationship patterns of behaviour, and Norm Analysis, which extracts and specifies the norms that establish how and when these management actions occur. Finally, we propose a multi-agent framework for norm based building management. This framework contributes to the design domain of intelligent building management system by defining a set of behaviour patterns, and the norms that govern the real-time behaviour in a building

New advances in aircraft MRO services: data mining enhancement

Aircraft Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) agencies rely largely on row-data based quotation systems to select the best suppliers for the customers (airlines). The data quantity and quality becomes a key issue to determining the success of an MRO job, since we need to ensure we achieve cost and quality benchmarks. This paper introduces a data mining approach to create an MRO quotation system that enhances the data quantity and data quality, and enables significantly more precise MRO job quotations. Regular Expression was utilized to analyse descriptive textual feedback (i.e. engineer’s reports) in order to extract more referable highly normalised data for job quotation. A text mining based key influencer analysis function enables the user to proactively select sub-parts, defects and possible solutions to make queries more accurate. Implementation results show that system data would improve cost quotation in 40% of MRO jobs, would reduce service cost without causing a drop in service quality

Distributed multimedia quality: The user perspective

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Distributed multimedia supports a symbiotic infotainment duality, i.e. the ability to transfer information to the user, yet also provide the user with a level of satisfaction. As multimedia is ultimately produced for the education and / or enjoyment of viewers, the user’s-perspective concerning the presentation quality is surely of equal importance as objective Quality of Service (QoS) technical parameters, to defining distributed multimedia quality. In order to extensively measure the user-perspective of multimedia video quality, we introduce an extended model of distributed multimedia quality that segregates quality into three discrete levels: the network-level, the media-level and content-level, using two distinct quality perspectives: the user-perspective and the technical-perspective. Since experimental questionnaires do not provide continuous monitoring of user attention, eye tracking was used in our study in order to provide a better understanding of the role that the human element plays in the reception, analysis and synthesis of multimedia data. Results showed that video content adaptation, results in disparity in user video eye-paths when: i) no single / obvious point of focus exists; or ii) when the point of attention changes dramatically. Accordingly, appropriate technical- and user-perspective parameter adaptation is implemented, for all quality abstractions of our model, i.e. network-level (via simulated delay and jitter), media-level (via a technical- and user-perspective manipulated region-of-interest attentive display) and content-level (via display-type and video clip-type). Our work has shown that user perception of distributed multimedia quality cannot be achieved by means of purely technical-perspective QoS parameter adaptation

Understanding the usage of Mobile Payment Systems- the impact of personality on the continuance usage

Payment convenience has benefited from the revolution in mobile technologies. M-payment users, however, seem inconsistent in their payment activity, resisting change from traditional payment methods. Ensuring consumer continuance of m-payment technology usage is critical to ensuring the ubiquity of m-payment solutions. Although research has examined the influence of individual difference on the acceptance of m-payment, most studies fail to consider whether ongoing acceptance is maintained by the user, or whether a change in perception occurs as a result of use. Moreover, current studies consider user demographic profiles to segment mobile users, yet this dismisses the impact of individual difference, e.g. personality or cognitive style. This paper proposes a model that can be used to investigate the impact of individual difference on user perception of m-payment systems. The Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model factors (i.e. effort expectancy, performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition, habit, hedonic motivation, price value, trust and perceived risk) allow capture of data relating to two use perceptions; pre- and post-usage perception. The proposed model allows capture and comparison of pre-usage expectation and post-usage beliefs, allowing consideration of perception variance as a result of technology use. This model will be applied to gain a deeper insight into how to address users’ satisfaction, acceptance, and continuance usage of Near Field Communication m-payment technologies

Exploring the link between leadership and Devops practice and principle adoption

Our research focuses in software-intensive organizations and highlights the challenges that surface as a result of the transitioning process of highly-structured to DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles were identified, which organizations select as part of DevOps-oriented adoption. The most frequently adopted ITIL® service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice and principle adoption success, indicate that DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from the existence of change management, release and deployment management, service level management, incident management and service catalog management. We also uncover that the DevOps adoption leadership role is required in a DevOps team setting and that it should, initially, be an individual role

Leading Devops practice and principle adoption

This research, undertaken in highly structured software-intensive organizations, outlines challenges associated to agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles, which organizations choose to include in their DevOps adoption journeys were identified. The most frequently adopted structured service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice adoption success, indicate that those with software development and operation roles in DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from existence of highly structured service management approaches such as ITIL®

Consideration of persuasive technology on users acceptance of e-commerce: exploring perceived persuasiveness

Persuasive technologies, used within in the domain of interactive technology, are used broadly in social contexts to encourage customers towards positive behavior change. In the context of e-commerce, persuasive technologies have already been extensively applied in the area of marketing to enhancing system credibility, however the issue of ‘persuasiveness’, and its role on positive user acceptance of technology, has not been investigated in the technology acceptance literature. This paper reviews theories and models of users’ acceptance and use in relation with persuasive technology, and identifies their limitation when considering the impact of persuasive technology on users’ acceptance of technology; thus justifying a need to add consideration of ‘perceived persuasiveness’. We conclude by identifying variables associated with perceived persuasiveness, and suggest key research directions for future research