Crowdsourcing User-Contributed Solutions to Aerospace Product Development Issues through Micro-Blogging

Revenue and production output of the United Kingdom’s Aerospace Industry (AI) is growing year on year and the need to develop new products and innovative enhancements to existing ranges is creating a critical need for the increased utilisation and sharing of employee knowledge. The capture of employee knowledge within the UK’s AI is vital if it is to retain its pre-eminent position in the global marketplace. Crowdsourcing, as a collaborative problem solving activity, allows employees to capture explicit knowledge from colleagues and teams and also offers the potential to extract previously unknown tacit knowledge in a less formal virtual environment. By using micro-blogging as a mechanism, a conceptual framework is proposed to illustrate how companies operating in the AI may improve the capture of employee knowledge to address production-related problems through the use of crowdsourcing. Subsequently, the framework has been set against the background of the product development process proposed by Maylor in 1996 and illustrates how micro-blogging may be used to crowdsource ideas and solutions during product development. Initial validation of the proposed framework is reported, using a focus group of 10 key actors from the collaborating organisation, identifying the perceived advantages, disadvantages and concerns of the framework; results indicate that the activity of micro-blogging for crowdsourcing knowledge relating to product development issues would be most beneficial during product conceptualisation due to the requirement for successful innovation

A business process modelling approach to improve OEM and supplier collaboration

Nowadays, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are facing fast changes in technological advancement. These changes encourage them to be more innovative and to offer their Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) quality products with ever shorter deadlines, which is not an easy task. This project (BENEFITS) aims to provide innovative solutions to keep the most exploitable SME’s skills within its local regions. This paper focuses on Business Process Modeling (BPM) and process interactions during the development phases of innovative products. Due to the specific needs and requirements in terms of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)-based solutions for SMEs and OEMs, this work explores the relationship between them and their suppliers, based on ICT technologies and focuses on SMEs adoption of PLM. Such relationship needs the Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) for representing all tasks that must be done for the collaborative process planning. Two existing information models (NIST and PPRO) serve as an information model to investigate the way of implementing design processes in the context of PLM

A Framework for Improving the Sharing of Manufacturing Knowledge through Micro-Blogging

The purpose of this paper is to report on an industrial investigation, conducted within a leading power generation manufacturer, to better understand the organisational processes and challenges present in relation to the management and sharing of knowledge during product manufacturing. Findings reveal that the organisation is failing to fully benefit from web 2.0 technologies and particularly micro-blogging. Details of the investigation results are presented and a conceptual framework is proposed to demonstrate how organisations may enhance the sharing of explicit manufacturing knowledge using micro-blogging tools

Towards supplier maturity evaluation in terms of PLM collaboration

The product lifecycle management (PLM) system has a significant role to support the collaboration and manage the partnership between OEM and Supplier to enable the success of supplier integration. Today great rates of co- operation as suppliers have been dedicated to SMEs. Since one of the PLM task is to control the collaboration between OEM and suppliers, this paper provide supplier (SMEs) a framework to find their place in this relationship in the concept of PLM. To respond to this trend, we defined a methodology based on collaborative matrix maturity levels and four PLM axes of strategic, organization, process and tools levels. Finally according to this ma- trix, we proposed a structure of a proper questionnaire and example that show suppliers how to evaluate their positions in terms of collaboration in PLM

Crowdsourcing User-Contributed Solutions to Aerospace Product Development Issues through Micro-Blogging

Revenue and production output of the United Kingdom’s Aerospace Industry (AI) is growing year on year and the need to develop new products and innovative enhancements to existing ranges is creating a critical need for the increased utilisation and sharing of employee knowledge. The capture of employee knowledge within the UK’s AI is vital if it is to retain its pre-eminent position in the global marketplace. Crowdsourcing, as a collaborative problem solving activity, allows employees to capture explicit knowledge from colleagues and teams and also offers the potential to extract previously unknown tacit knowledge in a less formal virtual environment. By using micro-blogging as a mechanism, a conceptual framework is proposed to illustrate how companies operating in the AI may improve the capture of employee knowledge to address production-related problems through the use of crowdsourcing. Subsequently, the framework has been set against the background of the product development process proposed by Maylor in 1996 and illustrates how micro-blogging may be used to crowdsource ideas and solutions during product development. Initial validation of the proposed framework is reported, using a focus group of 10 key actors from the collaborating organisation, identifying the perceived advantages, disadvantages and concerns of the framework; results indicate that the activity of micro-blogging for crowdsourcing knowledge relating to product development issues would be most beneficial during product conceptualisation due to the requirement for successful innovation.European Program INTERREG IVA France-Channel-U

Investigation into current industrial practices relating to product lifecycle management in a multi-national manufacturing company

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems have gained growing acceptance for managing all information relating to products throughout their full lifecycle, from idea conceptualisation through operations to servicing and disposal. This paper, through an in-depth exploratory study into a leading power generation manufacturing organisation, presents current PLM issues experienced by manufacturing companies, exploring three separate topics: 1) PLM, 2) Knowledge Management and Lessons Learnt and 3) Product Servicing and Maintenance. Following a review of published literature, results of the investigation are presented, analysing the responses of 17 employees interviewed. With respect to Product Development, it was found that information traceability is time consuming and change management requests take too long to complete. Results relating to knowledge management indicate that the Company operates a ‘who you know’ culture, but do aim to capture lessons learned on the manufacturing shop floor and assembly lines. Therefore, a prototype design is proposed to integrate the capturing of lessons learnt within the existing PLM system

PLM adoption in SMEs context

The increasing market needs and technologies evolution, push companies to develop competitive advantages based on adequate and intensive use of information technology and communication (ICT). However, SMEs do not realize the importance of ICT adoption, which becomes vital for the development, and are not always well equipped to adopt and integrate them to their activities. The paper focused on issues regarding the ICT adoption, especially PLM solutions by SMEs. By analyzing the PLM definitions and works done, we explored indicators that impact positively or negatively ICT and PLM adoption. This paper proposes a model, currently theoretical, with empirical validation proposal through a survey

A review of crowdsourcing literature related to the manufacturing industry

In an increasingly competitive globalised manufacturing environment, the necessity to develop new products and introduce innovative enhancements to existing ranges has created a critical need for the increased utilisation and sharing of organisational and employee knowledge. The capture of this knowledge within industry is of paramount importance as organisations seek to survive and remain competitive. Crowdsourcing, as a collaborative idea generation and problem solving activity, allows employees to capture explicit knowledge from large groups of colleagues and teams, and offers the potential to extract previously unknown tacit knowledge in a less formal virtual environment. This paper provides a review of recently published literature relating to crowdsourcing in the manufacturing industry and offers suggestions for the future direction of crowdsourcing research in manufacturing and product development

DFT analysis and third-harmonic generation properties of one series of push–pull benzylidenemalononitrile derivatives

Optical and nonlinear optical properties of benzylidenemalononitrile derivatives with different electron-donating groups’ substituents were studied. Four benzylidenemalononitrile derivatives [benzylidenemalononitrile (1), (4-chlorobenzylidene)malononitrile (2), (4-hydroxybenzylidene)malononitrile (3) and (4-(dimethylamino)benzylidene)malononitrile (4)] were functionalized, synthesized and analyzed using 1H NMR, FTIR, and UV–vis. A study of electrochemical properties was conducted using cyclic voltammetry. The third-harmonic generation technique was used to analyze and evaluate the susceptibility ($$\chi_{{{\text{THG}}}}^{ }$$) of cubic nonlinear optical properties on thin films at 1064 nm. THG measurements using the Maker fringe technique were used to analyze and evaluate the susceptibility $$\chi_{{}}^{ }$$ parameter of thin films of PMMA with embedded molecules. The studied benzylidenemalononitrile substituted with a strong electron-donating group showed considerable nonlinear responses. Theoretical analysis was performed using DFT/B3LYP/6-311G++ (d, p) and Gaussian 09 program quantum chemical calculations. Third-order nonlinear optical response increases proportionally with the electron-donating character of the substituent groups