Angelo Corallo

Enhancing product development through knowledge‐based engineering (KBE)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show with figures the potentialities of knowledge‐based engineering (KBE) methods in new product development (NPD). It estimates the business value generated by a tool which integrates the handoff between engineering groups of a large aerospace company.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on three years of observation and interviews at a leading Italian firm. A process‐based approach is used for assessing business value.Findings – The KBE application automated the preparation of data transferred to computer‐aided engineering engineers for analysis by computer‐aided design engineers and reduced the time required by more than 90 percent. This allowed time savings which contributed to enhance product quality.Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on a single case, though its findings are consistent with prior studies. Future research will implement like applications in other contexts at the subject firm and other firms.Practical implicatio...

A knowledge-based decision support system for shipboard damage control

The operational complexity of modern ships requires the use of advanced applications, called damage control systems (DCSs), able to assist crew members in the effective handling of dangerous events and accidents. In this article we describe the development of a knowledge-based decision support system (KDSS) integrated within a DCS designed for a national navy. The KDSS uses a hybrid design and runtime knowledge model to assist damage control operators through a kill card function which supports damage identification, action scheduling and system reconfiguration. We report a fire fighting scenario as illustrative application and discuss a preliminary evaluation of benefits allowed by the system in terms of critical performance measures. Our work can support further research aimed to apply expert systems to improve shipboard security and suggest similar applications in other contexts where situational awareness and damage management are crucial.

Defining Product Lifecycle Management: A Journey across Features, Definitions, and Concepts

Product lifecycle management (PLM) has become more important in companies providing technologies and methodologies to manage data, information, and knowledge along the whole product lifecycle. In recent years, several authors have argued about PLM using a managerial or a technological view. The paper analyses these studies and integrates different authors points of view using focus groups, blogs, and face-to-face meetings in a university community of practice. Three sets of features (i.e., managerial, technological, and collaborative ones) have been used to review the existing definitions shared between academic and industrial ones and to propose an extended PLM definition describing its key concepts. The paper is a useful reference for managers and academics who want to have a clear and critical understanding of PLM using a unique source to collect lines of evidence on several PLM definitions, features, and concepts.

Semantic Knowledge Management: An Ontology-based Framework

The massive quantity of data, information, and knowledge available in digital form on the web or within the organizational knowledge base requires a more effective way to control it. The Semantic Web and its growing complexity demands a resource for the understanding of proper tools for management. Semantic Knowledge Management: An Ontology-Based Framework addresses the Semantic Web from an operative point of view using theoretical approaches, methodologies, and software applications as innovative solutions to true knowledge management. This advanced title provides readers with critical steps and tools for developing a semantic based knowledge management system.

SBEAVER: a tool for modeling business vocabularies and business rules

Methodologies in software development are typically applied when a problem is already formulated and described. Software developers transform requirements into code with a relatively repetitive process. The actual difficulty lies in describing business needs and expected functionalities. Stakeholders involved in software development can express their ideas using a language close to them, but they usually are not able to formalize these concepts in a clear and unambiguous way. In this paper, we introduce a new tool intended primarily for business analysts and modelers who want to formalize their business knowledge using a business oriented notation based on natural language and fact-oriented approach. Moreover, the capability to map models to formal logic allows automatically generation of IT system design artifacts bridging the existing language gap between business and IT.

Optimizing competence management processes: a case study in the aerospace industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the case of a leading Italian aerospace company which developed an integrated system aimed to optimize the management of engineering competencies within the Chief Technical Office function.Design/methodology/approach – The paper was based on a set of interviews to company referents and a one‐year period of researchers observation at the company site to analyze competence management processes and the application on the field of the methodology and the tool. The approach adopted is to present a real practice following a pragmatic and illustrative approach.Findings – The integrated system provides an objective method to support critical evaluations related to the management of competencies and actors. The benefits achieved derive from a more effective and efficient monitoring of competencies available to perform given activities, and from the analysis of gaps, actor allocation, and job‐rotation issues.Research limitations/implications – The application of t...

Chapter 13 Bottom-up extraction and maintenance of ontology-based metadata

Abstract In this chapter, several flexible techniques aimed at extracting, maintaining and enriching semantic-web style metadata are discussed. Such techniques were designed for being applied in the framework of dynamic Communities of Practice (CoP) interactions. Namely, we present a way of building ontologies that proceeds in a bottom-up fashion, defining concepts as clusters of concrete objects. Unlike huge, “supply-side” normative ontologies, our bottom-up ontologies are based on use of implicit and, therefore, parsimonious part-whole and is-a relations. This makes them suitable for the ad-hoc style of conceptualization used within communities of practice and peer-to-peer (P2P) communities. Also we discuss how metadata based on bottom-up ontologies can be associated with a flexible degree of trust by collecting user feedback. Our bottom-up extraction method complements current practice, where, as a rule, ontologies are built top-down. It is not claimed that bottom-up construction is a generally valid recipe; rather, the approach is intended to enrich the ontology developers palette when designing and implementing Semantic Web applications.

COLLABORATION IN AN AEROSPACE SMEs CLUSTER: INNOVATION AND ICT DYNAMICS

The aerospace industry is characterized by an intensive net of relationships and information in the supply chain. The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) working for this kind of industry needs to be innovative and adopt information and communication technologies (ICT) tools to work with bigger companies. This paper explore three networks of relations (i.e. complete, R&D, and production) inside an aerospace cluster of SMEs located in Italy with the aims to specify dynamics in the ICT adoption and innovation rising. The centrality in the R&D network emerges as key characteristics to explore innovation and ICT in such firms.

Business Modelling Language: a framework supporting interoperability in cluster of SMEs

This paper aims at describing the effort realised by ISUFI in defining the business modelling language (BML), in the widest context of the digital business ecosystem (DBE) Project. One of the main obstacles in the adoption of e-business technologies from organisations and communities depends on the divide between technologies, which have reached a quite high level of maturity, and methodologies enabling business knowledge modelling. These methodologies are, on one side, not enough connected with software development and management processes and, on the other, poorly usable and understandable from business users. BML has as main purpose to allows a more simple communication among business people involved in e-business scenario, granting at the same time a strong expressivity and formal logic mapping.

A semantic recommender engine enabling an etourism scenario

This work approaches the problem of delivering services in a personalized way in an eTourism scenario. Our research, on one side, exploits semantic annotation of either services and user profiles to add a layer of business description that allows the system to supply the most suitable service to the user who requested it. On the other side, this work aims to extent Service Oriented Architecture with the use of semantics and ontologies to enable e-business relations in the tourism applicative domain. This approach is adopted in the MAIS project, in which a Service Oriented Architecture has been developed. Our model relies on semantic description of services, rule-based user profile and the use of semantic matching algorithms.