Eswaran Subrahmanian

Information sharing and exchange in the context of product lifecycle management: Role of standards

This paper introduces a model of the information flows in Product Life cycle Management (PLM), serving as the basis for understanding the role of standards in PLM support systems. Support of PLM requires a set of complementary and interoperable standards that cover the full range of aspects of the products life cycle. The paper identifies a typology of standards relevant to PLM support that addresses the hierarchy of existing and evolving standards and their usage and identifies a suite of standards supporting the exchange of product, process, operations and supply chain information. A case study illustrating the use of PLM standards in a large organization is presented. The potential role of harmonization among PLM support standards is described and a proposal is made for using open standards and open source models for this important activity.

Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) - A Design Challenge?

In this paper, we make the case that ICT projects in the developed and developing world often lead to partial or total failures due to the incomplete assessment of the problem being solved and the metrics used to evaluate solutions. While in the developed world the success of ICT solutions are often determined by the market, with available infrastructure and market mechanisms, in the developing world this ecosystem does not exist thus requiring an understanding of the ecosystem in which ICT solutions are to be applied. Using literature from the design space, and experiences in ICT for development, we elaborate the dimensions of design such as incorporation of stakeholders, incentive structures, and design participation that are critical to successful deployment. We examine some successes and failures in product/solution development in the ICT area to identify the dimensions of good design incorporated by these products and services. With the perspective that ICT for sustainable development issues are ill-structured and wicked problems that have to incorporate all the defined dimensions of design, we propose a model of product and service identification and development that is based on insights from asynchronous computational agent problem solving. We claim that new methods such as the one proposed need to be identified, developed and tested for their effectiveness in the development of products and services that satisfy the needs of human development

Introducing Sustainability Early into Manufacturing Process Planning

In response to the global trend towards implementing sustainable manufacturing practices, we put forth an exploratory approach that uses energy monitoring as a means to introduce sustainability criteria early into manufacturing process planning. Typically cost, quality and time are the indices for manufacturability assessment in generating manufacturing process plans. In this paper, we propose the idea of introducing sustainability to complement cost, quality and time to arrive at alternative sustainable plans in identified manufacturing processes. To be sustainable, it is pertinent that manufacturing firms understand the energy consumption of different manufacturing equipment used to produce products. This will enable industry to implement energy reduction processes in a more effective manner and pave the way for improved and alternate manufacturing solutions. The paper presents the potential utility of energy usage readings in the interest of continuing dialogue and collaboration.

Humans' Critical Role in Smart Systems: A Smart Firefighting Example

Smart systems are everywhere. They have the unique ability to optimize their performance under a variety of inputs and recover quickly from a wide variety of disturbances. This ability depends on both the cognitive and physical capabilities of such systems. Currently available cyber technologies have dramatically increased the cognitive capabilities of machines. As these technologies advance, so will those cognitive capabilities. This means that humans and machines can work more collaboratively, as joint partners, to execute those capabilities. Here, a system is described that takes advantage of such technologies to deploy a smart firefighting approach.

Evaluating reasoning systems

A review of the literature on evaluating reasoning systems reveals that it is a very broad area with wide variation in depth and breadth of research on metrics and tests. This is the second of a two-part series that begins to bring order to the area by categorizing reasoning systems according to their capabilities. These can be used as a basis for evaluating and testing reasoning systems claiming to be in each category. Capabilities are analyzed along the dimensions of representation languages and inference. The first part introduces information metrology, model theory, and inference to facilitate understanding of the reasoning categories presented. It also groups representation languages by their relation to first-order logic, and model-theoretic properties, such as soundness and completeness. This part examines inference procedures, dividing them into deduction, induction, abduction, and analogical reasoning. It explains the subcategories and characteristics of each, and concludes with recommendations for future work.

Modeling and Analysis of Indian Carnatic Music Using Category Theory

This paper presents a category theoretic ontology of Carnatic music. Our goals here are twofold. First, we will demonstrate the power and flexibility of conceptual modeling techniques based on a branch of mathematics called category theory (CT), using the structure of Carnatic music as an example. Second, we describe a platform for collaboration and research sharing in this area. The construction of this platform uses formal methods of CT (colimits) to merge our Carnatic ontology with a generic model of music information retrieval tasks. The latter model allows us to integrate multiple analytical methods, such as hidden Markov models, machine learning algorithms, and other data mining techniques like clustering, bagging, etc., in the analysis of a variety of different musical features. Furthermore, the framework facilitates the storage of musical performances based on the proposed ontology, making them available for additional analysis and integration. The proposed framework is extensible, allowing future work in the area of rāga recognition to build on our results, thereby facilitating collaborative research. Generally speaking, the methods presented here are intended as an exemplar for designing collaborative frameworks supporting reproducibility of computational analysis and simulation.