John P. T. Mo

An integrated process model driven knowledge based system for remote customer support

This paper describes a demonstrator in the Globeman 21 project of the international IMS initiative to investigate the use of information technology tools and methods such as the World Wide Web to support remote customers. The focus of the demonstrator is an Australian company manufacturing CNC plate cutting machines. Because the company has customers all over the world, it needs to provide effective and responsive remote support to customers in the use, maintenance and troubleshooting of their equipment. The research in the project starts with an understanding of the underlying logic of human expert reasoning and hence provides a process model which directs the customer through the necessary dialog procedures. A knowledge repository is created to capture the knowledge of company domain experts as well as field information available from experienced users. A set of software tools has been created in the project which integrates the process model and the knowledge base and allows changes to be made easily by the company.

Development of an Information Technology Infrastructure for Extended Enterprise

An extended enterprise is formed in the Globeman 21 project of the international Intelligence Manufacturing Systems Initiative to investigate the problems involved in the information access and control within the extended enterprise. Since the relationship of the companies in the extended enterprise is loosely associative, that is, there is no formal legal binding mechanism to explicitly state the obligations of the partners, the information infrastructure must also reflect the openness that is required to support it. This paper discusses the development of such an Information Infrastructure and some of the work done in ascertaining the usability of the technologies adopted. Specifically, we discuss various policies and software structures, and evaluate the use of WWW versus Lotus Notes in such an infrastructure.

A Framework for Round the Clock Design and Support

This paper gives an overview of a project to develop a computer-networked environment which assists designers around the world to work collaboratively. The collaborative environment described here makes use of high bandwidth international networks and is based on the concept of Global Concurrent Engineering (GCE), which enables collaborative work between design teams across time zones and countries. The approach followed in this project is to analyse the process of product design and subsequently develop a working scenario to handle both the interactive and non-interactive activities for global design teams.

Collaborative Networks in Australia — Challenges and Recommendations

Australia is a country with a size comparable to Europe but with less than 10% of the inhabitants. Low-density population results in relatively high cost of infrastructures and small domestic markets. Over the last ten years, Australia has moved from a locally oriented economy to one that operates as part of the global business environment. Australian companies, large and small, take this opportunity to form alliances with international partners in order to participate in large-scale overseas projects. The most significant challenge facing Australian researchers in the next decade is the understanding of the collaboration in this complex and dynamic international business network and to put it into successful practice. Through our recent projects in global enterprise networks, we recommend the key research areas on collaborative networks to be the design of extended enterprise, technologies for the integration information and knowledge across company boundaries and the support to people in collaborative decision-making.

Framework for Automatic Creation of Remote Operations Support Systems

Customer service is essential to maintain good and lasting relationships. Many companies would like to reduce the cost of such support services. They have been looking for solutions many of which are created using IT tools. This paper will discuss a generic approach using IDEF3 process modelling methodology to provide such services in a flexible fashion. The approach results in the definition of a framework consisting of generic modelling methodology and software systems which captures the knowledge of experts and generates customer support systems tailored to the application requirements. The framework allows personnel, who do not have computer programming background, to generate such systems easily and the information can be accessed anywhere in the world.

Content Management System and Its Alignment to Business Processes

Abstract With the globalisation of economy, companies form alliances with business partners by participating in a virtual enterprises and combine their core competencies for greater impact. However, different organisations have different business processes and information management systems and hence the intellectual cooperation is hindered by conflicts and mis-interpretation of information. This paper examines the issues of creating and managing the content of the information infrastructure that is necessary to support successful operation of the virtual enterprise. The experience is drawn from the GLOBEMEN project of the IMS program. The paper describes the methods of organising and developing a structural analysis on the requirements of content management in the business processes of the virtual enterprise and the tools required for identifying information flow and the systems that people need to perform their tasks and decision-making processes.

Collaboration and Application Integration: Distributed Design with Virtual CAD

The pervasiveness of computer networking and rapid progress in computer performance have made global cooperation of designers a real possibility. While these technologies provide the hardware infrastructure, software development is struggling to keep pace with these developments. There are many legacy applications and competing new developments, but unfortunately most of those operate on specific platforms in isolated environments. Cooperation of designers working on those systems is very difficult; a significant problem being that different data converter facilities are needed to exchange, interpret and combine designs components produced on different systems. The system presented in this paper aims at integrating different CAD systems and achieve true interoperability, where components designed in one system can be easily viewed, modified or integrated into other designs. The approach taken was creating an integration platform, and different CAD systems are integrated into a virtual CAD system in a seamless manner. The original CAD systems store objects designed locally on that system, while remote access is provided via an integration layer.

Technology infrastructure for virtual organisation of toolmakers

Globalisation has forced companies to work together in a new arrangement known as virtual enterprise. An Australian initiative called RELINK aims to demonstrate the methodologies and systems, that will enable small firms in the tooling and automotive industry to participate with medium and large firms in turnkey projects as part of a broader supply chain. The initiative draws on this body of knowledge in conjunction with research and university partners and concentrates on the practicality of the formation of virtual enterprises in the tooling and automotive industries competing with larger toolmaking companies globally. This paper explores a 5 layer open communication framework for virtual enterprise to establish a continuity of functionality in the communication process that enables B2B operations within a virtual enterprise with varying levels of communication capabilities. The framework identifies options for bridging gaps in communication functionality between the desired application level and the varying situations of the participants.

Development of an ICT infrastructure for internet based integration

Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructures supporting complex operations require collaborative effort to integrate a range of standalone software products into a coordinated system. However, the standalone products are normally developed with specific objectives and do not interoperate with each other. In a virtual enterprise environment, this imposes major challenges to ICT managers to manage o large variety of software products whereby each product only satisfies the unique requirements of a small portion of the user community. This paper discusses the development of the ICT infrastructure for a tooling virtual enterprise) using the open protocol standards as well as a new ICT infrastructure development tool known as Dynamic Network System (DNS). DNS models the operating characteristics of the ICT environment and generates the integrated internet web portal quickly from the system designer’s view. It is built on standard JSP server capabilities using open source system that has the normal server security facilities.

A STUDY ON COORDINATION OF A LARGE PROJECT IN A VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE

Under the IMS (Intelligent Manufacturing Systems) program, CSIRO assisted the ANZAC Ship Alliance in Australia to establish a framework for coordinating team members working in a cross company project from different locations. The ANZAC Ship Alliance is a virtual enterprise formed by 3 major partners with the aim to provide management and implementation of capability changes in ANZAC class frigates. Our earlier study proved that significant modifications are essential in order to adapt project operations to different practices of individual companies. This paper describes the study of the actual processes within an ANZAC Ship Alliance project, the techniques used to identify the information and workflow as well as the relationships with the stakeholders. Development of a web-based system that significantly enhances the effectiveness of collaboration within the virtual enterprise is presented.