Joshua P Fan

The adoption process and impact of additive manufacturing on manufacturing systems

Company pressure for manufacturers is mounting from two angles: increasing pressure of global competition, and rapid advancements in technology such as additive manufacturing (AM) that are altering the way that goods are manufactured. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption process of AM within a manufacturing system and its business impact.,Research was conducted to collect empirical data at two manufacturing case companies in the North West England. Both cases are located in areas of industrial recovery using AM engineering innovation for value creation.,Early findings showed that the implementation of AM caused a shift in value propositions and the creation of additional value streams (VSs) for the case study companies. AM was shown to compliment and strengthen traditional manufacturing VSs rather than replacing them.,Limitations include the generalizability due to the number and location of case companies included in this research.,It is worthwhile to explore the opportunities that AM brings with the existing customer base as it has the potential to add unexplored and untapped value. However, managers need to be mindful of the capability and resources required to put the VS into practice.,Both cases resulted in skill retainment and development due to the implementation of AM. Hence, the innovation contributed to regional economic recovery and business survival.,This empirical research is one of the early field explorations focussing on the impact of AM on VS structures. Hence, this paper contributes to the area of technology enhanced manufacturing systems.

An integration-oriented ontology development methodology to reuse existing ontologies in an ontology development process

Ontology is defined as an explicit specification of a conceptualization and can be used to provide a shared understanding of a domain which is necessary to overcome differences in terminology from various sources. To build high quality ontologies, developers are required to choose and follow a suitable methodology containing a series of steps, activities and guidelines organized in a systematic way. In this paper, we develop guidelines on how to select ontology merging or integration which has not been explored in any ontology research. As it is more cost effective to build an ontology reusing existing ontologies (integration and merging) than from scratch, we therefore propose an ontology development methodology, MIOD, which incorporates and performs ontology integration in its development process. A semi-automatic key term evaluation system is developed to find suitable source ontologies from a group of candidate ontologies. The proposed methodology and system are used to address the insufficiency of current ontology development and integration methodologies.

Ontology-based collaborative inter-organizational knowledge management network

Knowledge is recognized as one of the most important and valuable management assets because knowledge enables organizations to utilize and develop resources, enhance their competitiveness and develop sustainable competitive advantage. A number of knowledge management approaches have been developed with the purpose of managing organizational knowledge.

A Dynamic Nursing Workflow Management System: A Thailand Hospital Scenario

In this chapter, we propose the use of dynamic compilation of web services to support workflow management using a hospital scenario in Thailand. Web service based on work practices of nursing system in Thailand is discussed. A dynamic platform for workflow management (DPWFM), which integrates decision making process of workflow management by allowing nurse supervisors to customize workflow requirement is proposed.

To provide guidelines for designing new mediation tools and identifying matching technique: a classification framework approach

Ontology matching can be defined as the process of discovering similarities between two ontologies and it can be processed exploiting a number of different techniques. To provide a common conceptual basis, researchers have started to develop classifications to distinguish them. The most significant one is the classification proposed by Shvaiko and Euzenat to compare different existing ontology mediation systems as well as to design a new one. As the classification contains some improper identifications and vague categories, we therefore propose a design and input-specific classification framework of ontology matching techniques to address the above problems based on the findings of the literature survey. The framework provides not only a clear guideline on designing new mediation tool but also an effective method to identify the type of the matching technique and its related executive approach simply by comparing input of mediation system with the input layer in the proposed framework.