Karl A. Hribernik

State-of-the-art and good practice in the field of living labs

Living Labs are an emerging Public Private Partnership (PPP) concept in which firms, public authorities and citizens work together to create, prototype, validate and test new services, businesses, markets and technologies in real-life contexts, such as cities, city regions, rural areas and collaborative virtual networks between public and private players. The real-life and everyday life contexts will both stimulate and challenge research and development as public authorities and citizens will not only participate in, but also contribute to the whole innovation process. This paper examines the state-of-the art in involving the user and stakeholder organisations into the innovation process in various ongoing, embryonic Living Labs initiatives, examines the key practices that need to be in place for the maturation of the concept and gives examples on how those are currently being deployed. The paper concludes with a section dedicated to identifying areas in which future research is required.

Living labs as a multi-contextual R&D methodology

The ability to be creative and innovative in a society influenced by stress, lack of time, and other factors, harnessing the technology available in todays knowledge society is key towards increasing the overall productivity of a future European society. Whilst technology enables new value-chains, product and service development increasingly need to focus on true user needs in order to be successful in todays increasingly global and competitive market. New R&D and innovation methodologies need to be developed to meet the challenge of addressing those needs. This paper examines the need for involving the user and other stakeholder organisations into the innovation process, analyses the key issues regarding regional innovation, and presents a basic concept of Living Labs as a multi-contextual R&D methodology addressing those issues. The proposed Living Labs methodology contributes to the coming challenges of mass-deployment of ICT solutions as a mean to further develop the society involving the citizens. It brings the users/consumers/citizens into the system of innovation, thereby leveraging on a larger mass of ideas, knowledge and experiences etc and substantially boosting the innovation capability.

The product avatar as a product-instance-centric information management concept

This paper presents the concept of semi-autonomous product-centric information management based on the Product Avatar (PA) concept, discussing the overall concept of distributed and decentralised information management relevant to individual product items and analyses the requirements the concept generates. In that context, it aims at stimulating discussion on the pragmatic utilisation of emerging technologies, such as RFID, wireless networking and ubiquitous computing. This paper further illustrates the benefits of the application of the PA concept in examples related to PLM against a scenario based on a network of organisations connected to the maintenance, repair and operation processes of a product.

Supporting the ideation processes by a collaborative online based toolset

Successful innovations depend upon what input is given to the development process. That input is developed in the early stage of innovation in which neither problems nor goals are well-defined (Simon, 1973; Bayazit, 2004). The presented research focuses on how innovators’ requirements towards software tools supporting early-stage innovation can be met by suitable working environments. Allan (2007) describes early-stage innovation as a social process where individuals and groups work together in a collaborative way. This paper examines how such collaborative work can be encouraged by applying game dynamics to early-stage innovation processes. The game dynamics examined are implemented in an integrated software solution designed to support innovators with getting connected to the right people, producing ideas based on exploring knowledge and evaluating them to achieve the goal of developing successful innovations. The presented approach is based on the research carried out by the European Community funded Integrated Project Laboranova.

Improving reverse logistics processes using item-level product life cycle management

Sustainability is a key issue for companies offering products and services on the global market. The ever-increasing worldwide demand for raw materials in combination with the rising costs for materials and energy challenges companies to make their products, processes and services more sustainable. More and more customers are demanding sustainable products and services due to their increased awareness about environmental protection. By providing access to data, information and knowledge about products and services the concept of product life cycle management (PLM) can be applied to reverse logistics processes to improve sustainability. The term PLM and, therefore, the functionality of existing PLM systems must be considered as quite different. This paper introduces the concept of item-level PLM. It investigates the requirements that item-level PLM systems must fulfil in order to support sustainability in reverse logistics processes in an appropriate manner. Existing item-level PLM solutions are then investigated according to their suitability in the field of reverse logistics.

A Semantic Mediator for Data Integration in Autonomous Logistics Processes

Autonomous control in logistic systems is characterized by the ability of logistic objects to process information, to render and to execute decisions on their own. This paper investigates whether the concept of the semantic mediator is applicable to the data integration problems arising from an application scenario of autonomous control in the transport logistics sector. Initially, characteristics of autonomous logistics processes are presented, highlighting the need for decentral data storage in such a paradigma. Subsequently, approaches towards data integration are examined. An application scenario exemplifying autonomous control in the field of transport logistics is presented and analysed, on the basis of which a concept, technical architecture and prototypical implementation of a semantic mediator is developed and described. A critical appraisal of the semantic mediator in the context of autonomous logistics processes concludes the paper, along with an outlook towards ongoing and future work.

An Approach for the Integration of Data Within Complex Logistics Systems

Due to a global competition today’s business world changed dramatically whereas the ongoing trend towards global enterprise networks has lead to increasing customer expectations regarding the performance of logistics systems which have to be simultaneously reliable, robust and cost-effective. One the one hand reliability, robustness and cost-efficiency mainly depend on the availability of suitable ICTsolutions as well as their proper integration into the business processes. As a consequence various systems were developed in the past and are currently in use. On the other hand the seamless access to the data kept by all these different systems is a key issue in order to meet the requirements of logistics systems of today and tomorrow. In this context data integration represents a major challenge which is still unsolved. This paper describes a proposal for a service-oriented approach towards the seamless integration of logistics data which aims at combining existing systems and standards and thus overcoming today’s data and information barriers. By accepting existing standards and interfaces this requires innovative approaches addressing the semantic description of data, their transparent transformation between different representations as well as a common interface which can be provided to the various systems which are currently applied in the field of logistics.

A Service-oriented, Semantic Approach to Data Integration for an Internet of Things Supporting Autonomous Cooperating Logistics Processes

The core vision put forward by the Internet of Things, of networked, intelligent objects capable of taking autonomous decisions based on decentral information processing, resonates strongly with research in the field of autonomous cooperating logistics processes. The characteristics of the IT landscape underlying autonomous cooperating logistics processes pose a number of challenges towards data integration. The heterogeneity of the data sources, their highly distributed nature, along with their availability, make the application of traditional approaches problematic. The field of semantic data integration offers potential solutions to address these issues. This contribution aims to examine in what way an adequate approach towards data integration may be facilitated on that basis. It subsequently proposes a service-oriented, ontology-based mediation approach to data integration for an Internet of Things supporting autonomous cooperating logistics processes.

Can a Product Have a Facebook? A New Perspective on Product Avatars in Product Lifecycle Management

In today’s business environment, customer expectation towards product lifecycle information accessibility and quality is rising. Concepts such as the Internet of Things (IoT) respond to these demands enabling products becoming “intelligent” and capable of interaction. Simultaneously, society is changing with people spending more and more time online. Social networks allow them to interact richly with both their personal and professional contacts. Users of social network share information about their lives with a wide network of people who can respond directly. Being the most widely used social network Facebook’s functionality and usability have continuously evolved, culminating in the introduction of the timeline. The timeline is a representation of the users’ entire life, de facto managing the user’s “lifecycle” information. Considering the above developments, the question arises, whether it is feasible for a product to have a Facebook which acts as its product avatar, and whether that would contribute towards fulfilling the increasing customer demands towards product lifecycle information accessibility and quality?

Accessing servitisation potential of PLM data by applying the product avatar concept

Manufacturers of complex, high-value consumer products are increasingly forced to think of ways to satisfy their customers’ needs, stand out from competition and access new revenue streams. One way to accomplish that is to utilise the potential of product service bundles, which allow customers to enjoy a more holistic experience of products. The objective of this study was to investigate how the development of a novel concept, the product avatar and its application to existing products can contribute to servitisation. After establishing a solid foundation through a literature review, the theory behind the product avatar concept is introduced. In the following, the support of the product avatar concept for the main drivers of servitisation is discussed. The theoretical findings are then evaluated through a case study describing the development and application of the product avatar to leisure boat product lifecycle management data in the European boat industry. The results indicate that the product avatar concept does support servitisation by e.g. supporting industrial stakeholders to create new services around their core product which, in turn, may create new revenue opportunities.