Lilia Gzara

Tracking product specification dependencies in collaborative design for conflict management

The main difficulty associated with a collaborative design process is understanding the product data exchanged during the design. Efficient and effective coordination of design activities relies on a thorough understanding of the dependencies between shared product specifications throughout the entire development cycle. This paper explores the linkages between the design process features and product specification dependencies, and suggests ways of identifying and managing specification dependencies to improve collaborative process performance. Using a UML (Unified Modeling Language) specification, we propose a process traceability tool to track the design process in an ongoing manner. Based on the information captured, the dependencies between specifications involved in the tracked process are identified and inserted in a dependency network, which is maintained throughout the design process. A set of mechanisms is then proposed to qualify the identified dependencies. Extracting and qualifying specification dependencies could be useful in many design situations; for example, during an engineering change management process to assess impacts and study change feasibility, or during a conflict management process to assist designers in resolving conflicts and maintaining the coherence of the design process (knowing that change management is a tool to conduct conflict management). Special attention is paid to the conflict management process. By means of a case study, we show how the solution we propose can assist designers during the conflict management process.

DEPNET: A Methodology for Identifying and Qualifying Dependencies Between Engineering Data

Collaborative design is a collection of the co-operated efforts undertaken by a team of designers. Due to multi-actors interaction, conflicts can emerge from disagreements between designers about proposed designs. Therefore, a critical element of collaborative design would be conflict resolution. In this paper, the DEPNET methodology is introduced to support conflict management. This methodology is based on a Unified Modelling Language (UML) traceability model to extract the data dependencies network. This will allow identifying the conflict resolution team as well as evaluating the impact of a selected solution. A case study within an industrial partner is described to illustrate this methodology.

BI4BI: A continuous evaluation system for Business Intelligence systems

Abstract Business Intelligence (BI) allows supporting decision making by providing methods and tools to easily access and manage business information. Indeed, it is crucial to maintain BI systems and make them evolve in order to fit business and users’ needs. For this purpose, applying BI for BI is suggested. It helps to analyze the current BI environment and to make decisions about its use and evolution. Then, the main contribution of this paper consists in developing a novel system called BI4BI which is based on both BI systems’ data and BI users’ feedbacks. As a result, based on a user centered approach, an automated system for BI evaluation is developed helping its continuous evolution. To this end, system-based and user-based solutions provide two complementary data sources, required to effectively gather insights on the use of BI systems and the way they should evolve. A case study in a semiconductor manufacturer company demonstrates the impact of our solution on the evaluation and evolution of BI systems. Hence, thanks to the involvement of the company’s BI users during the solution design, a set of evaluation criteria responding to their objectives for evaluating the BI system are identified and validated. Furthermore, the results of this case study show that our proposed solution is better than existing ones, in terms of level of focus of its BI evaluation criteria, its level of automation, and its continuous processing.

Tracking design dependencies to support conflict management

Due to the multi-actors interaction during collaborative design, conflicts can be revealed from disagreements between designers about proposed designs. A critical element of collaborative design would be conflict resolution. This paper proposes a methodology to support designers during the process of conflict management; focusing mainly on identifying the conflict resolution team and evaluating the selected solution impact issues. The methodology is based on product data dependencies network which is composed of the handled data and the dependency links between them. Qualification concepts are introduced to manage these dependencies. In order to identify this network, a traceability model to track the design process is proposed.

Manufacturing Reporting Knowledge Representation: A Case Study at STMicroelectronics

This paper addresses the problem of manufacturing Reporting knowledge representation in manufacturing companies. An approach to characterize these knowledge is proposed. The solution is applied to the Reporting process at STMicroelectronics for capitalizing knowledge in the Wiki of the company and responding to users’ needs. In such an approach, the user participates throughout the knowledge representation definition process, even in choosing knowledge characteristics to represent it. For that aim, three dimensions are taken into consideration: the know What, the know Why and the know How.