Editorial

Citation

Haupt, T.C. (2011), "Editorial", Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Vol. 9 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jedt.2011.34309caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Volume 9, Issue 3

The final issue of Volume 9 of the Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology features papers on a conceptual design support tool (CDST), integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) through partnerships of stakeholders in affordable housing projects, the effectiveness of intrusion detection systems (IDSs) as an access control supplement, development of a cyclone with internal electric field, capability maturity model integration (CMMI), analytical analysis of long-haul dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical transmission systems, and maintainability of mechanical systems.

Dereje Engida Woldemichael and Fakhruldin Mohd Hashim describe the framework of a CDST to assist designers during the conceptual design process. By combining human creativity with computer capabilities they argue that it is possible to perform conceptual design processes more efficiently than solely manual design especially repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Some of these tasks include functional modeling using standard vocabularies of functions, generating concepts and displaying on morphology chart, concept combination, and concept evaluation. The tool can be used as a knowledge management system in industry by capturing expertise knowledge and to train novice designers.

In their paper, Ayman Othman and Mahmoud Abdellatif investigate the role of partnership in integrating the CSR of project stakeholders towards better housing affordability. Affordable housing is one of the greatest challenges that face countries around the globe, especially developing countries. The complexity of the problem hinders governments from achieving their plans for sustainable development. They argue that the five domains CSR-Partnership model, namely government, society, economy, law and technology will help integrating the CSR of project stakeholders as an approach for developing affordable housing projects. The developed model represents a synthesis that is novel and creative in thought and adds value to the knowledge in a manner that has not previously occurred.

The paper by Nhlanhla Boyfriend Wilton Mlitwa and Dwain Birch investigates the effectiveness of IDSs as an access control supplement in protecting electronic information resources and networks in information-centric organizations. The study focuses on the strengths and vulnerabilities of IDS. The authors suggest that although IDSs have vulnerabilities, they offer an added cushion to conventional network access control. Security awareness is crucial to effective e-citizenry, but complacency could be a threat. As a unique contribution, the paper presents an activity-theory work-activity framework of analyzing network security. Further, the paper presents original, industry-specific interview findings, raising awareness that existing security measures need to be viewed as a continuous work-activity with planning and implementations that are embedded on goals and processes towards stated outcomes. Access controls themselves should be monitored. They should be supplemented by effective IDSs if unauthorized access is to be effectively minimized.

In the next paper, Ntshengedzeni S. Mamphweli and Edson L. Meyer discuss how smoke precipitators and electrostatic air cleaning devices are used to remove particles from air discharged to the environment. They explain that the electrostatic part of the process places excess charge on the particle laden gas/air and then passes the gas/air through an oppositely charged grid that attracts and retains the charged particles. Further, this technique has since been adopted in cyclone dust collectors used in biomass gasifiers. The difference is that cyclones used external electric fields to exert a force that pushes the particles down, supplementing the gravitational force and inertia. They argue that the particle collection efficiency of cyclones can be enhanced if electrical forces are employed to supplement the inertial forces. By pre-charging the particles and applying a radial electric field within the cyclone, collection efficiency is improved, in particular for smaller size particles of dielectric materials.

Hussain M. Alfaraj and Shaowen Qin argue that the use of CMMI on its own can be problematic for the organization because it does not provide a roadmap to implementation or identification of key process improvement areas, but instead only provides the goals for each level of implementation. Addition of another framework such as CoBIT can add the required operational data, but poses some unique challenges for implementation. However, the integration of ITIL, CoBIT, and ISO/IEC 22007 provides a roadmap to the integration of CMMI and CoBIT. This report discusses this co-implementation and integration of the two frameworks, as well as the underlying framework of a new proposed integration model.

Gurmeet Kaur, M.L. Singh, and M.S. Patterh suggest that fiber nonlinearities are anticipated to impose transmission limitations due to the enhanced total interaction length in long-haul DWDM optical transmission systems. They present analytical analysis of these systems in the presence of two significant fiber nonlinearities (stimulated Raman scattering and four wave mixing). Simple expressions are derived to study the dependence of signal-to-noise ratio on the inter-amplifier spacing.

Shailendra Kumar, I.A. Khan, and O.P. Gandhi in the final paper, provide a critical review of the literature on design for maintainability (DFM) with emphasis on psychology and cognitive sciences and suggest possible gaps from the point of view of researchers and practitioners. They discuss a new shift in engineering design, in general, and DFM of mechanical systems, in particular. They also argue that the paper will be useful to researchers, designers, maintenance professionals and others concerned with maintainability of a system. This paper is equally useful for the researchers and design professionals from the domain of engineering design irrespective of their field of application.

Special thanks to each of the contributing authors and reviewers for their contribution to the papers in this particular issue.

Theo C. Haupt