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Business improvement initiatives have benefit for both an organisation’s operational effectiveness and its knowledge acquisition capabilities. These have a synergistic effect upon the ability to gain and maintain competitive advantage. Among the multitude of approaches that can be adopted process mapping (PMapping) is widely used. The purpose of this paper is to examine the utilisation of PMapping for undertaking business process improvement and the resultant acquisition of knowledge among those that are involved in its performance and the subsequent use of process maps (PMaps).

Adopting the notion of " knowledge as knowing " and Activity Theory as the research framework, a four-year Participatory Action Research study of three organisations was conducted. Data were gathered through cyclically developed semi-structured interviews, on-site observation and instantaneously sampled field notes.

It finds that PMapping is a useful technique for conducting business process improvements and acquiring knowledge of organisations and their people. It also finds that PMaps are useful knowledge repositories that have value beyond aiding the development of improved business processes. Socialisation is a key determinant of knowledge coproduction and transfer. This study finds that it occurs in formal and informal modes between individuals engaged in PMapping.

The choice of PMapping technique may have significant influence upon the knowledge that is acquired by individuals and organisations during business process improvement initiatives. Future research should explore the relationship between PMapping methods, their knowledge-generative potential and the usability of the resultant PMaps.

Organisations undertaking business process improvement initiatives should take account of those factors that mediate its undertaking and its knowledge-generative potential. The objectives of improvement initiatives and of specific activities such as PMapping need to be carefully considered. Changes in objectives need clear communication and justification, and the purpose and benefit of such changes must be weighed against the potential detrimental effect that they may have upon the workforce. Inconsiderate goals setting and changing can lead to individuals coming under significant psychological and sociological pressures.

This research furthers the understanding of knowledge acquisition and business process improvement in non-manufacturing environments. It identifies the challenges involved in adopting PMapping as a business improvement tool. It also provides insight into the use of the tool as a technique for fostering knowledge acquisition in individuals.

The effective management of technology as a source of competitive advantage is of vital importance for many organisations. It is necessary to understand, communicate and integrate technology strategy with marketing, financial, operations and human resource strategies. This is of particular importance when one considers the increasing cost, pace and complexity of technology developments, combined with shortening product life cycles. A five‐process model provides a framework within which technology management activities can be understood: identification, selection, acquisition, exploitation and protection. Based on this model, a technology management assessment procedure has been developed, using an “action research” approach. This paper presents an industrial case study describing the first full application of the procedure within a high‐volume manufacturing business. The impact of applying the procedure is assessed in terms of benefits to the participating business, together with improvements to the assessment procedure itself, in the context of the action research framework.

This paper aims to address a mobile robot localization system that avoids using a dedicated laser scanner, making it possible to reduce implementation costs and the robot’s size. The system has enough precision and robustness to meet the requirements of industrial environments.

Using an algorithm for artificial beacon detection combined with a Kalman Filter and an outlier rejection method, it was possible to enhance the precision and robustness of the overall localization system.

Usually, industrial automatic guide vehicles feature two kinds of lasers: one for navigation placed on top of the robot and another for obstacle detection (security lasers). Recently, security lasers extended their output data with obstacle distance (contours) and reflectivity. These new features made it possible to develop a novel localization system based on a security laser.

Once the proposed methodology is completely validated, in the future, a scheme for global localization and failure detection should be addressed.

This paper presents a comparison between the presented approach and a commercial localization system for industry. The proposed algorithms were tested in an industrial application under realistic working conditions.

The presented methodology represents a gain in the effective cost of the mobile robot platform, as it discards the need for a dedicated laser for localization purposes.

This paper presents a novel approach that benefits from the presence of a security laser on mobile robots (mandatory sensor when considering industrial applications), using it simultaneously with other sensors, not only to guarantee safety conditions during operation but also to locate the robot in the environment. This paper is also valuable because of the comparison made with a commercialized system, as well as the tests conducted in real industrial environments, which prove that the approach presented is suitable for working under these demanding conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to present various knowledge‐acquisition methods and to show how existing empirical research can be used for mapping between marketing problem domains and knowledge acquisition techniques. The key to doing this is to create a taxonomy of marketing problem domains.

This paper combines a thorough literature review with prima facie conceptualization to map a generic problem domain, and thereby provide guidance in the choice of knowledge‐acquisition technique for developers of expert systems in the field of marketing.

Recent empirical research in the field of expert systems shows that certain knowledge‐acquisition techniques are significantly more efficient than others for the extraction of certain types of knowledge within specific problem domains. It is found that protocol analysis, while fairly commonly used, is relatively inefficient for analytic problems. In the synthetic problem domain, interviewing proves to perform better for simple problems and worse for more difficult‐to‐model synthetic domains.

The findings suggest that it may be worth exploring some of the non‐traditional knowledge‐acquisition techniques when working on some types of applications. Further research could offer guidance in choosing the appropriate technique, with the aim of improving the quality, efficiency and development of the resulting system.

Designers of expert systems for marketing should consider interviewing and card sorting as the main means of knowledge acquisition for analytic problem domains, rather than protocol analysis as the main knowledge‐acquisition technique for analytic problem domains.

This paper is the first to suggest mapping between knowledge‐acquisition research and marketing problem domains.

The group meetings have continued regularly since the last Report appeared. Several members from the earliest days are still present at most meetings, but new members have also been welcomed. The meetings continue to be the ideal medium for refurbishing old ideas, or trying out new ones, however outrageous, in a spirit of cheerful goodwill. There have been frequent visitors, many from overseas, and if they are unprepared they may find the rapid changes of discussion somewhat bewildering. Among the visitors who made special contributions have been: Mrs J. Aitchison, who described her thesaurofacet scheme for the English Electric Co.; Dr Perreault (Director of Libraries, University of Alabama in Huntsville), who discussed the relations between philosophy and science; Mr Bhattacharya (Documentation Research and Training Centre, Bangalore), who described the work of the Centre (established by Ranganathan in 1962); and Dr H. Borko (University of Southern California) who gave a wonderfully clear account of his work on automated classification.

In this study, nine managers of a Dutch multinational engineering company were interviewed on the success and failure factors of post‐acquisition processes they were involved in over the past five years. When referring to their experiences, the managers mainly spoke about failures and how to avoid these in future. The focus of this study was on the cognitive map structure of the perspectives of managers as disclosed by the interview data. Three different collective maps were found, representing “the Strategists”, strategic business unit‐presidents, and human resource (HR)‐managers. The maps show differences in perspectives on four central themes: control versus cooperation; how to handle the culture of the acquired firm; trust versus distrust; and speed versus carefulness. If the maps are compared with literature on management acquisition processes, the HR‐managers' map shows richer insights into how to manage human factors in acquisition processes than the other two. Instead of exploiting these valuable insights, the differences in perspectives fostered distrust between the two management levels, which constrained mutual learning.

This study aims to propose an offline exploratory method that consists of two stages: first, the authors focus on completing the kinematics model of the system by analyzing the Jacobians in the vicinity of the starting point and deducing a virtual input to effectively navigate the system along the non-holonomic constraint. Second, the authors explore the sensorimotor space in a predetermined pattern and obtain an approximate mapping from sensor space to chained form that facilitates controllability.

In this paper, the authors tackle the controller acquisition problem of unknown sensorimotor model in non-holonomic driftless systems. This feature is interesting to simplify and speed up the process of setting up industrial mobile robots with feedback controllers.

The authors validate the approach for the test case of the unicycle by controlling the system with time-state control policy. The authors present simulated and experimental results that show the effectiveness of the proposed method, and a comparison with the proximal policy optimization algorithm.

This research indicates clearly that feedback control of non-holonomic systems with uncertain kinematics and unknown sensor configuration is possible.

Top managers rarely have an accurate inventory of the capabilities buried within their firms. Although there are many reasons for such partial knowledge, cognitive biases play an important role for its existence. We argue that managers’ cognitive biases could lead to lost opportunities and exposure to vulnerabilities as they engage in the complex cognitive tasks surrounding mergers and acquisitions. In this chapter, we propose a structured approach that managers can use to quickly assess the distribution of capabilities across merging firms to mitigate the impact of these biases. Strategic capability mapping (SCM) relies on an assessment of the distribution of capabilities, including where certain capabilities are located, their breadth and depth, and helps increase identification of potential complementarities and combination potential as well as reduce the merged firm's exposure to vulnerabilities such as losing areas of undiscovered strength. A description of the process and examples of successful application are provided.

Examines the who, what and why of the knowledge mapping process used in the visual display of information in contemporary organizations. Knowledge mapping serves as the continuously evolving organizational memory, capturing and integrating strategic explicit knowledge within an organization and between an organization and its external environment. Knowledge map making is treated as a medium of communication over what is important and actionable information (knowledge) in organizational contexts. Effective knowledge maps take into account the who, what and why of the knowledge mapping process. Effective knowledge maps help identify intellectual capital, socialize new members, enhance organizational learning and help anticipate impending threats and/or opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the relevance of cultural heritage inventories and documentation as critical tools for heritage conservation and management in historic cities, through the case study of the historic city of Ahmadabad, India.

The paper discusses the creation of inventories as part of the comprehensive documentation undertaken for preparation of the World Heritage nomination dossier. In this context, the goal of preserving the outstanding universal value of the historic city formed the basis for selection and assessment of the assets to be included in the inventory. Standard processes and methodology employed for creation of the database involved archival research and planning; field surveys for mapping, photo documentation and data collection; data registration and processing using CAD, Ms Office and geographic information system (GIS)-based digital platform. Optimal data acquisition while maintaining cost and time efficiency was an important consideration for the fieldwork.

While an inventory remains a critical conservation tool, the heritage assets are integrally linked to and influenced by their surroundings in an urban context. A comprehensive documentation approach that provides a broader understanding of the city’s natural features, built environment, heritage resources, cultural practices and socio-economic networks is therefore necessary for creation of a suitable management plan for historic cities. Traditional field surveys based on external visual observation are time and cost effective, and can generate adequate information on identification and assessment of built heritage assets for creation of inventory along with documentation of their context. However, the scale of investigation and the intended role of an inventory as an urban management tool calls for creation of integrated, accessible and updatable data management systems.

At the moment, the database created is only used for the limited purpose of monitoring and managing the conservation of listed properties. The importance of the inventory as a critical conservation and urban management tool can be further validated once the GIS database of the historic city is integrated within the urban management and planning system for the city.

The inventory created for the historic city of Ahmadabad offers one of the few examples of heritage documentation at such a large scale. It covers an area of 543 ha with a detailed inventory of more than 6,000 properties. The description of, and the reflections on the process employed provide an overview of usual challenges encountered in creation, presentation and management of heritage inventories for historic cities which may offer useful guidelines to practitioners planning similar exercises and help them establish efficient work processes.