Search results

Advancements in digital technologies have provided significant opportunities to improve the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Owner-operated (AECO) sector’s performance through superior data management, streamlined processes and cooperative working practices. However, whilst academic literature widely espouses these benefits during the design and construction phases of development, research suggests that the operational phase of a building’s lifecycle has yet to fully realise performance improvements available through the application of digital modelling technology. The purpose of this paper is to synthesise extant digital modelling, asset management and emergent digital asset management literature, to report upon the beneficial implications of digitalised asset management and identify obstacles hampering its adoption in industry.

A componential synthesis of future work reported upon in extant literature is organised into thematic categories that indicate potential research avenues and a trajectory for digital asset management research and practice.

Themes identified include: imprecise Building Information Modelling definitions; isolated software development; data interoperability; intellectual property and virtual property rights; and skills and training requirements. Notably, increased environmental performance also arose as a theme requiring further research but received considerably less academic coverage than the other obstacles identified.

The work presents a comprehensive review of digital technologies utilised within the AECO sector and as such provides utility to researchers, policy makers and practitioners to enhance their knowledge capabilities.

The purpose of this research is to study how knowledge‐based systems are applied in an industrial environment. This paper attempts to propose a system, object‐based knowledge integration system (OBKIS) which supports the early stages of product development.

This proposed system characterizes the “dynamic” information exchange capability through its distinct features to include executable tasks within product information script that is being utilized in various functional groups, thereby introducing the action items to be carried out in relevant areas. To achieve the “dynamic” information exchange capability, object technology, which is favorable to the creation of inter‐related modularized data objects, is incorporated into the product information script to facilitate the active information interchange process. The universal extensible markup language (XML) is also adopted to facilitate data exchange between the database and the knowledge base in order to make real time data and knowledge available throughout the enterprise.

Further research on developing the well‐structured XML schema is needed in order to provide a well‐understood syntax and self‐defined mark‐up language to suit particular needs of product data exchange. For verification and measurement, it is suggested that one should evaluate the system in terms of data reliability, transformation accuracy and effectiveness for improving product design process.

The implications of these for information flows and management of product data during product development are discussed. In order to validate the feasibility of the proposed system, a prototype is developed for a local company so as to provide linking between the system design concept and system implementation in a practical environment.

The significance of this research is that a new product data schema for the initial phase of product development is formulated and the proposed system supports invoking various behaviors for the same message and overriding the pre‐defined inherited operation such that a flexible correlation can be formulated in the iterative product design process.

An arterial blood gas (ABG) interpretation remains indispensable tool to assess and monitor critically ill patients in the intensive care unit or other critical care settings. This paper proposes a mobile‐based interpreter for ABG tests with the aim of providing accurate diagnosis in face of multiple acid‐base and oxygenation disorders. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A rule‐based expert system is designed and implemented using interpretation knowledge gathered from specialist physicians and peer‐reviewed medical literature. The gathered knowledge of ABG tests are organized into premise‐explanation pairs to deliver reliable evaluation with the appropriate differential in a timely manner.

Performance of the developed interpreter prototype was assessed using a dataset of 74 ABG tests gathered from medical literature and clinical practice. The obtained results demonstrated that the identified acid‐base and oxygenation disorders and their differential diagnoses are accurately correlated with those assessed manually by consultant specialist physicians.

This application is foreseen to be an everyday tool for clinicians at various levels; however, further studies are needed to evaluate its eventual impact on patients’ outcomes.

The contribution of this paper is the development of a new ABG interpreter which combines both the acid‐base and oxygenation disorders in a single application. Unlike existing ABG interpreters, it is comprehensive and capable of accurately identifying all kinds of acid‐base disorders and their combinations. In addition, it utilizes urine electrolytes which are useful tools in the differential diagnosis of normal anion gap metabolic acidosis and metabolic alkalosis. The interpretation algorithm is also designed to be flexible for some clinical settings which lack some input test data.

Strategic trends towards service operations have been widely reported in the recent literature, but organisational capabilities to support such service-centred strategies are less well understood. The purpose of this paper is to identify key organisational issues in managing complex engineering service operations throughout the lifecycle.

Using instruments developed from the product lifecycle management technologies and the network configuration concept, key organisational issues for engineering service operations were identified through case studies focusing on complex engineering products and services systems across a variety of industrial sectors.

The case studies demonstrated different organisational features and strategic priorities of engineering service operations along the whole lifecycle. A generic trend has been observed for engineering systems to move from being design, development and manufacturing focused to embracing support and end-of-life recycling matters.

This paper provides an overall framework for integrating key organisational issues in engineering service operations. It contributes to the service literature by highlighting the need of developing appropriate organisational capabilities to support service-centred strategies with engineering cases. It also provides guidance for companies to manage their engineering network operations throughout the whole lifecycle of complex products and services systems.

Development and implementation of new process equipment within the process industries frequently necessitate strong collaboration between process firms and their equipment suppliers in joint process development projects. However, collaboration in this setting entails significant challenges over the lifecycle of these projects. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to explore the problems and opportunities faced by equipment suppliers during collaboration with process firms, throughout the various lifecycle stages of process development projects.

The article synthesizes results from 22 interviews in a multiple case study of eight equipment suppliers in the process industries and a comprehensive review of relevant literature to identify critical problems of opportunities during the lifecycle. In total, data were gathered from firms in six different countries.

A deficient pre‐study may create problems due to miscommunication during development when close interaction is required. Purchasing discussions can be done simultaneously to development when a supplier has been selected, although uncertainty is a problem. It is important to get end‐user feedback and commitment during development and later stages. During assembly and installation and start‐up, a variety of actors are working simultaneously which requires coordination and planning from an early stage. Close interaction and education with end‐user is critical for the technology transfer in the start‐up stage. Sharing of experiences enhances operational performance during production.

This study contributes by employing information rich case study data to describe the problem and opportunities faced over the full lifecycle in joint process development projects in the process industry. In particular, key issues over the lifecycle have been identified and described (e.g. purchasing, start‐up, education). Moreover, the adoption of a lifecycle perspective has indicated how activities, issues, and managerial challenges in specific stages are interconnected and affect the joint work in the following stages.

The findings of this article serves as guidelines to managers in equipment supplier firms and their customers by highlighting the problems and opportunities for improvement that occur during the interconnected stages of process development projects.

By focusing on the collaborative activities in different stages, this study higlights the critical problems and opportunities in the lifecycle of process equipment. In addition this article outlines how joint process development activities can facilitate enhanced operational performance, by means of collaborative design, installation and operation of new process equipment – i.e. “open operation”.

This study attempts to expand knowledge of product lifecycle management (PLM) and supporting systems. Its objective is threefold: first, to identify and assess the impact of two key PLM building blocks on new product performance. Second, to use the aforementioned PLM building blocks to highlight the distinctive nature of PLM and closed‐loop PLM systems. Third, to demonstrate that the closed‐loop PLM system provides more new product benefits than the PLM system and that the usage of the closed‐loop PLM system is positively related to new product development.

The research hypotheses were tested on data collected from 87 manufacturers in the transportation equipment manufacturing industry in one Canadian province.

The findings show that only ten manufacturers have adopted a closed‐loop PLM system. As expected, the results show that the two key PLM building blocks, namely operational integration and information system (IS) usage, are positively related to new product development. Findings also show that the level of forward operational integration is similar in the closed‐loop PLM system and in the PLM system, while the level of backward operational integration, the usage of the PLM system and new product development are higher in the closed‐loop PLM system. Finally, the results demonstrate that the usage of the closed‐loop PLM system is positively related to new product development.

This contribution should give academics and practitioners alike a better understanding of the role and benefits of PLM and its supporting systems (the PLM system and the closed‐loop PLM system).

Capabilities are a widely researched subject, but capability development techniques have received considerably less attention. Capability development is a long-term activity, where both how to choose “the right capabilities” and how to develop “the capabilities right” are important. The purpose of this paper is to approach to pick up the most widespread capabilities and development techniques in project-companies, and observes their shift of focus when moving from one lifecycle stage to another.

A long-scale survey was chosen and carried out in EU member state Estonia in 2011, resulting with close to a couple of 100 responses.

The quality of most business capabilities decreases in reaching the decline stage of the lifecycle, but project-related capabilities are improving. The same cannot be concluded for project-led capability development techniques, as they decline, and the quality of traditional and business-led capability techniques are improving. The use of development techniques changes less throughout lifecycle stages than capabilities do – it is not so important how companies develop capabilities, capabilities themselves matter.

Survey was performed in a small country which limits the generalizability to larger countries.

Capabilities and their development techniques are very much practice-oriented, especially development techniques. However, research indicates that it is more important to choose the right capabilities and worry less about their development-specific issues.

Results provide lifecycle-specific information which capabilities and their development techniques prevail at what stage of companies’ lifecycle. Thus far, learning, as the most important technique, has received the most attention, other techniques less – this research gives further information about a wider array of the techniques. Furthermore, the prior research was concentrated on a few specific capabilities or capabilities at an abstract level, this research focuses on a comprehensive set of capabilities.

Nowadays manufacturers companies are increasingly compelled to navigate towards servitization. Different methods and approaches were proposed in literature to support them to switch from traditional product-based business model to product service systems (PSSs). However, new knowledge, capabilities and skills were needed to consistently develop PSSs, since they need a joint focus on both customer’s perspective and company’s internal performance and at the same time a proper support for the integration of product and service design. The purpose of this paper is to propose the Product Service System Lean Design Methodology (PSSLDM), a structured methodology to develop PSSs along their entire lifecycle.

Retrieving concepts from interpretative, interactive and system development research traditions, and strongly reminding the design research methodology framework, the adopted research methodology is composed of three main phases (observation and conceptualization, theory building and tool development, validation) and involved three heterogeneous companies.

This paper provides an overview of the PSSLDM, explaining how the different methods supporting its conduction should contribute to properly design an integrated PSS. Moreover, companies highlighted several benefits in the different stages along the PSS lifecycle deriving by the adoption of the PSSLDM.

The development of a platform based on the PSSLDM methodology raises a discussion on the possible changes needed by current Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) models and systems when they have to do with PSSs.

The PSSLDM enriches the already proposed SErvice Engineering Methodology, introducing new several components linked by lean rules in each of its phases (starting from customer analysis, going through solution concept and detailed design, until the offering analysis) and better supprting the deatil design of both prodcut and service components.

Buildings and their construction activities consume a significant proportion of mineral resources excavated from nature and contribute a large percentage of CO₂ in the atmosphere. As a way of improving the sustainability of building construction and operation, various sustainable design appraisal standards have been developed across nations. Albeit criticism of the appraisal standards, evidence shows that increasing sustainability of the built environment has been engendered by such appraisal tools as Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), Code for Sustainable Homes (CfSH), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and Comprehensive Assessment System for Built Environment Efficacy, among others. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the appraisal standards in engendering whole lifecycle environmental sustainability of the built environment.

In order to evaluate the adequacy of sustainability scores assigned to various lifecycle stages of buildings in the appraisal standards, four case studies of a block of classroom were modelled. Using Revit as a modelling platform, stage by stage lifecycle environmental impacts of the building were simulated through Green Building Studio and ATHENA Impact estimator. The resulting environmental impacts were then compared against the assessment score associated with each stage of building lifecycle in BREAAM and CfSH.

Results show that albeit the consensus that the appraisal standards engender sustainability practices in the AEC industry, total scores assigned to impacts at each stage of building lifecycle is disproportionate to the simulated whole-life environmental impacts associated with the stages in some instances.

As the study reveals both strengths and weaknesses in the existing sustainability appraisal standards, measures through which they can be tailored to resource efficiency and lifecycle environmental sustainability of the built environment are suggested.