From trading to eCommunity management : responding to social and contractual challenges

"The increasing pressure for enterprises to join into agile business networks is changing the requirements on the enterprise computing systems. The supporting infrastructure is increasingly required to provide common facilities and societal infrastructure services to support the lifecycle of loosely-coupled, eContract-governed business networks. The required facilities include selection of those autonomously administered business services that the enterprises are prepared to provide and use, contract negotiations, and furthermore, monitoring of the contracted behaviour with potential for breach management. The essential change is in the requirement of a clear mapping between business-level concepts and the automation support for them. Our work has focused on developing B2B middleware to address the above challenges; however, the architecture is not feasible without management facilities for trust-aware decisions for entering business networks and interacting within them. This paper discusses how trust-based decisions are supported and positioned in the B2B middleware.""The increasing pressure for enterprises to join into agile business networks is changing the requirements on the enterprise computing systems. The supporting infrastructure is increasingly required to provide common facilities and societal infrastructure services to support the lifecycle of loosely-coupled, eContract-governed business networks. The required facilities include selection of those autonomously administered business services that the enterprises are prepared to provide and use, contract negotiations, and furthermore, monitoring of the contracted behaviour with potential for breach management. The essential change is in the requirement of a clear mapping between business-level concepts and the automation support for them. Our work has focused on developing B2B middleware to address the above challenges; however, the architecture is not feasible without management facilities for trust-aware decisions for entering business networks and interacting within them. This paper discusses how trust-based decisions are supported and positioned in the B2B middleware.""The increasing pressure for enterprises to join into agile business networks is changing the requirements on the enterprise computing systems. The supporting infrastructure is increasingly required to provide common facilities and societal infrastructure services to support the lifecycle of loosely-coupled, eContract-governed business networks. The required facilities include selection of those autonomously administered business services that the enterprises are prepared to provide and use, contract negotiations, and furthermore, monitoring of the contracted behaviour with potential for breach management. The essential change is in the requirement of a clear mapping between business-level concepts and the automation support for them. Our work has focused on developing B2B middleware to address the above challenges; however, the architecture is not feasible without management facilities for trust-aware decisions for entering business networks and interacting within them. This paper discusses how trust-based decisions are supported and positioned in the B2B middleware."Peer reviewe

Service-oriented middleware for managing inter-enterprise collaborations

Peer reviewe

Automating decisions for inter-enterprise collaboration management

Proceeding volume: 283/2008The current trend towards networked business forces enterprises to enter federated, loosely-coupled business networks, since much of the competition takes place between networks and value nets. The Pilarcos E2B interoperability middleware supports trend by providing services such as business service discovery and selection, interoperability management, eContracting and reputation-based trust management. Although these services automate the interoperability knowledge management and interoperability. testing, and may help in routine decisions, an essential element of the architecture involves oil expert system that automates or supports decisions oil joining collaborations, acting in them, or leaving them. The expert system focuses oil a single enterprise needs. This paper focuses on the ways of governing the automation level in the expert system in a way suitable for autonomous enterprises to control their participation in agile collaborations.Peer reviewe

Adapting the SHEL model in investigating industrial maintenance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and categorize problems in knowledge management of industrial maintenance, and support successful maintenance through adapting the SHEL model. The SHEL model has been used widely in airplane accident investigations and in aviation maintenance, but not in industrial maintenance. Design/methodology/approach – The data was collected by two separate surveys with open-ended questions from maintenance customers and service providers in Finland. The collected data was coded according to SHEL model -derived themes and analysed thematically with NVivo. Findings – The authors found that the adapted SHELO model works well in the industrial maintenance context. The results show that the most important knowledge management problems in the area are caused by interactions between Liveware and Software (information unavailability), Liveware and Liveware (information sharing), Liveware and Organisation (communication), and Software and Software (information integrity). Research limitations/implications – The data was collected only from Finnish companies and from the perspective of knowledge management. In practice there are also other kinds of issues in industrial maintenance. This can be a topic for future research. Practical implications – The paper presents a new systematic method to analyse and sort knowledge management problems in industrial maintenance. Both maintenance service customers and suppliers can improve their maintenance processes by using the dimensions of the SHELO model. Originality/value – The SHEL model has not been used in industrial maintenance before. In addition, the new SHELO model takes also interactions without direct human influence into account. Previous research has listed conditions for successful maintenance extensively, but this kind of prioritization tools are needed to support decision making in practice

Information-based industrial maintenance – an ecosystem perspective

In industrial maintenance, the increasing amount of data and information makes the management of information flows much more challenging than previously. Data from different sources is another issue, data can be real-time data from sensors or from different software systems. The type of data can vary from structured data to unstructured data. The Internet of Things (IoT) and modern information and communication technology make it possible to collect data easily. The problem is to recognize the relevant data to support the decision-making process and sharing data and information to right parties in right time. The aim of this thesis is to identify problems and benefits in information management in industrial maintenance. After the identification of problems and benefits, it is possible to create models and methods for improving the management of information in the industrial maintenance ecosystem. The qualitative research method is used in the empirical part of thesis. Surveys and interviews are used in the qualitative data collection. The thesis concerns the research gap in identifying problems and benefits in information management in the industrial maintenance ecosystem systemically. The need to share data and information has increased significantly in the networked maintenance ecosystem. The key aspects in information management in maintenance are: why, with whom, what, and how to share data. The thesis offers three main solutions to issues in information management in the maintenance ecosystem. First, the SHELO model was developed and tested in this study. It can be used to find the strengths and weaknesses in maintenance and in the maintenance service network. Second, data sharing is found to improve decision making in maintenance by offering the needed information combined from different sources. Thirdly, the findings highlight the importance of the whole maintenance ecosystem in developing maintenance quality

Type 2 diabetes enhances arterial uptake of choline in atherosclerotic mice: an imaging study with positron emission tomography tracer 18F-fluoromethylcholine

Additional file 1. Supplemental data

Agile Methods in Industrial Maintenance

Agile has become a popular term in organisations and businesses, beyond the IT sector. Characteristics of agile ways of working such as the assumption that boundary conditions and requirements might (and will) change make them attractive to applications in dynamic environments in general. Methods such as Scrum or Xtreme Programming turn agile values into actionable descriptions, originally intended for software development. This work offers a literature-based assessment of the suitability of agile methods for the maintenance of industrial production systems. In addition a process draft for the introduction of agile methods into maintenance practices is outlined. The findings show that so far there has been a relatively limited attention to agile methods in an industrial maintenance context but at the same time suggest the potential for their application.Post-print / Final draf

Factors fostering vocational students’ workplace learning success in the real workplace environment

The present paper proposes a conceptual model in which both personal and perceived workplace-related factors affect vocational students’ workplace learning success in real workplace environments, with workplace learning success constituted by students’ professional learning and satisfaction. We empirically tested the proposed model in two survey datasets (N = 242 and N = 88) collected from Finnish final-year vocational students and their workplace instructors using structural equation modelling (SEM) based on partial least squares (PLS). The results show that supportive climate, interpersonal trust in the workplace, and students’ self-efficacy all have a significant and positive impact on vocational students’ subjective workplace learning success. The results differ based on whether the professional learning is evaluated subjectively by the student or objectively by the workplace instructor. We discuss the implications of the findings for theory and practice.Post-print / Final draf