Abstract: Social Business Process Management (SBPM)
promises to overcome limitations of traditional BPM by allowing
flexible process design and enactment through the involvement of
users from a social community. This paper proposes a meta-model
and architecture for socially driven business process management
systems. It discusses the main facets of the architecture such as goalbased
role assignment that combines social recommendations with
user profile, and process recommendation, through a real example of
a charity organization.
Abstract: Nowadays companies strive to survive in a
competitive global environment. To speed up product
development/modifications, it is suggested to adopt a collaborative
product development approach. However, despite the advantages of
new IT improvements still many CAx systems work separately and
locally. Collaborative design and manufacture requires a product
information model that supports related CAx product data models. To
solve this problem many solutions are proposed, which the most
successful one is adopting the STEP standard as a product data model
to develop a collaborative CAx platform. However, the improvement
of the STEP-s Application Protocols (APs) over the time, huge
number of STEP AP-s and cc-s, the high costs of implementation,
costly process for conversion of older CAx software files to the STEP
neutral file format; and lack of STEP knowledge, that usually slows
down the implementation of the STEP standard in collaborative data
exchange, management and integration should be considered. In this
paper the requirements for a successful collaborative CAx system is
discussed. The STEP standard capability for product data integration
and its shortcomings as well as the dominant platforms for supporting
CAx collaboration management and product data integration are
reviewed. Finally a platform named LAYMOD to fulfil the
requirements of CAx collaborative environment and integrating the
product data is proposed. The platform is a layered platform to enable
global collaboration among different CAx software
packages/developers. It also adopts the STEP modular architecture
and the XML data structures to enable collaboration between CAx
software packages as well as overcoming the STEP standard
limitations. The architecture and procedures of LAYMOD platform
to manage collaboration and avoid contradicts in product data
integration are introduced.
Abstract: For best collaboration, Asynchronous tools and particularly the discussion forums are the most used thanks to their flexibility in terms of time. To convey only the messages that belong to a theme of interest of the tutor in order to help him during his tutoring work, use of a tool for classification of these messages is indispensable. For this we have proposed a semantics classification tool of messages of a discussion forum that is based on LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis), which includes a thesaurus to organize the vocabulary. Benefits offered by formal ontology can overcome the insufficiencies that a thesaurus generates during its use and encourage us then to use it in our semantic classifier. In this work we propose the use of some functionalities that a OWL ontology proposes. We then explain how functionalities like “ObjectProperty", "SubClassOf" and “Datatype" property make our classification more intelligent by way of integrating new terms. New terms found are generated based on the first terms introduced by tutor and semantic relations described by OWL formalism.
Abstract: The noticeable advance in the area of computer technology has paved the way for the invention of powerful mobile devices. However, limited storage, short battery life, and relatively low computational power define the major problems of such devices. Due to the ever increasing computational requirements, such devices may fail to process needed tasks under certain constraints. One of the proposed solutions to this drawback is the introduction of Collaborative Computing, a new concept dealing with the distribution of computational tasks amongst several handhelds. This paper introduces the basics of Collaborative Computing, and proposes a new protocol that aims at managing and optimizing computing tasks in Ad-Hoc Collaborative Computing Environments.
Abstract: Today, money laundering (ML) poses a serious threat
not only to financial institutions but also to the nation. This criminal
activity is becoming more and more sophisticated and seems to have
moved from the cliché of drug trafficking to financing terrorism and
surely not forgetting personal gain. Most international financial
institutions have been implementing anti-money laundering solutions
(AML) to fight investment fraud. However, traditional investigative
techniques consume numerous man-hours. Recently, data mining
approaches have been developed and are considered as well-suited
techniques for detecting ML activities. Within the scope of a
collaboration project for the purpose of developing a new solution for
the AML Units in an international investment bank, we proposed a
data mining-based solution for AML. In this paper, we present a
heuristics approach to improve the performance for this solution. We
also show some preliminary results associated with this method on
analysing transaction datasets.
Abstract: We demonstrate the synthesis of intermediary views
within a sequence of color encoded, materials discriminating, X-ray
images that exhibit animated depth in a visual display. During the
image acquisition process, the requirement for a linear X-ray detector
array is replaced by synthetic image. Scale Invariant Feature
Transform, SIFT, in combination with material segmented morphing
is employed to produce synthetic imagery. A quantitative analysis of
the feature matching performance of the SIFT is presented along with
a comparative study of the synthetic imagery. We show that the total
number of matches produced by SIFT reduces as the angular
separation between the generating views increases. This effect is
accompanied by an increase in the total number of synthetic pixel
errors. The trends observed are obtained from 15 different luggage
items. This programme of research is in collaboration with the UK
Home Office and the US Dept. of Homeland Security.
Abstract: There is wide range of scientific workflow systems
today, each one designed to resolve problems at a specific level. In
large collaborative projects, it is often necessary to recognize the
heterogeneous workflow systems already in use by various partners
and any potential collaboration between these systems requires
workflow interoperability. Publish/Subscribe Scientific Workflow
Interoperability Framework (PS-SWIF) approach was proposed to
achieve workflow interoperability among workflow systems. This
paper evaluates the PS-SWIF approach and its system to achieve
workflow interoperability using Web Services with asynchronous
notification messages represented by WS-Eventing standard. This
experiment covers different types of communication models provided
by Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC). These models are:
Chained processes, Nested synchronous sub-processes, Event
synchronous sub-processes, and Nested sub-processes
(Polling/Deferred Synchronous). Also, this experiment shows the
flexibility and simplicity of the PS-SWIF approach when applied to a
variety of workflow systems (Triana, Taverna, Kepler) in local and
remote environments.
Abstract: In this era of competitiveness, there is a growing need for supply chains also to become competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer’s expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. In the recent years, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature. Various researchers and practitioners have tried to identify and implement strategies in supply chains which can bring competitiveness in the supply chains i.e. supply chain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select strategies for supply chain competitiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector using an integrated approach of literature review and exploratory interviews with eminent professionals from the supply chain area in various industries, academia and research. The aim of the paper is to highlight the important area of competitiveness in the supply chain and to suggest recommendations to the industry and managers of manufacturing sector.
Abstract: The paper considers a novel modular and intrinsically safe redundant robotic system with biologically inspired actuators (pneumatic artificial muscles and rubber bellows actuators). Similarly to the biological systems, the stiffness of the internal parallel modules, representing 2 DOF joints in the serial robotic chains, is controlled by co-activation of opposing redundant actuator groups in the null-space of the module Jacobian, without influencing the actual robot position. The decoupled position/stiffness control allows the realization of variable joint stiffness according to different force-displacement relationships. The variable joint stiffness, as well as limited pneumatic muscle/bellows force ability, ensures internal system safety that is crucial for development of human-friendly robots intended for human-robot collaboration. The initial experiments with the system prototype demonstrate the capabilities of independently, simultaneously controlling both joint (Cartesian) motion and joint stiffness. The paper also presents the possible industrial applications of snake-like robots built using the new modules.
Abstract: Collaborative networked learning (hereafter CNL)
was first proposed by Charles Findley in his work “Collaborative
networked learning: online facilitation and software support" as part
of instructional learning for the future of the knowledge worker. His
premise was that through electronic dialogue learners and experts
could interactively communicate within a contextual framework to
resolve problems, and/or to improve product or process knowledge.
Collaborative learning has always been the forefront of educational
technology and pedagogical research, but not in the mainstream of
operations management. As a result, there is a large disparity in the
study of CNL, and little is known about the antecedents of network
collaboration and sharing of information among diverse employees in
the manufacturing environment. This paper presents a model to
bridge the gap between theory and practice. The objective is that
manufacturing organizations will be able to accelerate organizational
learning and sharing of information through various collaborative
Abstract: The aspiration of this research article is to target and
focus the gains of university-Industry (U-I) collaborations and
exploring those hurdles which are the obstacles for attaining these
gains. University-Industry collaborations have attained great
importance since 1980 in USA due to its application in all fields of
life. U-I collaboration is a bilateral process where academia is a
proactive member to make such alliances. Universities want to
ameliorate their academic-base with the technicalities of technobabbles.
U-I collaboration is becoming an essential lane for achieving
innovative goals in this century. Many developed nations have set
successful examples to prove this phenomenon as a catalyst to reduce
costs, efforts and personnel for R&D projects. This study is exploits
amplitudes of UI collaboration incentives in the light of success
stories of developed countries. Many universities in USA, UK,
Canada and various European Countries have been engaged with
enterprises for numerous collaborative agreements. A long list of
strategic and short term R&D projects has been executed in
developed countries to accomplish their intended purposes. Due to
the lack of intentions, genuine research and research-oriented
environment, the mentioned field could not grow very well in
developing countries. During last decade, a new wave of research
has induced the institutes of developing countries to promote R&D
culture especially in Pakistan. Higher Education Commission (HEC)
has initiated many projects and funding supports for universities
which have collaborative intentions with industry.
Findings show that rapid innovation, overwhelm the technological
complexities and articulated intellectual-base are major incentives
which steer both partners to establish faculty-industry alliances. Everchanging
technologies, concerned about intellectual property,
different research environment and culture, research relevancy (Basic
or applied), exposure differences and diversity of knowledge
(bookish or practical) are main barriers to establish and retain joint
ventures. Findings also concluded that, it is dire need to support and
enhance cooperation among academia and industry to promote highly
coordinated research behaviors. Author has proposed a roadmap for
developing countries to promote R&D clusters among faculty and
industry to deal the technological challenges and innovation
complexities. Based on our research findings, Model for R&D
Collaboration for developing countries also have been proposed to
promote articulated R&D environment. If developing countries
follow this phenomenon, rapid innovations can be achieved with
limited R&D budget heads.
Abstract: As open innovation has received increasingly attention
in the management of innovation, the importance of identifying
potential partnership is increasing. This paper suggests a methodology
to identify the interested parties as one of Innovation intermediaries to
enable open innovation with patent network. To implement the
methodology, multi-stage patent citation analysis such as
bibliographic coupling and information visualization method such as
keyword vector mapping are utilized. This paper has contribution in
that it can present meaningful collaboration keywords to identified
potential partners in network since not only citation information but
also patent textual information is used.
Abstract: Development of knowledge based society carries multiple challenges to the higher education system. Some of the challenges laid before the higher education sector of countries which aspire to become knowledge based societies are: the entrepreneurial leadership of the higher education institutions, finding new sources of financing in order to minimize dependence on public resources, creating connections with the labor market, commercial utilization of R&D results, promotion of innovations as well as the overall promotion of science excellence relevant to the economic sector. Within a framework of this paper and its main subject of research, the challenge which is being put before the higher education institutions is an effort of establishing regional mission of higher education through the open collaboration with regional key factors, both private and public. Development of the mentioned collaboration and its contribution to the overall regional development in Croatia is the main subject of empirical research in this paper.
Abstract: The increasing recognition of the need for education to be closely aligned with team playing, project based learning and problem solving approaches has increase the interest in collaborative learning among university and college instructors. Using online collaboration learning in learning can enhance the outcome and achievement of students as well as improve their communication, critical thinking and personnel skills. The current research aims at examining the effect of OCL on the student's achievement at Kingdom of Bahrain. Numbers of objectives were set to achieve the aim of the research include: investigating the current situation regarding the collaborative learning and OCL at the Kingdom of Bahrain by identifying the advantages and effectiveness of OCL as a learning tool over traditional learning, examining the factors that affect OCL as well as examining the impact of OCL on the student's achievement. To achieve these objectives, quantitative method was adopted. Two hundred and thirty one questionnaires were distributed to students in different local and private universities at Kingdom of Bahrain. The findings of the research show that most of the students prefer to use FTFCL in learning and that OCL is already adopted in some universities especially in University of Bahrain. Moreover, the most factors affecting the adopted OCL are perceived readiness, and guidance and support.
Abstract: Operational safety of critical systems, such as nuclear power plants, industrial chemical processes and means of transportation, is a major concern for system engineers and operators. A means to assure that is on-line safety monitors that deliver three safety tasks; fault detection and diagnosis, alarm annunciation and fault controlling. While current monitors deliver these tasks, benefits and limitations in their approaches have at the same time been highlighted. Drawing from those benefits, this paper develops a distributed monitor based on semi-independent agents, i.e. a multiagent system, and monitoring knowledge derived from a safety assessment model of the monitored system. Agents are deployed hierarchically and provided with knowledge portions and collaboration protocols to reason and integrate over the operational conditions of the components of the monitored system. The monitor aims to address limitations arising from the large-scale, complicated behaviour and distributed nature of monitored systems and deliver the aforementioned three monitoring tasks effectively.
Abstract: A research study was conducted with an objective to propose a collaborative business strategy of a oil and gas trading company, representing PPT Energy Trading Co., Ltd., with its shareholder, especially electricity and power supply companies for LNG Form of Coal Bed Methane in B2B Transaction. Collaborative business strategy is a strategy to collaborate with other organizations due to have future benefits in both parties, or achieve the business objective through the collaboration of business, its strategy and partners. A structured interview was established to collect the required primary data from the company. Not only interview, but also company’s business plan and annual report were collected and analyzed for the company’s current condition. As the result, this research shows a recommendation to propose a new collaborative strategy with limiting its target market, diversifying product, conducting new business model, and considering other stakeholders.
Abstract: Nowadays the asynchronous learning has granted the permission to the anywhere and anything learning via the technology and E-media which give the learner more convenient. This research is about the design of the blended and online learning for the asynchronous learning of the process management subject in order to create the prototype of this subject asynchronous learning which will create the easiness and increase capability in the learning. The pattern of learning is the integration between the in-class learning and online learning via the internet. This research is mainly focused on the online learning and the online learning can be divided into 5 parts which are virtual classroom, online content, collaboration, assessment and reference material. After the system design was finished, it was evaluated and tested by 5 experts in blended learning design and 10 students which the user’s satisfaction level is good. The result is as good as the assumption so the system can be used in the process management subject for a real usage.
Abstract: In the time of globalisation, growing uncertainty, ambiguity and change, traditional way of doing business are no longer sufficient and it is important to consider non-conventional methods and approaches to release creativity and facilitate innovation and growth. Thus, creative industries, as a natural source of creativity and innovation, draw particular attention. This paper explores feasibility of building creative partnerships between creative industries and business and brings attention to mutual benefits derived from such partnerships. Design/approach - This paper is a theoretical exploration of projects, practices and research findings addressing collaboration between creative industries and business. Thus, it concerns creative industries, arts, business and its representatives in order to define requirements for creative partnerships to work and succeed. Findings – Current practices in engaging into arts-business partnerships are still very few, although most of creative partnerships proved to be highly valuable and mutually beneficial. Certain conditions shall be provided in order to benefit from arts-business creative synergy. Originality/value- By integrating different sources of literature, this article provides a base for conducting empirical research in several dimensions within arts-business partnerships.
Abstract: In recent years, the development of e-learning is very
rapid. E-learning is an attractive and efficient way for computer
education. Student interaction and collaboration also plays an
important role in e-learning. In this paper, a collaborative web-based
e-learning environment is presented. A wide range of interactive and
collaborative methods are integrated into a web-based environment.
This e-learning environment is designed for information security
curriculum.
Abstract: Transferring patient information between medical care
sites is necessary to deliver better patient care and to reduce medical
cost. So developing of electronic medical records is an important trend
for the world.The Continuity of Care Document (CCD) is product of
collaboration between CDA and CCR standards. In this study, we will
develop a system to generate medical records with entry level based on
CCD template module.