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Showing papers in "Enterprise Information Systems in 2014"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The concept of CMfg, including its architecture, typical characteristics and the key technologies for implementing aCMfg service platform, is discussed and three core components for constructing a CMfg system, i.e. CMfg resources, manufacturing cloud service and manufacturing cloud are studied.
Abstract: Combining with the emerged technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of things, service-oriented technologies and high performance computing, a new manufacturing paradigm – cloud manufacturing CMfg – for solving the bottlenecks in the informatisation development and manufacturing applications is introduced. The concept of CMfg, including its architecture, typical characteristics and the key technologies for implementing a CMfg service platform, is discussed. Three core components for constructing a CMfg system, i.e. CMfg resources, manufacturing cloud service and manufacturing cloud are studied, and the constructing method for manufacturing cloud is investigated. Finally, a prototype of CMfg and the existing related works conducted by the authors' group on CMfg are briefly presented.

710 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A new chaos control optimal algorithm (CCOA) is designed to address the CSCOS problem, and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can search better solutions with less time-consumption than widely used algorithms such as genetic algorithm and typical chaotic genetic algorithm.
Abstract: This article investigates the problem of cloud service composition optimal-selection (CSCOS) in cloud manufacturing (CMfg). The categories of cloud services and their QoS (quality of service) indexes are established. From the perspective of QoS indexes, the relationship among QoS key factors for different kinds of cloud services are analysed and elaborated, and the corresponding objective functions and constraints of CSCOS are proposed. A new chaos control optimal algorithm (CCOA) is designed to address the CSCOS problem, and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can search better solutions with less time-consumption than widely used algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA) and typical chaotic genetic algorithm (CGA).

126 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A conceptual framework with six main capability areas and 17 sub areas is presented and a classification of different maturity types is proposed, based on cluster analysis and discriminant analysis, to contribute to the grounding of business process literature.
Abstract: The article elaborates on business process maturity, which indicates how well an organisation can perform based on its business processes, i.e. on its way of working. This topic is of paramount importance for managers who try to excel in today's competitive world. Hence, business process maturity is an emerging research field. However, no consensus exists on the capability areas or skills needed to excel. Moreover, their theoretical foundation and synergies with other fields are frequently neglected. To overcome this gap, our study presents a conceptual framework with six main capability areas and 17 sub areas. It draws on theories regarding the traditional business process lifecycle, which are supplemented by recognised organisation management theories. The comprehensiveness of this framework is validated by mapping 69 business process maturity models BPMMs to the identified capability areas, based on content analysis. Nonetheless, as a consensus neither exists among the collected BPMMs, a classification of different maturity types is proposed, based on cluster analysis and discriminant analysis. Consequently, the findings contribute to the grounding of business process literature. Possible future avenues are evaluating existing BPMMs, directing new BPMMs or investigating which combinations of capability areas i.e. maturity types contribute more to performance than others.

106 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Among the ERP life-cycle phases, the implementation phase was affected most by the SME context, and the case studies illustrate the need for a more nuanced view on what should be considered general characteristics of SMEs; for example, regarding the level of IS knowledge, business processes, and market characteristics.
Abstract: Small and medium-sized enterprises SMEs are increasingly implementing enterprise resource planning ERP systems. Compared to large enterprises, SMEs differ in a number of inherent characteristics, which are likely to impact the ERP system implementations. The purpose of this study is to explore these influences of the SME context on the ERP system implementation process. SME characteristics are synthesised from relevant literature and the influences of the contextual factors on various activities across the ERP life cycle are investigated. The study presents findings from a multiple case study of four SMEs. The ownership type of the companies and limited resources were identified as the most influential contextual factors. Among the ERP life-cycle phases, the implementation phase was affected most by the SME context. The case studies also illustrate the need for a more nuanced view on what should be considered general characteristics of SMEs; for example, regarding the level of IS knowledge, business processes, and market characteristics.

86 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The cost of performing the analysis was low; no case study required more than 20 man-hours of work, making the method ideal for practitioners with an interest in obtaining rapid availability estimates of their enterprise information systems.
Abstract: The availability of enterprise information systems is a key concern for many organisations. This article describes a method for availability analysis based on Fault Tree Analysis and constructs from the ArchiMate enterprise architecture EA language. To test the quality of the method, several case-studies within the banking and electrical utility industries were performed. Input data were collected through stakeholder interviews. The results from the case studies were compared with availability of log data to determine the accuracy of the method's predictions. In the five cases where accurate log data were available, the yearly downtime estimates were within eight hours from the actual downtimes. The cost of performing the analysis was low; no case study required more than 20 man-hours of work, making the method ideal for practitioners with an interest in obtaining rapid availability estimates of their enterprise information systems.

58 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article presents a method to introduce conditional branch structures into the process model of composite service when needed, in order to satisfy users' diverse and personalised needs and adapt to the dynamic changes of real-world environment.
Abstract: The creation of value-added services by automatic composition of existing ones is gaining a significant momentum as the potential silver bullet in service-oriented architecture. However, service composition faces two aspects of difficulties. First, users' needs present such characteristics as diversity, uncertainty and personalisation; second, the existing services run in a real-world environment that is highly complex and dynamically changing. These difficulties may cause the emergence of nondeterministic choices in the process of service composition, which has gone beyond what the existing automated service composition techniques can handle. According to most of the existing methods, the process model of composite service includes sequence constructs only. This article presents a method to introduce conditional branch structures into the process model of composite service when needed, in order to satisfy users' diverse and personalised needs and adapt to the dynamic changes of real-world environment. UML activity diagrams are used to represent dependencies in composite service. Two types of user preferences are considered in this article, which have been ignored by the previous work and a simple programming language style expression is adopted to describe them. Two different algorithms are presented to deal with different situations. A real-life case is provided to illustrate the proposed concepts and methods.

47 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results support multiple hypothesised relationships, including the finding that a risk-oriented organisational culture as well as normative and coercive pressures accelerates decision timeliness.
Abstract: Organisations desire timeliness. Timeliness facilitates a better responsiveness to changes in an organisation's external environment to either attain or maintain competitiveness. Despite its importance, decision timeliness has not been explicitly examined. Decision timeliness is measured in this study as the time taken to commit to a decision. The research objective is to identify the drivers of decision timeliness in the context of adopting service-oriented architecture SOA, an innovation for enterprise computing. A research model rooted in the technology–organisation–environment TOE framework is proposed and tested with data collected in a large-scale study. The research variables have been examined before in the context of adoption, but their applicability to the timeliness of innovation decision-making has not received much attention and their salience is unclear. The results support multiple hypothesised relationships, including the finding that a risk-oriented organisational culture as well as normative and coercive pressures accelerates decision timeliness. Top management support as well as the traditional innovation attributes compatibility, relative advantage and complexity/ease-of-use were not found to be significant when examining their influence on decision timeliness, which appears inconsistent with generally accepted knowledge and deserves further examination.

42 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
José Esteves1
TL;DR: Results suggest that the categorised list of ERP training best practices can be used to better understand training activities in ERP implementation projects, and reveal that the company size and location have an impact on the relevance ofTraining best practices.
Abstract: Although training is one of the most cited critical success factors in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems implementations, few empirical studies have attempted to examine the characteristics of management of the training process within ERP implementation projects. Based on the data gathered from a sample of 158 respondents across four stakeholder groups involved in ERP implementation projects, and using a mixed method design, we have assembled a derived set of training best practices. Results suggest that the categorised list of ERP training best practices can be used to better understand training activities in ERP implementation projects. Furthermore, the results reveal that the company size and location have an impact on the relevance of training best practices. This empirical study also highlights the need to investigate the role of informal workplace trainers in ERP training activities.

42 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An advanced model for the evaluation of the success of ERP implementation on organisational and operational performance indicators in oil–gas companies is proposed and establishes a correlation between a process-based method, a scorecard model and ERP critical success factors.
Abstract: The so far implemented enterprise resource planning ERP systems have in many cases failed to meet the requirements regarding the business process control, decrease of business costs and increase of company profit margin. Therefore, there is a real need for an evaluation of the influence of ERP on the company's performance indicators. Proposed in this article is an advanced model for the evaluation of the success of ERP implementation on organisational and operational performance indicators in oil–gas companies. The recommended method establishes a correlation between a process-based method, a scorecard model and ERP critical success factors. The method was verified and tested on two case studies in oil–gas companies using the following procedure: the model was developed, tested and implemented in a pilot gas–oil company, while the results were implemented and verified in another gas–oil company.

39 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An intelligent manufacturing system is proposed to accommodate product geometric variants autonomously by integrating a 3D vision system into manufacturing processes by acquiring vision sensor data, detecting the geometric changes, and modifying the control programmes of the machine in response to the changes.
Abstract: A flexible manufacturing system is capable of dealing with changes and uncertainties occurring in a manufacturing environment. A rigid automation system adapts changes through reconfiguration or manual modification of its control programmes. In contrast, an advanced system responds to the changes autonomously or with a minimal manual intervention. One critical technology for a flexible manufacturing system is to detect or predict the changes and uncertainties and take them into account for the control of the manufacturing system. In this paper, an intelligent manufacturing system is proposed to accommodate product geometric variants autonomously by integrating a 3D vision system into manufacturing processes. The proposed system is capable of acquiring vision sensor data, detecting the geometric changes, and modifying the control programmes of the machine in response to the changes. In this innovative work, a new method for converting the raw vision sensor data into a surface model of the product is presented. A new surface reconstruction algorithm is proposed to generate the surface model directly from the raw 3D point-cloud data of a product. In addition, an advanced programming algorithm that uses acquired surface models to automatically update robot programmes for a new task with minimal manual intervention is presented.

38 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Various relevant research directions in semantic BPM (SBPM) are identified and the state of art of SBPM is summarised.
Abstract: Based on an in-depth analysis of the existing approaches in applying semantic technologies to business process management (BPM) research in the perspective of cross-enterprise collaboration or so-called business-to-business integration, we analyse, discuss and compare methodologies, applications and best practices of the surveyed approaches with the proposed criteria. This article identifies various relevant research directions in semantic BPM (SBPM). Founded on the result of our investigation, we summarise the state of art of SBPM. We also address areas and directions for further research activities.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A research model was developed to explore the impact of human image as a visual element on consumers’ online shopping emotions and subsequent attitudes towards websites and showed that product pictures combined with human image induced positive emotions among participants, thus promoting their attitudes towards online shopping websites.
Abstract: On B2C shopping websites, effective visual designs can bring about consumers’ positive emotional experience From this perspective, this article developed a research model to explore the impact of human image as a visual element on consumers’ online shopping emotions and subsequent attitudes towards websites This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to collect both eye movement data and questionnaire data to test the research model Questionnaire data analysis showed that product pictures combined with human image induced positive emotions among participants, thus promoting their attitudes towards online shopping websites Specifically, product pictures with human image first produced higher levels of image appeal and perceived social presence, thus stimulating higher levels of enjoyment and subsequent positive attitudes towards the websites Moreover, a moderating effect of product type was demonstrated on the relationship between the presence of human image and the level of image appeal Specific

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A pilot study to migrate the concept of linked data into the development of a domain-specific application, i.e. the vehicle repair support system, and describes the approaches of semantic information retrieval to consume these linkages for value creation for companies.
Abstract: The vision of the Semantic Web is to build a global Web of machine-readable data to be consumed by intelligent applications. As the first step to make this vision come true, the initiative of linked open data has fostered many novel applications aimed at improving data accessibility in the public Web. Comparably, the enterprise environment is so different from the public Web that most potentially usable business information originates in an unstructured form (typically in free text), which poses a challenge for the adoption of semantic technologies in the enterprise environment. Considering that the business information in a company is highly specific and centred around a set of commonly used concepts, this paper describes a pilot study to migrate the concept of linked data into the development of a domain-specific application, i.e. the vehicle repair support system. The set of commonly used concepts, including the part name of a car and the phenomenon term on the car repairing, are employed to build the ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Results indicate that clinical information has become notably more integrated, despite the lack of flow in the economic–financial area, and the role ERP systems play in aiding the integration of hospital data is analyzed.
Abstract: Public resources should always be managed efficiently, more so in times of crisis. Due to the specific characteristics of the healthcare sector, there is a need for special attention, especially in regards to hospitals. Administrators need useful tools to be able to efficiently manage available resources, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Therefore, an analysis of the effects of their implementation and use in hospitals is valuable. This study has two purposes. One is to analyse the role ERP systems play in aiding the integration of hospital data, with focus on user satisfaction as well as possible resistance to change. The other purpose is to analyse the effects of implanting and using ERP systems in the hospital environment and identifying how certain variables influence the process, especially the existence of different organisational cultures. Results indicate that clinical information has become notably more integrated, despite the lack of flow in the economic–financial area. The he...

Journal ArticleDOI
Wen Guang Qu1, Yajing Ding1, Yongyi Shou1, Honggeng Zhou1, Hong Du1 
TL;DR: This paper proposes that enterprise systems will affect process flexibility negatively but affect organisational flexibility positively and suggests that a company's flexibility should be distinguished between process level and organisational level.
Abstract: In light of the current dynamic business environment, companies nowadays need to respond rapidly to changes. Companies often invest heavily in enterprise systems in the hope that these can improve their flexibility in coping with such changes. However, previous studies have shown that the impact of enterprise systems on flexibility can be either positive or negative. To resolve this inconsistency in the existing research, this paper suggests that a company's flexibility should be distinguished between process level and organisational level. Specifically, this paper proposes that enterprise systems will affect process flexibility negatively but affect organisational flexibility positively. The analysis results show that enterprise systems have different effects on process and organisational flexibility. Furthermore, industry clockspeed sets a boundary for the effect on process flexibility but not for that on organisational flexibility. Research and practical implications of this study are discussed.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explores a method to automatically identify routing requirements from BPMN choreography model and to accordingly design routing in the integration solution, and demonstrates that the method is effective to improve the design quality and reduce time cost.
Abstract: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) choreography modelling depicts externally visible message exchanges between collaborating processes of enterprise information systems. Implementation of choreography relies on designing system integration solutions to realise message exchanges between independently developed systems. Enterprise integration patterns (EIPs) are widely accepted artefacts to design integration solutions. If the choreography model represents coordination requirements between processes with behaviour mismatches, the integration designer needs to analyse the routing requirements and address these requirements by manually designing EIP message routers. As collaboration scales and complexity increases, manual design becomes inefficient. Thus, the research problem of this paper is to explore a method to automatically identify routing requirements from BPMN choreography model and to accordingly design routing in the integration solution. To achieve this goal, recurring behaviour mismatch sc...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An online semantics-based method to cluster Chinese web search results using the generalised suffix tree to extract the longest common substrings (LCSs) from search snippets and improves the Chameleon algorithm to cluster snippets.
Abstract: Information explosion is a critical challenge to the development of modern information systems. In particular, when the application of an information system is over the Internet, the amount of information over the web has been increasing exponentially and rapidly. Search engines, such as Google and Baidu, are essential tools for people to find the information from the Internet. Valuable information, however, is still likely submerged in the ocean of search results from those tools. By clustering the results into different groups based on subjects automatically, a search engine with the clustering feature allows users to select most relevant results quickly. In this paper, we propose an online semantics-based method to cluster Chinese web search results. First, we employ the generalised suffix tree to extract the longest common substrings LCSs from search snippets. Second, we use the HowNet to calculate the similarities of the words derived from the LCSs, and extract the most representative features by constructing the vocabulary chain. Third, we construct a vector of text features and calculate snippets’ semantic similarities. Finally, we improve the Chameleon algorithm to cluster snippets. Extensive experimental results have shown that the proposed algorithm has outperformed over the suffix tree clustering method and other traditional clustering methods.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is concluded that hospital performance can be improved through an enriched understanding of hospital ES design, which builds on recent work which suggests that hospital enterprises are comprised of multiple internal ES configurations which may generate different levels of performance.
Abstract: Our understanding of enterprise systems (ES) is gradually evolving towards a sense of design which leverages multidisciplinary bodies of knowledge that may bolster hybrid research designs and together further the characterisation of ES operation and performance. This article aims to contribute towards ES design theory with its hospital enterprise systems design (HESD) framework, which reflects a rich multidisciplinary literature and two in-depth hospital empirical cases from the US and UK. In doing so it leverages systems thinking principles and traditionally disparate bodies of knowledge to bolster the theoretical evolution and foundation of ES. A total of seven core ES design elements are identified and characterised with 24 main categories and 53 subcategories. In addition, it builds on recent work which suggests that hospital enterprises are comprised of multiple internal ES configurations which may generate different levels of performance. Multiple sources of evidence were collected including electro...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The proposed framework offers a homogeneous PM information exchange model that can be applied through decision support in e-Manufacturing environment and improves the necessary interoperability in decision-making data processing tasks.
Abstract: The implementation of Internet technologies has led to e-Manufacturing technologies becoming more widely used and to the development of tools for compiling, transforming and synchronising manufacturing data through the Web. In this context, a potential area for development is the extension of virtual manufacturing to performance measurement (PM) processes, a critical area for decision making and implementing improvement actions in manufacturing. This paper proposes a PM information framework to integrate decision support systems in e-Manufacturing. Specifically, the proposed framework offers a homogeneous PM information exchange model that can be applied through decision support in e-Manufacturing environment. Its application improves the necessary interoperability in decision-making data processing tasks. It comprises three sub-systems: a data model, a PM information platform and PM-Web services architecture. A practical example of data exchange for measurement processes in the area of equipment maintena...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A new analysis method of LPNs is introduced based on incidence matrix, and the enabled conditions of transitions are given, and reachable markings are calculated based on the constructed incidence matrix.
Abstract: Logic Petri nets (LPNs) can simplify the net-structure and mitigate the problem of state space explosion To directly investigate the properties of LPNs, a new analysis method of LPNs is introduced in this paper based on incidence matrix The enabled conditions of transitions are given, and reachable markings are calculated based on the constructed incidence matrix of LPNs The state equation of LPNs is defined, and the reachability of LPNs is analysed Compared with the previous work, the incidence matrix in this paper can contain more information and describes the logic expressions and arcs of LPNs The computational complexity of LPNs is lower Finally, the validity, reliability and effectiveness of the proposed method are illustrated by analysing an actual case The theoretical and practical values of LPNs are enhanced

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A BPEL-based framework using a service composition model to represent the functional requirements of the system and shows how the evolved model can be used at runtime to increase the system's autonomic capabilities and delivered QoS.
Abstract: Dynamically adaptive systems propose adaptation by means of variants that are specified in the system model at design time and allow for a fixed set of different runtime configurations. However, in a dynamic environment, unanticipated changes may result in the inability of the system to meet its quality requirements. To allow the system to react to these changes, this article proposes a solution for automatically evolving the system model by integrating new variants and periodically validating the existing ones based on updated quality parameters. To illustrate this approach, the article presents a BPEL-based framework using a service composition model to represent the functional requirements of the system. The framework estimates quality of service QoS values based on information provided by a monitoring mechanism, ensuring that changes in QoS are reflected in the system model. The article shows how the evolved model can be used at runtime to increase the system's autonomic capabilities and delivered QoS.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A multi-layer architecture and a general procedure are proposed to integrate different CFD toolsets with intelligent optimisation algorithms, parallel computing technique and other techniques for efficient computation to facilitate CFD-based design optimisation.
Abstract: Multi-disciplinary design optimisation MDO is one of critical methodologies to the implementation of enterprise systems ES. MDO requiring the analysis of fluid dynamics raises a special challenge due to its extremely intensive computation. The rapid development of computational fluid dynamic CFD technique has caused a rise of its applications in various fields. Especially for the exterior designs of vehicles, CFD has become one of the three main design tools comparable to analytical approaches and wind tunnel experiments. CFD-based design optimisation is an effective way to achieve the desired performance under the given constraints. However, due to the complexity of CFD, integrating with CFD analysis in an intelligent optimisation algorithm is not straightforward. It is a challenge to solve a CFD-based design problem, which is usually with high dimensions, and multiple objectives and constraints. It is desirable to have an integrated architecture for CFD-based design optimisation. However, our review on existing works has found that very few researchers have studied on the assistive tools to facilitate CFD-based design optimisation. In the paper, a multi-layer architecture and a general procedure are proposed to integrate different CFD toolsets with intelligent optimisation algorithms, parallel computing technique and other techniques for efficient computation. In the proposed architecture, the integration is performed either at the code level or data level to fully utilise the capabilities of different assistive tools. Two intelligent algorithms are developed and embedded with parallel computing. These algorithms, together with the supportive architecture, lay a solid foundation for various applications of CFD-based design optimisation. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture and algorithms, the case studies on aerodynamic shape design of a hypersonic cruising vehicle are provided, and the result has shown that the proposed architecture and developed algorithms have performed successfully and efficiently in dealing with the design optimisation with over 200 design variables.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The limitations of the naïve Bayes algorithm are discussed, and it is found that the assumption on the independence of terms is the main reason for an unsatisfactory classification in many real-world applications.
Abstract: Automated information retrieval is critical for enterprise information systems to acquire knowledge from the vast amount of data sets. One challenge in information retrieval is text classification. Current practices rely heavily on the classical naive Bayes algorithm due to its simplicity and robustness. However, results from this algorithm are not always satisfactory. In this article, the limitations of the naive Bayes algorithm are discussed, and it is found that the assumption on the independence of terms is the main reason for an unsatisfactory classification in many real-world applications. To overcome the limitations, the dependent factors are considered by integrating a term frequency–inverse document frequency TF-IDF weighting algorithm in the naive Bayes classification. Moreover, the TF-IDF algorithm itself is improved so that both frequencies and distribution information are taken into consideration. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, two simulation experiments were conducted, and the comparisons with other classification methods have shown that the proposed method has outperformed other existing algorithms in terms of precision and index recall rate.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presents a concept-oriented query language approach to manipulate this diversity of data so that the programming skill requirements are considerably reduced and the features which need technical knowledge are hidden in application-specific concepts and structures.
Abstract: In enterprise information systems EISs it is necessary to model, integrate and compute very diverse data. In advanced EISs the stored data often are based both on structured e.g. relational and semi-structured e.g. XML data models. In addition, the ad hoc information needs of end-users may require the manipulation of data-oriented structural, behavioural and deductive aspects of data. Contemporary languages capable of treating this kind of diversity suit only persons with good programming skills. In this paper we present a concept-oriented query language approach to manipulate this diversity so that the programming skill requirements are considerably reduced. In our query language, the features which need technical knowledge are hidden in application-specific concepts and structures. Therefore, users need not be aware of the underlying technology. Application-specific concepts and structures are represented by the modelling primitives of the extended RDOOM relational deductive object-oriented modelling which contains primitives for all crucial real world relationships is-a relationship, part-of relationship, association, XML documents and views. Our query language also supports intensional and extensional–intensional queries, in addition to conventional extensional queries. In its query formulation, the end-user combines available application-specific concepts and structures through shared variables.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The result showed that the proposed method was available, and could provide guidance for quality control and support for product reliability in inter-enterprise machining processes.
Abstract: In order to meet the quality control requirement of dynamic and complicated product machining processes among enterprises, a system framework of inter-enterprise machining quality control based on fractal was proposed. In this system framework, the fractal-specific characteristic of inter-enterprise machining quality control function was analysed, and the model of inter-enterprise machining quality control was constructed by the nature of fractal structures. Furthermore, the goal-driven strategy of inter-enterprise quality control and the dynamic organisation strategy of inter-enterprise quality improvement were constructed by the characteristic analysis on this model. In addition, the architecture of inter-enterprise machining quality control based on fractal was established by means of Web service. Finally, a case study for application was presented. The result showed that the proposed method was available, and could provide guidance for quality control and support for product reliability in inter-enterprise machining processes.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this application, the EIS and the simulation test platform are combined together, which enhances the coherence and consistency of the information exchange between the system development and the system verification, to improve the work efficiency.
Abstract: Verification and validation of a railway signalling system is a crucial part of the workflow in railway signalling enterprises. Typically, the verification and validation of this type of safety-critical system is performed by means of an on-site test, which leads to a low efficiency and high costs. A novel method for the verification and validation of a railway signalling system is proposed as an application of the enterprise information system (EIS) technique. In this application, the EIS and the simulation test platform are combined together, which enhances the coherence and consistency of the information exchange between the system development and the system verification, to improve the work efficiency. The simulation and auto-test technology used in the system verification also lowers the human and financial costs.

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an architecture for health information exchange in pervasive healthcare environments meant to be generally applicable to different applications in the healthcare domain, which is designed for message exchange by integrating ubiquitous computing technologies, intelligent agents and healthcare standards, in order to provide interoperability between healthcare systems.
Abstract: This paper presents an architecture for health information exchange in pervasive healthcare environments meant to be generally applicable to different applications in the healthcare domain. Our architecture has been designed for message exchange by integrating ubiquitous computing technologies, intelligent agents and healthcare standards, in order to provide interoperability between healthcare systems. We conduct controlled experiments at three cardiology clinics, an analysis laboratory, and the cardiology sector of a hospital located in Marilia (Sao Paulo, Brazil). Three scenarios were developed to evaluate this architecture, and the results showed that the architecture is suitable to facilitate the development of healthcare systems by offering generic and powerful message exchange capabilities. The proposed architecture facilitates health information exchange between various healthcare information systems, contributing in this way to the development of a pervasive healthcare environment that allows healthcare to be available anywhere, anytime and to anyone.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An automatic control system for uniformly paving green pellets on the grate, via a mechanism mainly constituted of a mechanical linkage, a swinging belt, a conveyance belt and a grate, and their functional relationships is presented.
Abstract: In iron and steelmaking industry, iron ore pellet qualities are crucial to end-product properties, manufacturing costs and waste emissions. Uniform pellet pavements on the grate machine are a fundamental prerequisite to ensure even heat-transfer and pellet induration successively influences performance of the following metallurgical processes. This article presents an automatic control system for uniformly paving green pellets on the grate, via a mechanism mainly constituted of a mechanical linkage, a swinging belt, a conveyance belt and a grate. Mechanism analysis illustrates that uniform pellet pavements demand the frontend of the swinging belt oscillate at a constant angular velocity. Subsequently, kinetic models are formulated to relate oscillatory movements of the swinging belt’s frontend to rotations of a crank link driven by a motor. On basis of kinetic analysis of the pellet feeding mechanism, a cubic B-spline model is built for numerically computing discrete frequencies to be modulated during a m...


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper designs CoMaP – a distributed mashup platform that incorporates a dynamic and efficient scheme for deploying mashups on the processing nodes, and proposes novel techniques that leverage keyword synonyms, ontologies and caching to enhance end-user experience.
Abstract: Since the advent of Web 2.0, personalised applications such as mashups have become widely popular. Mashups enable end-users to fetch data from distributed data sources, and refine it based on their personal needs. This high degree of personalisation that mashups offer comes at the expense of performance and scalability. These scalability challenges are exacerbated by the centralised architectures of current mashup platforms. In this paper, we address the performance and scalability issues by designing CoMaP – a distributed mashup platform. CoMaP’s architecture comprises of several cooperative mashup processing nodes distributed over the Internet upon which mashups can, fully or partially, be executed. CoMaP incorporates a dynamic and efficient scheme for deploying mashups on the processing nodes. Our scheme considers a number of parameters such as variations in link delays and bandwidths, and loads on mashup processing nodes. CoMaP includes effective and low-cost mechanisms for balancing loads on the proc...