Collaboration across the extended entreprise barrier or

Florence Sellini

Sujets

• Employabilité, métiers et formations

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• Publié par: englue
• Nombre de lectures: 237
• Langue: English

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Proceedings of the TMCE 2006, April 18–22, 2006, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Edited by Horváth and Duhovnik  2006 press, City, ISBN COLLABORATION ACROSS THE EXTENDED ENTREPRISE: BARRIER OR OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP YOUR KNOWLEDGE ASSETS? Florence Sellini Knowledge Management AIRBUS UK [e-mail] Joseph Cloonan Knowledge Management Airbus UK [e-mail] Elizabeth Carver Human Factors BAE SYSTEMS UK [e-mail] Patrick Williams INBIS UK [e-mail] solutions that span long product lifecycles within ABSTRACT multi-disciplinary, multi-company and multi-cultural Europe’s Aeronautical industry operates as a highly environments. VIVACE will take the lead in driving complex and dynamic relationship between a vast these solutions into the extended enterprise and number of specialist companies. Current aircraft contribute to Europe’s aim of becoming the world’s design and manufacturing processes involve 40 to 50 leading knowledge-based economy. different companies in a tiered supply chain. In this The VIVACE research work is driven by real context, it’s becoming more and more difficult to business cases to understand the knowledge make sure that product quality is maintained and that challenges and to identify effective solutions delivery schedules are met. Successful collaboration deployable into future Aircraft programmes. The requires an understanding of, and support for, the work presented in this paper relates to a Wing interaction and interdependencies between Engineering Use Case (KEWE). communication, culture, exploitation and dispersed team working. in the continual drive for KEYWORDS competitivenes. Knowledge Management (KM) has been identified as a key enabler in reducing costs, Knowledge management, concept phase, improving quality and helping to ensure safe and collaborative design, extended enterprise, aircraft correct products (Brimble, R, Longueville, B, Sellini, design F, 2004). The European project VIVACE (FP6, 2004-2007) 1. INTRODUCTION aims at improving the capability to design and build The European research VIVACE project (FP6, 2004- an aircraft in such a context, and moreover to doing 2007) aims at delivering an improved Aeronautical it ever faster. VIVACE proposes to define a Collaborative Design Environment with associated Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) Processes, Models and Methods to design an aircraft environment, whereby knowledge is managed not and its engines as a whole, providing virtual products only within individual companies but across supply with all requested functionality and components in chain relationships. The challenge is to provide each phase of the product engineering life cycle. The 1 VIVACE approach is to develop advanced different mediums, applications, and models are capabilities such as Knowledge Enabled Engineering, all in alignment? For example, if I have a (KEE), Multi-disciplinary Optimisation (MDO), knowledge base, a CAD model, and / or an Design To Decision Objective (DtDO), EDM, IT application, how do I know they are up to date, at Infrastructures applied on real case engineering and a local level as well as at a distributed level? business scenarios from the aircraft and engine How can we provide visibility of context and sectors. The KEE advanced capability is of interest provenance of information to support individuals for this paper as the work presented here is from the in deciding the degree to which they should trust, Wing Engineering business case, which has accept and re-use information. identified key challenges related to Knowledge 2. How can we enable people to share knowledge Management in the extended enterprise context. and information across the extended enterprise In order to better understand the key elements with confidence? This includes exchange of associated with these KM challenges, several semi- technical as well as process information, formal structured interviews were conducted with different and informal information (through interpersonal stakeholders from both the prime and supply chain communications, sharing personal notes and so contractors for a typical wing design activity. The on), as well as lessons learned and good practice. interviews covered issues of collaboration, It is anticipated that success will be highly communication, knowledge capture sharing and re- dependant on the relationships within the use, risks relating to organisational structure and the enterprise within the technical teams, as well as dispersed nature of the team as well as how lessons the contractual environment within which the learned are captured and implemented across projects team is working. or within new projects. 3. How can we find knowledge through people Several analysis frameworks were used to identify within the extended enterprise across cultural the gaps between the ‘as-is’ knowledge practices and (including discipline, organisational, and the desired ‘to-be’ vision as defined by the supply national) boundaries? This means taking a chain stakeholders. These included a “Strengths, network approach to develop organisational Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats” analysis awareness through knowledge networks – (SWOT), as well as using part of the Relationship enabling individuals to both push and pull Evaluation Tool (RET) provided by the UK Supply information and knowledge. Chain Research In Action (SCRIA) organisation 4. How can we mitigate risk in the extended (Lamming, Cousins and Hogan, 1998) and the use of enterprise? By avoiding the negative impacts and IDEFØ formalism (www.idef.com) to provide a delays, extra costs and rework due to confusions visual output. and misunderstandings, access to the right Section 2 & 3 of the paper will focus on the scenario information or access to the right skill. that formed the base of the wing business case used The ultimate aim of the VIVACE project and for the VIVACE project and the methodology used to particularly the KEE advanced capability is to deliver conduct the assessment and analysis. In section 4, the Knowledge Enabled Solutions to respond to these paper will present the findings and functional challenges. The future work section will describe requirements that will drive the selection and how the survey findings will provide functional deployment of appropriate Knowledge Management requirements to define the appropriate Knowledge Solutions to the business. Solutions. 2. USE CASE SCENARIO 2.2. Specific business context For the purpose of the study, the business scenario 2.1. Business requirements dealt with the design of a wing tip, which is part of In the extended enterprise context, preliminary the wing structure design in the aircraft development knowledge challenges or business requirements were process. For a new derivative of an Aircraft, a identified and rated as high priority. revised wing tip is required resulting in a longer span, and a simple winglet. The change requires a 1. How can we ensure that knowledge is up to date and consistent? How can we be sure that new structure outboard of the current wing tip 2 Florence SELLINI, Patrick WILLIAMS, Joseph CLOONAN, Elizabeth CARVER  support rib, and revisions to the rib interface in order 3. EXPERIMENTATION METHOD AND to take the new wing tip. Because the derivative TOOLS activity occurs when the prime contractor’s Following the