Research on node importance evaluation of complex products based on three-parameter interval grey number grey relational model

In the process of product development, the identification and evaluation of important nodes is of great significance for the effective control of complex product engineering change. In order to identify and evaluate important nodes accurately, this paper proposes a method to evaluate the importance of complex product nodes. Firstly, an engineering change expression method based on multi-stage complex network is proposed. Then, the evaluation index system of important nodes of complex products is constructed. A three parameter grey relational model based on subjective and objective weights is proposed to identify and evaluate the important nodes of complex products. Finally, an example of a large permanent magnet synchronous centrifugal compressor is analyzed. The example shows that the top nodes are node 4, 1, 7, 9 and 24. Compared with other experiments, the proposed method can effectively and reasonably evaluate the node importance of complex products.

Change impact analysis of complex product using an improved three-parameter interval grey relation model

Change impact evaluation of complex product plays an important role in controlling change cost and improving change efficiency of engineering change enterprises. In order to improve the accuracy of engineering change impact evaluation, this paper introduces three-parameter interval grey number to evaluate complex products according to the data characteristics. The linear combination of BWM and Gini coefficient method is used to improve the three-parameter interval grey number correlation model. It is applied to the impact evaluation of complex product engineering change. This paper firstly constructs a multi-stage complex network for complex product engineering change. Then the engineering change impact evaluation index system is determined. Finally, a case analysis was carried out with the permanent magnet synchronous centrifugal compressor in a large permanent magnet synchronous centrifugal unit to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

An Open Product Lifecycle Management System

This thesis presents a complete set of user requirements and high-level architecture for [a] product lifecycle management (PLM) system for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Engineering activities such as engineering change management (ECM) and product data management (PDM) are emphasized. The system is designed to be developed in [an] open source environment. Therefore the system is called Open Product Lifecycle Management (OPLM) system. The thesis begins with a presentation of the motivation for the work and description of products and literature in the areas of PLM, SME and open source. An industry survey is conducted to elicit requirements of OPLM. Engineering change management (ECM) process is described and a modified framework for ECM in OPLM is presented. The proposed model is expected to make ECM faster, reusable and accurate. Four OPLM subsystems, namely, product data management, engineering change management, process management and business intelligence are defined. For each of the subsystems, subsystem components are identified and defined.

An Open Product Lifecycle Management System

This thesis presents a complete set of user requirements and high-level architecture for [a] product lifecycle management (PLM) system for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Engineering activities such as engineering change management (ECM) and product data management (PDM) are emphasized. The system is designed to be developed in [an] open source environment. Therefore the system is called Open Product Lifecycle Management (OPLM) system. The thesis begins with a presentation of the motivation for the work and description of products and literature in the areas of PLM, SME and open source. An industry survey is conducted to elicit requirements of OPLM. Engineering change management (ECM) process is described and a modified framework for ECM in OPLM is presented. The proposed model is expected to make ECM faster, reusable and accurate. Four OPLM subsystems, namely, product data management, engineering change management, process management and business intelligence are defined. For each of the subsystems, subsystem components are identified and defined.

Change impact analysis of complex product based on three-parameter interval grey number grey relational model

Change impact evaluation of complex product plays an important role in controlling change cost and improving change efficiency of engineering change enterprises. In order to improve the accuracy of change impact evaluation,this paper firstly expresses engineering changes based on multi-stage complex networks. Then, it constructs the evaluation index system of complex product engineering change impact. Next, based on the combination weighted three-parameter grey relational model, the engineering change impact of complex product is evaluated. Finally, a case analysis was carried out with the permanent magnet synchronous centrifugal compressor in a large permanent magnet synchronous centrifugal unit to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

THE MOTIVATION FOR ENGINEERING CHANGE IN THE INDUSTRIAL COMPANY

The authors of this article established the goal to investigate parameters related to the staff motivation for engineering change in the industrial company as case study and to predict the ways of improving the performance of the company. Employees of the company can be more motivated to generate innovative ideas and to implement them. That can be related to the better engineering change situation. For this reason, in this work, we have explored the environment and opportunities to improve the engineering performance of the company in the context of engineering change. The authors of the paper have conducted several studies, collected and analysed important information. Methods used – review of scientific literature and other sources of information, case study, structural systematic analysis, and sociological survey of industrial company personnel based on hypothesis. The object of the research was motives for engineering change in the industrial company. Motivated organizational behaviour actions, that focus on creation and realization of innovative ideas for engineering change, can be based on creation of an innovation-friendly environment. As our research has shown, it is important to consider parameters related to the staff motivation, such as, satisfaction with the company’s declared policy, satisfaction with the management’s behaviour in encouraging employees, freedom of employees to communicate and take creative initiative.

Natural language processing methods for knowledge management—Applying document clustering for fast search and grouping of engineering documents

Product development companies collect data in form of Engineering Change Requests for logged design issues, tests, and product iterations. These documents are rich in unstructured data (e.g. free text). Previous research affirms that product developers find that current IT systems lack capabilities to accurately retrieve relevant documents with unstructured data. In this research, we demonstrate a method using Natural Language Processing and document clustering algorithms to find structurally or contextually related documents from databases containing Engineering Change Request documents. The aim is to radically decrease the time needed to effectively search for related engineering documents, organize search results, and create labeled clusters from these documents by utilizing Natural Language Processing algorithms. A domain knowledge expert at the case company evaluated the results and confirmed that the algorithms we applied managed to find relevant document clusters given the queries tested.