An Overview of Underwater Connectors

Underwater connectors are very essential and complex components of deep-sea engineering equipment and their design and manufacture have apparent multidisciplinary characteristics. Wet-mateable connectors (WMCs) represent the highest level of technology in this field, and only a very few countries in the world can produce WMCs. So, WMCs are likely to be a constraining factor to some maritime powers that might try to achieve breakthroughs in this field, constraining the innovation-driven development of deep-sea equipment. This paper gives a detailed overview of underwater connectors, both electrical and optical. First, the background of underwater connectors is introduced, and then the main available commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products are described. Next, the new concept of functional units is proposed by the authors to help readers to have a better understanding of underwater connectors. Then, the basic theories of design are introduced according to different functional units, covering the aspects of electrical/optical connection, pressure-balanced oil-filled (PBOF) technology, penetrable self-sealing, aligning and locking structures. Finally, some discussions and conclusions are presented. This paper aims to reveal the secrets of key technologies used in underwater connectors, especially in WMCs.

Quality Assessment of Standard and Customized COTS Products

Software quality is a very important aspect in evolving strategy for IT vendors involved in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) (also referred as packaged software) product development. Software metrics are widely accepted measures for monitoring and managing the quality in software projects. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are COTS products and attempt to integrate data and processes in organizations and often require extensive customization. Using software quality metrics already established in literature, software quality attributes defined by the quality model ISO/IEC 9126 were evaluated for a standard and a customized ERP product. This will help the ERP team to identify the specific quality attributes that were affected owing to customization. This research study infers that there exists a considerable impact of ERP system customization over the quality of ERP product. The implications of the findings for both practice and research are discussed, and possible areas of future research are identified.

Integrating COTS technology in defense systems

Purpose Militaries face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempos, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The integration of COTS products into defense systems has been offered to help meet these challenges, yet such integration suffers mixed results. The purpose of this paper is to offer a knowledge-based conceptual framework for understanding COTS technology integration in the defense sector. Design/methodology/approach A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings Research implicates the importance of knowledge management to successful COTS integration. COTS appropriateness should be gauged, and it is impacted by 14 enabling and five deterrent factors. Research limitations/implications The conceptual framework of COTS technology usage enhances understanding of COTS performance. The framework and its propositions should focus, and thus, stimulate increased future research of COTS performance. Limitations common to qualitative methods are disclosed. Practical implications By identifying factors that shape COTS appropriateness, practitioners know the factors to manage to hedge toward successful COTS integration. Managers should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. COTS integrators need to better manage the lessons learned from COTS integration programs. Originality/value This research is the first to develop a conceptual framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness.

Faster Than Light

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products allow researchers to conduct studies using readily accessible systems in order to save time, effort, and/or money that would otherwise be spent designing a custom product. In this article, we discuss the potential of a low-cost and commercially available video game, FTL: Faster Than Light, to be used as a testbed for research into complex or high-workload situations. In this preliminary review, we prototype a performance assessment tool for FTL, which we call FTL Score, and evaluate its ability to distinguish performances between a pilot sample of three participants. The results of this exploratory study showed that our measurement methods were able to distinguish between the performance of two novices and an expert. This suggests that a larger follow-up study is warranted, and lends some support to the hypothesis that FTL can be used as an easy-to-deploy and low-cost testbed for research into high-workload performance.

A FUZZY APPROACH TO MULTIOBJECTIVE COTS PRODUCTS SELECTION OF MODULAR SOFTWARE SYSTEMS USING EXPONENTIAL MEMBERSHIP FUNCTIONS

In this paper, we study a decision-making problem related to software creation using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products in a modular software system. The optimal selection of COTS products is difficult due to the variations in various critical parameters such as cost, reliability, execution time, and delivery time. Further, it is difficult to estimate precisely the values of these parameters since sufficient data may not be available and also there could be measurement errors. We present a fuzzy 0–1 optimization model of the multiobjective COTS products selection problem using exponential membership functions that simultaneously minimize the total cost, size, execution time and delivery time and maximize the reliability of a modular software system subject to many realistic constraints. The fuzzy goals are defined for each selection criterion as per the preferences of the decision maker and are aggregated using product operator to obtain an equivalent optimization model for optimal COTS selection. A real-world case study is discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the solution methodology.