- Email: [email protected]
Collaborative e-work networks in industrial engineering
Computers & Industrial Engineering 57 (2009) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Computers & Industrial Engineering journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/caie
Editorial
Collaborative e-work networks in industrial engineering Recently, pervasive computing and networking have emerged as a powerful computing and communication environment enabling new features of interactive and collaborative effectiveness, especially with the ability of providing better quality services anytime, anywhere, and for everyone. The field of industrial engineering has realized the enormous potential benefits and challenges of these useful features, and has been directing significant research efforts to the design of the new and emerging e-work environment. This new environment is characterized by automation-supported functions with networking protocols and e-services, communication models, and collaborative information mining, analysis and management (sometimes called ‘‘collaborative analytics”). To facilitate collaborative resource and task sharing, and to support application-specific networking and communications for mutually beneficial collaboration, pervasive computing devices must enable reliable ad hoc communication and networking, and strong computational, logical support of the desired collaboration. With ad hoc, wireless and mobile network communications, two important advantages emerge to sustain this facilitation: Seamless and transparent access to services and applications can be achieved; at the same time, rationalized mechanisms for establishing spontaneous and interactive networking among communicating entities can be provided in the background, as a parallel supportive service layer. Despite considerable progress in mobile computing and wireless communication technologies, industrial engineering fundamental demands and emerging applications are facing complex challenges in several directions in this high-priority area. In developing this special issue, therefore, the guest editors have invited authors to focus on the topics of communication models, interaction models and protocols, networking infrastructure, workflow and information integration, collaborative design, planning, and resource allocation, collaborative processing and decisions, network configuration for collaborative work, and applicability and usability analysis for real-world applications. In addition, to support the emerging collaborative e-work flexibility and wide-open mobility, services and specific applications have been sought, especially where they can adapt to heterogeneous networking environments supporting multi-hop communication in hybrid wired/wireless environments. Authors have responded, and as a result, this special issue provides a significant opportunity for researchers and readers: to investigate novel and forthcoming research problems of collaborative e-work networks, interactions, and communication, with emphasis on industrial engineering principles and responsibilities. The scope includes various aspects of ad hoc networking protocols, services, agent/middleware modeling, industrial application-specific sensor and other multi-agent networks, and complex systems issues associated with these different perspectives. Overall, 26 articles were submitted to this special issue. All submitted manuscripts were subjected to a rigorous blind-refereeing process, as 0360-8352/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cie.2009.01.012
normally followed by this journal. Through several cycles of review and revision processes, however, twelve of them have been finally selected for their special quality and potential interest to the readers of Computers and Industrial Engineering. The results presented in these papers are based on scientific investigation and have a direct bearing on real-life engineering problems. Moreover, the techniques presented have potential application in other, similar situations. The articles’ subject domains cover the three main areas of collaborative e-work networks, and their design so they can be enabled and improved:
– The first two areas involve e-collaboration among humans, processes and systems. – The third area involves e-collaboration among sensors and sensor networks within automation systems. In the area of collaborative e-work in production and service:
‘‘Collaborative networked organizations: concepts and practice in manufacturing enterprises” by Camarinha-Matos, Afsarmanesh, Galeano, and Molina, describes key concepts related to collaborative networked organizations (CNOs), offers a high level classification of collaborative networks, and illustrates application cases in the manufacturing industry. ‘‘e-Work based collaborative optimization approach for strategic logistic network design problem,” by Miranda, Garrido, and Ceroni, develops an e-work based heuristic approach to solve collaboratively the network design problem at strategic and tactical levels. ‘‘Event-driven service coordination for business process integration in ubiquitous enterprises,” by Kong, Jung, and Park, presents an event-driven approach to business process integration by facilitating real-time event processing and distributed service coordination. ‘‘Context modeling and measuring for proactive resource recommendation in business collaboration,” by Gong, Ning, Li, O’Sullivan, Chen, and Decker, proposes a context-sensitive collaboration system to help improve the working efficiency of knowledge workers. An OWL-based context model is used for enabling context reasoning. The last article in this group, ‘‘A query-based cross-language diagnosis tool for distributed decision making support” by
2
Editorial / Computers & Industrial Engineering 57 (2009) 1–2
Choe, Lehto, Park, and Allebach, presents a query translationbased cross-language diagnosis tool for assisting users diagnosing print defects. This contribution is a step in solving increasingly challenging requirements for multi-cultural and crosscultural collaboration, in this case, in collaborative diagnosis. The next group of articles focuses on distributed, collaborative production planning, coordinated process control, and design:
‘‘Multi-tier and multi-site collaborative production: Illustrated by a case example of TFT-LCD manufacturing” by Chen, Huang, and Lai, deals with a distributed production planning system for a multi-tier and multi-site production system, by combining agent technology with advanced planning and scheduling (APS) system. ‘‘A coordinate SPC model for assuring designated fit quality via quality-oriented statistical tolerancing,” by Zhang and Yang, presents a statistical model applied with equal batches for hole/shaft fitting, and achieves a designated fit quality and minimum defective ratio by fully utilizing statistical tolerance zone and the known information of manufactured mating parts. Its contribution is in using statistical SPC for collaborating parties in assembly and supply. ‘‘Asymmetric negotiation based collaborative product design for component reuse in disparate products,” by Li, Zhang and Lin, follows the direction of the previous article by developing a Pareto optimal points prediction, where an optimal design can be jointly determined by all participating designers, even though they represent different and distributed manufactures. ‘‘A method for predicting future location of mobile user for location-based services system,” by Vu, Ryu, and Park, presents a movement rule-based location prediction method (RLP) to guess a user’s future location for location-based services (LBSs). The authors also provide an efficient support to the LBSs provider in monitoring the user intelligently and sending information to the user in a push-driven fashion. Finally, the third group is in the area of ad hoc automation communication and networking:
‘‘A collaborative sensor network middleware for automated production systems,” by Jeong and Nof, addresses the need to deploy wireless networks of micro-sensors that
collaborate for better monitoring and intelligent control in production automation, and presents a middleware structure with optimal or near-optimal deployment scheme for geometry-specific design. ‘‘An auction-based dynamic bandwidth allocation with sensitivity in wireless networked control system” by Tipsuwan, Kamonsantiroj, Srisabye, and Chongstivattana evaluates the effect of a network-induced delay whose purpose is to change the utility or preference in the networked control system (NCS) by applying the average sensitivity term. An auctionbased dynamic bandwidth allocation technique is developed to prevent abuse by self-oriented (‘‘selfish”), non-collaborative systems. ‘‘Distributed energy balanced routing for wireless sensor networks” by Ok, Lee, Mitra, and Kumara, introduces a new metric, energy cost, devised to balance the remaining energy of sensors and energy efficiency. A distributed energy balanced routing (DEBR) algorithm is developed to prolong the lifetime of the networks. It has been a privilege to collaborate with so many colleagues on developing this special issue resulting with these articles; they highlight the wide-scope and the significant potential impacts of this emerging research field. The guest editors wish to thank all the authors who submitted their original contributions, whether their papers have been included in this special issue, or not due to time limitations. In addition, the guest editors acknowledge and thank the referees: without their generous investment of time and application of their expertise the high quality of the journal could not be maintained. The advice and support by Dr. M.I. Dessouky, Editor-in-Chief, and his excellent staff of Computers & Industrial Engineering are also greatly appreciated. Guest Editors Wootae Jeong Korea Railroad Research Institute, 360-1, Woram-dong, Uiwang, Gyunggi-do, Republic of Korea Tel.: +82 31 460 5817 E-mail address: [email protected] Shimon Y. Nof * PRISM Center and School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, 315 N. Grant St., West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA * Tel.: +1 765 494 5427; fax: +1 765 494 1299. E-mail addresses: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Computers & Industrial Engineering journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/caie
Editorial
Collaborative e-work networks in industrial engineering Recently, pervasive computing and networking have emerged as a powerful computing and communication environment enabling new features of interactive and collaborative effectiveness, especially with the ability of providing better quality services anytime, anywhere, and for everyone. The field of industrial engineering has realized the enormous potential benefits and challenges of these useful features, and has been directing significant research efforts to the design of the new and emerging e-work environment. This new environment is characterized by automation-supported functions with networking protocols and e-services, communication models, and collaborative information mining, analysis and management (sometimes called ‘‘collaborative analytics”). To facilitate collaborative resource and task sharing, and to support application-specific networking and communications for mutually beneficial collaboration, pervasive computing devices must enable reliable ad hoc communication and networking, and strong computational, logical support of the desired collaboration. With ad hoc, wireless and mobile network communications, two important advantages emerge to sustain this facilitation: Seamless and transparent access to services and applications can be achieved; at the same time, rationalized mechanisms for establishing spontaneous and interactive networking among communicating entities can be provided in the background, as a parallel supportive service layer. Despite considerable progress in mobile computing and wireless communication technologies, industrial engineering fundamental demands and emerging applications are facing complex challenges in several directions in this high-priority area. In developing this special issue, therefore, the guest editors have invited authors to focus on the topics of communication models, interaction models and protocols, networking infrastructure, workflow and information integration, collaborative design, planning, and resource allocation, collaborative processing and decisions, network configuration for collaborative work, and applicability and usability analysis for real-world applications. In addition, to support the emerging collaborative e-work flexibility and wide-open mobility, services and specific applications have been sought, especially where they can adapt to heterogeneous networking environments supporting multi-hop communication in hybrid wired/wireless environments. Authors have responded, and as a result, this special issue provides a significant opportunity for researchers and readers: to investigate novel and forthcoming research problems of collaborative e-work networks, interactions, and communication, with emphasis on industrial engineering principles and responsibilities. The scope includes various aspects of ad hoc networking protocols, services, agent/middleware modeling, industrial application-specific sensor and other multi-agent networks, and complex systems issues associated with these different perspectives. Overall, 26 articles were submitted to this special issue. All submitted manuscripts were subjected to a rigorous blind-refereeing process, as 0360-8352/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cie.2009.01.012
normally followed by this journal. Through several cycles of review and revision processes, however, twelve of them have been finally selected for their special quality and potential interest to the readers of Computers and Industrial Engineering. The results presented in these papers are based on scientific investigation and have a direct bearing on real-life engineering problems. Moreover, the techniques presented have potential application in other, similar situations. The articles’ subject domains cover the three main areas of collaborative e-work networks, and their design so they can be enabled and improved:
– The first two areas involve e-collaboration among humans, processes and systems. – The third area involves e-collaboration among sensors and sensor networks within automation systems. In the area of collaborative e-work in production and service:
‘‘Collaborative networked organizations: concepts and practice in manufacturing enterprises” by Camarinha-Matos, Afsarmanesh, Galeano, and Molina, describes key concepts related to collaborative networked organizations (CNOs), offers a high level classification of collaborative networks, and illustrates application cases in the manufacturing industry. ‘‘e-Work based collaborative optimization approach for strategic logistic network design problem,” by Miranda, Garrido, and Ceroni, develops an e-work based heuristic approach to solve collaboratively the network design problem at strategic and tactical levels. ‘‘Event-driven service coordination for business process integration in ubiquitous enterprises,” by Kong, Jung, and Park, presents an event-driven approach to business process integration by facilitating real-time event processing and distributed service coordination. ‘‘Context modeling and measuring for proactive resource recommendation in business collaboration,” by Gong, Ning, Li, O’Sullivan, Chen, and Decker, proposes a context-sensitive collaboration system to help improve the working efficiency of knowledge workers. An OWL-based context model is used for enabling context reasoning. The last article in this group, ‘‘A query-based cross-language diagnosis tool for distributed decision making support” by
2
Editorial / Computers & Industrial Engineering 57 (2009) 1–2
Choe, Lehto, Park, and Allebach, presents a query translationbased cross-language diagnosis tool for assisting users diagnosing print defects. This contribution is a step in solving increasingly challenging requirements for multi-cultural and crosscultural collaboration, in this case, in collaborative diagnosis. The next group of articles focuses on distributed, collaborative production planning, coordinated process control, and design:
‘‘Multi-tier and multi-site collaborative production: Illustrated by a case example of TFT-LCD manufacturing” by Chen, Huang, and Lai, deals with a distributed production planning system for a multi-tier and multi-site production system, by combining agent technology with advanced planning and scheduling (APS) system. ‘‘A coordinate SPC model for assuring designated fit quality via quality-oriented statistical tolerancing,” by Zhang and Yang, presents a statistical model applied with equal batches for hole/shaft fitting, and achieves a designated fit quality and minimum defective ratio by fully utilizing statistical tolerance zone and the known information of manufactured mating parts. Its contribution is in using statistical SPC for collaborating parties in assembly and supply. ‘‘Asymmetric negotiation based collaborative product design for component reuse in disparate products,” by Li, Zhang and Lin, follows the direction of the previous article by developing a Pareto optimal points prediction, where an optimal design can be jointly determined by all participating designers, even though they represent different and distributed manufactures. ‘‘A method for predicting future location of mobile user for location-based services system,” by Vu, Ryu, and Park, presents a movement rule-based location prediction method (RLP) to guess a user’s future location for location-based services (LBSs). The authors also provide an efficient support to the LBSs provider in monitoring the user intelligently and sending information to the user in a push-driven fashion. Finally, the third group is in the area of ad hoc automation communication and networking:
‘‘A collaborative sensor network middleware for automated production systems,” by Jeong and Nof, addresses the need to deploy wireless networks of micro-sensors that
collaborate for better monitoring and intelligent control in production automation, and presents a middleware structure with optimal or near-optimal deployment scheme for geometry-specific design. ‘‘An auction-based dynamic bandwidth allocation with sensitivity in wireless networked control system” by Tipsuwan, Kamonsantiroj, Srisabye, and Chongstivattana evaluates the effect of a network-induced delay whose purpose is to change the utility or preference in the networked control system (NCS) by applying the average sensitivity term. An auctionbased dynamic bandwidth allocation technique is developed to prevent abuse by self-oriented (‘‘selfish”), non-collaborative systems. ‘‘Distributed energy balanced routing for wireless sensor networks” by Ok, Lee, Mitra, and Kumara, introduces a new metric, energy cost, devised to balance the remaining energy of sensors and energy efficiency. A distributed energy balanced routing (DEBR) algorithm is developed to prolong the lifetime of the networks. It has been a privilege to collaborate with so many colleagues on developing this special issue resulting with these articles; they highlight the wide-scope and the significant potential impacts of this emerging research field. The guest editors wish to thank all the authors who submitted their original contributions, whether their papers have been included in this special issue, or not due to time limitations. In addition, the guest editors acknowledge and thank the referees: without their generous investment of time and application of their expertise the high quality of the journal could not be maintained. The advice and support by Dr. M.I. Dessouky, Editor-in-Chief, and his excellent staff of Computers & Industrial Engineering are also greatly appreciated. Guest Editors Wootae Jeong Korea Railroad Research Institute, 360-1, Woram-dong, Uiwang, Gyunggi-do, Republic of Korea Tel.: +82 31 460 5817 E-mail address: [email protected] Shimon Y. Nof * PRISM Center and School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, 315 N. Grant St., West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA * Tel.: +1 765 494 5427; fax: +1 765 494 1299. E-mail addresses: [email protected]