Automotive Architecture Framework: The experience of Volvo Cars

The automotive domain is living an extremely challenging historical moment shocked by many emerging business and technological needs. Electrification, autonomous driving, and connected cars are some of the driving needs in this changing world. Increasingly, vehicles are becoming software-intensive complex systems and most of the innovation within the automotive industry is based on electronics and software. Modern vehicles can have over 100 Electronic Control Units (ECUs), which are small computers, together executing gigabytes of software. ECUs are connected to each other through several networks within the car, and the car is increasingly connected with the outside world. These novelties ask for a change on how the software is engineered and produced and for a disruptive renovation of the electrical and software architecture of the car. In this paper we describe the current investigation of Volvo Cars to create an architecture framework able to cope with the complexity and needs of present and future vehicles. Specifically, we present scenarios that describe demands for the architectural framework and introduce three new viewpoints that need to be taken into account for future architectural decisions: Continuous Integration and Deployment, Ecosystem and Transparency, and car as a constituent of a System of Systems. Our results are based on a series of focus groups with experts in automotive engineering and architecture from different companies and universities.     

Plant closing: A case study at Volvo and Renault

In autumn 1992 the board of the Volvo concern decided to close down the plants at Kalmar and Uddevalla, the plants that for a long time had reputed Volvo to develop a new Swedish form of work organization within car industry. In this article I analyze the plant closing by the theory of dual industrial structures. I find this theory valuable. It provides a complementary sociological approach to the discussion. I point to the importance of the negotiations going on, at the time, of an amalgamation of Volvo and Renault, as well as of the corporate tradition of Renault, characterized by a Fordistic concept of production. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Developing a Culture of Privacy: A Case Study

In building a culture of privacy, an organization must clearly articulate privacy as an organizational priority; communicate key privacy and security messages; educate across the organization; raise awareness of the importance of registering privacy incidents and breaches; build privacy into the fabric of the organization's activities; and make privacy information and guidance readily accessible. Accomplishing these objectives provides a framework to create or reinforce a privacy culture. In 2003, the province of Ontario, Canada, created the smart systems for health agency (SSHA) to connect healthcare professionals across the province.     

A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Open Source Software Project Characteristics on Positive Outcomes

This article formulates and tests a set of hypotheses about the success of open source software projects with respect to market penetration and human resource attraction. The authors collected data from 1025 open source software projects in a longitudinal study. The cross-sectional results show that the extent of a project’s operating systems, the range of translated languages, programming languages, and project age positively impact OSS projects’ positive outcomes with respect to market penetration and human resource attraction.     

基于企业创新需求的设计服务发展模式研究

我国当下经济、政策、产业的导向都为设计服务业的发展带来机遇。而作为设计服务业主体的设计公司由于自身发展的局限性,导致其经营定位模糊、层次不清。以企业创新所提出的纵向专业化服务深度的需求和横向多专业领域服务广度的需求为线索,设计公司可以明确自己的发展路径,接合自身特点与优势选择定位,从而抓住发展的机遇。     

Agile Project Management: A Case Study of a Virtual Research Environment Development Project

In this paper we use a case study of a project to create a Web 2.0-based, Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for researchers to share digital resources in order to reflect on the principles and practices for embedding eResearch applications within user communities. In particular, we focus on the software development methodologies and project management techniques adopted by the project team in order to ensure that the project remained responsive to changing user requirements without compromising their capacity to keep the project ‘on track’, i.e. meeting the goals declared in the project proposal within budget and on time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we describe how the project team, whose members are distributed across multiple sites (and often mobile), exploit a repertoire of coordination mechanisms, communication modes and tools, artefacts and structuring devices as they seek to establish the orderly running of the project while following an agile, user-centred development approach.     

Use of Social Media in Inbound Open Innovation: Building Capabilities for Absorptive Capacity

This study investigates the effects of the use of social media in inbound open innovation on capabilities for absorptive capacity of companies. Seven explorative case studies were conducted in an R&D and business context of two large global high‐tech companies. The results suggest that if the necessary conditions are met, social media usage increases the transparent, moderational and multi‐directional interactions that in turn influence four capabilities for absorptive capacity: connectedness, socialization tactics, cross‐functionality and receptivity, a hitherto overlooked capability. Hence, we observe that social media are boundary‐spanning tools that can be used to build and increase companies' absorptive capacity.     

Visualization Support for Developing a Matrix Calculus Algorithm: A Case Study

The development of custom interactive visualization tools for specific domains and applications has been made much simpler recently by a surge of visualization tools, libraries and frameworks. Most of these tools are developed for classical data science applications, where a user is supported in analyzing measured or simulated data. But recently, there has also been an increasing interest in visual support for understanding machine learning algorithms and frameworks, especially for deep learning. Many, if not most, of the visualization support for (deep) learning addresses the developer of the learning system and not the end user (data scientist). Here we show on a specific example, namely the development of a matrix calculus algorithm, that supporting visualizations can also greatly benefit the development of algorithms in classical domains like in our case computer algebra. The idea is similar to visually supporting the understanding of learning algorithms, namely provide the developer with an interactive, visual tool that provides insights into the workings and, importantly, also into the failures of the algorithm under development. Developing visualization support for matrix calculus development went similar as the development of more traditional visual support systems for data analysts. First, we had to acquaint ourselves with the problem, its language and challenges by talking to the core developer of the matrix calculus algorithm. Once we understood the challenge, it was fairly easy to develop visual support that streamlined the development of the matrix calculus algorithm significantly.     

Design Contribution to the Competitive Performance of SMEs: The Role of Design Innovation Capabilities

The strategic role of design‐driven innovation is being increasingly recognized. Many studies show that investments in design positively influence the innovative capacity of firms and consequently their competitive performance. However, few researchers have explored how this relationship comes about. The studies that over the years have contributed to the understanding of design have identified two main barriers: the lack of a common language on design, and poor analysis of the dynamics that characterize the relationship between investment in design and competitive performance. In this paper, we investigate six small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) located in the Lombardy region of Italy that have received funding from a policy aimed to develop design innovation capabilities. We identify and discuss five different design innovation capabilities and we analyse their role in mediating the relationship between investment in design and competitive performance.     

车用定速器系统的系统级设计方法研究

实时系统的性能(如实现成本,满足时间约束的能力)很大程度上取决于设计人员的早期决策。本文首先提出一种新的异构实时系统的系统级设计方法。新方法能够帮助设计人员迅速确定适当的系统结构并实现功能划分。然后,本文以车用定速器系统前期设计为例,证明了通过新方法确定的实时系统结构不仅能够满足时间约束,并且能够实现系统资源的最优化。     

E-Learning technologies: A key to Dynamic Capabilities

The field of Dynamic Capabilities has evolved very rapidly in recent years. Enhancing Dynamic Capabilities is considered to be a major tool to achieving a sustained competitive advantage. However, Dynamic Capabilities are inherently complex and there is a great deal of research on their various contributing factors. On a parallel research track, much has been written on the significance and long-lasting contribution of Knowledge Management and Learning on competitive advantage. Today’s learning in organizations is increasingly centred around Electronic-Learning (E-Learning). This paper suggests that there is a solid link between technological tools (E-Learning), management processes (Knowledge Management) and organizational outcome (Dynamic Capabilities), and discusses the impact of E-Learning technologies on for-profit organizations as a means of enhancing Dynamic Capabilities through Knowledge Sharing, both within and across the organization’s boundaries. Managers and knowledge experts in three leading companies were surveyed. The findings show that firms can acquire significant Dynamic Capabilities by using E-Learning technologies to promote Knowledge Sharing. It is further concluded that using E-Learning for developing channels of Knowledge Sharing across the organization helps to ensure excellence and competitiveness by increasing much sought-after Dynamic Capabilities.     

增强中国电信自主创新能力的思考

党的十六届五中全会明确提出,要把增强自主创新能力作为国家战略,致力于建设创新型国家。建设自主创新体系、打造优秀自主品牌,是提升中国电信核心竞争力的关键环节,也是强力推进企业转型战略的重大课题。自主创新的内涵自主创新,既可以理解为一种集团战略和发展道路,也可以理解为一种科技创新方式。根据中国电信发展实际,笔者认为,自主创新的内涵应该包括四方面。一是加强原始性创新。重视WiMAX,NGN,3G,FMC,IMS等技术的跟踪、研究,把握技术方向。积极参与国内和国际电信行业的技术标准制定,与国内主要电信运营企业、设备制造企业进行…     

NIMS-PL: A Cable-Driven Robot With Self-Calibration Capabilities

We present the Networked InfoMechanical System for Planar Translation, which is a novel two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) cable-driven robot with self-calibration and online drift-correction capabilities. This system is intended for actuated sensing applications in aquatic environments. The actuation redundancy resulting from in-plane translation driven by four cables results in an infinite set of tension distributions, thus requiring real-time computation of optimal tension distributions. To this end, we have implemented a highly efficient, iterative linear programming solver, which requires a very small number of iterations to converge to the optimal value. In addition, two novel self-calibration methods have been developed that leverage the robot's actuation redundancy. The first uses an incremental displacement, or jitter method, whereas the second uses variations in cable tensions to determine end-effector location. We also propose a novel least-squares drift-detection algorithm, which enables the robot to detect long-term drift. Combined with self-calibration capabilities, this drift-monitoring algorithm enables long-term autonomous operation. To verify the performance of our algorithms, we have performed extensive experiments in simulation and on a real system.     

SARA: A Robotic System For Cars Fuelling

The paper presents a robot prototype designed for the autonomous fuelling of vehicles, with attention on users safety and surrounding impact. The overall duty is analysed and proper suggestions are developed to organise the operation cycle in view of regulatory schemes, most likely, soon issued by Authorities for development sustainability rules. The manipulation architecture appears to be central requirement for the effectiveness of any feasible fixture and the main characteristics of the purposely selected solution are shortly summarised. For the related overseeing arrangement, the project moves from an analysis of prototypal fixtures, already built and tested in the USA and EU, and looks about opportunities in standardising subsets of vehicles devices to simplify the fuelling tasks.     

Auto-Discovery Capabilities for Service Management: An ISP Case Study

Auto-discovery is one of the key technologies that enables management systems to be quickly customized to the environments that they are intended to manage. As Internet services have grown in complexity in recent years, it is no longer sufficient to monitor and manage these services in isolation. Instead, it is critical that management systems discover dependencies that exist among Internet services, and use this knowledge for correlation of measurement resutls, so as to determine the root-causes of problems. While most existing management systems have focused on discovery of host, servers, and network elements in isolation, in this paper we describe auto-discovery techniques that discover relationships among services. Since new Internet services and service elements are being deployed at a rapid pace, it is essential that the discovery methodologies be implemented in an extensible manner, so that new discovery capabilities can be incrementally added to the management system. In this paper, we present an extensible architecture for auto-discovery and describe a prototype implementation of this architecture and associated auto-discovery techniques. We also highlight experiences from applying these techniques to discover real-world ISP systems. Although described in the context of ISP systems, the concepts described in this paper are applicable for the discovery of services and inter-service relationships in enterprise systems as well.     

It Outsourcing and Core is Capabilities: Challenges and Lessons at Dupont

This article explores the following question: For firms that have outsourced major portions of their IT functions, what core IS capabilities do they need to retain and nurture, or create and develop, to ensure a strong IS capability over time? the challenges and lessons learned from implementing major IT outsourcing arrangements from 1997 to 2004 at Dupont are used to reexamine a previously published IS capabilities framework by the authors.     

The Front End of Radical Innovation: A Case Study of Idea and Concept Development at Prime Group

A firm's ability to develop radical innovation is heavily contingent on the front‐end phases where ideas and concepts are created, yet few empirical studies provide detailed insights into radical idea and concept development. Using literature on problem finding and problem solving, we explore how radically new ideas and concepts emerge, and outline the process by which they are created. Based on multiple case studies of five completed and two ongoing projects conducted by a highly innovative consultancy firm, Prime Group, the article proposes a six‐step process for radical idea and concept development. The insights provide theoretical implications and advice for how firms can increase novelty and success rates of emergent radical ideas and concepts.     

Empirical evaluation of the reformed assembly work at the Volvo Uddevalla plant: Psychosocial effects and performance aspects

This paper reports on the innovative, now defunct, Volvo Uddevalla final assembly plant. Theoretical frames of reference, the design process and empirical data on work group characteristics and working conditions are focused upon.

Information regarding the Uddevalla plant has been gathered during a long-term co-operation project with the Volvo Corporation. During the closing-down period we obtained full access to all the production engineering data and personnel files available. We also had the opportunity of studying the responses to a questionnaire distributed to a random sample of blue-collar workers.

Working conditions in Uddevalla in the form of psychosocial job factors are compared with industrial blue-collar workers in general as well as with assembly workers in the closed down Volvo Kalmar final assembly plant, which had a different, more traditional, production system. The paper also compares the psychosocial job factors, performance measures and work-group characteristics in the five assembly workshops in the Uddevalla plant.

In comparing assembly workshops, the paper contrasts two approaches to competence development and work structuring used in Uddevalla, namely (1) giving priority to individual in-depth training of a specific task or (2) giving priority to a large competence overlap between individuals in a work group.

Relevance to industry

This paper reports and explains some results from a multidisciplinary evaluation of shop-floor work in the Volvo Uddevalla plant, a full-scale assembly plant with parallellized flow and long cycle time, using autonomous work groups. These experiences should be of general interest to industries searching for the factory of the future.