Jan-Crister Persson, president of the Swedish Institute of Production Engineering Research, described a management approach called "Four-Leaf Clover Holistics." According to Persson, the driving force in the short- and long-term must be value for the customer, and that is a combination of perceived quality, value for the money, short lead times and delivery times, and lean, sustainable use of resources. In the global markets of today, opportunities present themselves and disappear so rapidly that immediate access to information is critical to decision-making and, in the end, success. In Persson's mind, the uncertainty in decisions increases as data increases because you often "don't know what you don't know" — you have data without having information that can be acted upon, but you are so overwhelmed that you think you know everything you need.

A guideline that Persson's Institute uses is a holistic approach that says it is not enough to have market studies, brand-name and product portfolios, concurrent engineering, target-setting and other elements in place — you must use four specific aspects, the Four-Leaf Clover:

• Improvement in the competency of people.
  
  
• Improvement through hardware investments, including computers and software.
  
  
• Improvement in the organizational control structure.
  
  
• Improvement in routines and the informal, unwritten rules of the enterprise.

"You have to change and improve all four leafs," Persson explains, "and do so at the same time. This holistic approach should be applied to industrial projects, research programs and development on the whole for improved, faster results."

Human factors were a topic of interest at the conference. Anna Johansson and Ulrika Harlin of Chalmers University in G�teborg showed that when system designers, developers and programmers shape human-machine interfaces in automated manufacturing systems (AMS), they, to a large extent, define working conditions for future operators. To be able to shape systems in a way that both human and technical resources are combined and balanced creates the optimal environment. "Results show that dynamic AMS requires procedures and support systems for interventions, not only for normal production," they claimed. "Unfortunately, there is a risk that human aspects are considered very late in the development phase. The important question, therefore, is how to consider these aspects early in the development and to make it a normal procedure to be used in all designs and changes. Indeed, our research shows that human considerations in an AMS environment requires a never-ending process."

A pilot program aimed at providing information support for practical decision-making at the shop floor level called DECIDE-IT was discussed by Ebrahim Mazharsolook and David Robinson of Key Industrial Software Systems (Portsmouth, UK) and Kostas Seferis of TASIS Ltd. (Athens, Greece). Designed to provide assistance to operators in troubleshooting situations, the information support will be directly relevant to that which is required to solve the problem at hand. It will come in the form of guidance incorporating knowledge from key personnel, experienced operators, existing company IT systems, and quality control experts. The presentation to the operator can be in computer multimedia or simpler on-screen, interactive forms, including flowcharts of the process under consideration or repair.

In companies of this size, redirection of resources from troubleshooting to business management could be very important. Getting business managers, often the director or owner, with the experience and knowledge of the equipment to come to the shop floor is a waste of resources and should be avoided. DECIDE-IT might be a solution. The system will be dynamic and updated by the companies when new problems and solutions are uncovered.

Another project discussed was Esprit Project 8162: QUALIT (Quality Assessment of Living with Information Technology). The objective was to provide support for the management of organizational change with the simultaneous enhancement of business performance and quality of work life. The program consortium established a forum called the European Laboratory for Change Management and People Empowerment with the aim of creating a learning community to exchange, discuss and develop approaches, methods and tools for managing the change process and improving the quality of life of the organization's members. In addition, it selects successful case studies to implement a Case Study Library and disseminate the principles formulated in the QUALIT project, creating a network of excellence for change management and people empowerment.

As the European Commission comes to the end of its Fourth Framework and looks out to the Fifth, projects such as these are the cornerstones for its continued importance to European manufacturers. In 1999, the name will change from Esprit to the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme as the Fifth Framework takes hold. Evolving Enterprise will continue to bring you these reports and other information from the Commission throughout 1999 and beyond.

The Esprit program funds research and development programs that afford its members advantages in global markets. A "graduate" of the program and continuing participant in ongoing Esprit projects is EPM Technology of Oslo, Norway. EPM Technology is a spin-off from EPM Consultants and was founded in December 1994. Both EPM Technology and EPM Consultants are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Jotne Group.

EPM Technology's mission is to develop and market software products based upon the ISO 10303 Standard for Product Data Representation and Exchange — STEP — and the data modeling language Express. These products are for use in application areas such as STEP, CALS, PSOC, PDIX, GIS, PDM and EDI. As part of the introduction of STEP-based products and technology to users, EPM offers companies on-site consulting in the application and implementation of STEP and Express-based technology.

Product development is done by a team of engineers with experience in mechanical components and systems, process control, manufacturing, offshore oil and gas exploration/production and automation. In addition, the development team employs experienced software architects with backgrounds in client/server computing, object-oriented technologies, and systems and database design.

The specification and implementation of EPM's Express Data Manager has been part of major European R&D; projects. The core technology has been developed over six years and is based on an implementation of the Express language itself. EPM Technology is the first company implementing a complete database management system designed for the storage, manipulation and access to both data models and product models according to the STEP standard. Compared to relational as well as object-oriented database systems, this implementation gives superior performance and increased functionality for implementing Express information models.

The information handled by Express Data Manager is contained in data models rather than in paper-based blueprints or application-specific programs, databases or texts. These models are created and defined in Express, the information modeling language specified in STEP (ISO 10303-11). Like other computer languages, Express has a well-defined syntax, structure and set of language rules. In sharp contrast to other languages, however, in an Express-based approach to product data, the models are totally independent of any underlying implementation tools.


Research Programs

EPM Technology continues the extensive work done by EPM Consultants in Esprit research projects. They have been engaged in the PRODEX project (budget: $10 million) which ran from July 1992 through June 1995. PRODEX demonstrated the use of STEP for the exchange of product data between different systems for mechanical design and analysis in manufacturing. Twelve European CAD and FEA (finite element analysis) vendors and five system integrators cooperated in this effort. Today EPM is engaged in other European Community-financed Esprit projects as well.

With extensive contracts from major manufacturers in Europe, Asia and the Americas, EPM Technology can count on generous feedback on its products and their application. One such manufacturer is British Aerospace (see page 14 for additional information on British Aerospace). Every major aerospace project relies on a complex web of partners, subcontractors and suppliers. The prime contractor must bring order to the myriad of elements of data that flow around a project so that the product can be delivered. Sharing information can be a technology challenge. At British Aerospace, the company needed to consolidate all the information required in the design, manufacture and life-cycle support of the Nimrod 2000, a state-of-the-art anti-submarine/surface ship aircraft.

To support the program, the prime contractor — British Aerospace Military Aircraft & Aerostructures group — is employing IBM's product data management (PDM) system, ProductManager. However, a major subcontractor is British Aerospace Airbus, a separate group. The Airbus group uses Optegra PDM from Computervision. Rather than develop a point-to-point translator to move data between the two programs, a more general translator is being developed using EPM's Express Data Manager.

In addition to addressing the immediate data exchange requirements, this STEP implementation will provide useful information for other projects, including the Eurofighter. In an environment where many organizations need to cooperate and each has its own tools and infrastructure, the only long-term solution is to use powerful standards like STEP in an intelligent manner. EPM is taking the work it did under the Esprit program and applying it for the advantage of the marketplace in general. In the end, the business model that was developed and the technology that came from the Esprit program are combined into a successful commercial venture.

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