From industry and defense we have learned that a holistic design approach should be adopted to integrate data and knowledge management. In all knowledge work, the life-cycle management of data structures, properties and parameters, values and ranges, dependencies, rules, decisions, and experiences, require in-depth understanding of the data. This in-depth understanding is workspace dependent, local and possessed by practitioners only.
A holistic design approach should therefore be applied, where data models are defined, adapted, and managed by practitioners in a role-oriented Federated Knowledge Architecture. A knowledge architecture is capable of providing the work contexts required for self-serve distributed data management.
How Product Models Determine Business Process Models
June 19, 2009
Business processes are commonly defined as a set of related activities directed at producing an outcome. In bureaucratic case processing, the outcome is typically a decision, which is documented in a case file and communicated using e.g. formal letters. For the management, improvement and automation of some of these processes, BPM and workflow systems are adequate. Knowledge intensive processes like engineering, design, and construction, however, produce outcomes that are far more complex. To manage, improve, and automate such processes, we must design product models and process models in parallel, with evolving product structures as the core and foundation. This post presents a case from oil&gas field development, outlines why a product-driven business process management approach is needed, and how it is applied. Read the rest of this entry »
Methodologies for Active Knowledge Architectures
April 23, 2009
Innovative design is the most important competitive factor for global engineering and manufacturing. Critical challenges include cutting lead times for new products, increasing stakeholder involvement, facilitating life-cycle knowledge sharing, service provisioning, and support. Current IT solutions for product lifecycle management fail to meet these challenges because they are built to perform routine information processing, rather than support agile creative work.
Active knowledge modeling is a family of methodologies that address this situation, utilizing model-driven application platforms. This post presents an overview of different methodologies applied to implement pragmatic and powerful design platforms, by building and utilizing active knowledge architectures (AKA).
Property Modeling – The Blind Spot of Object-Orientation
March 27, 2009
Properties define the data values that are important in a domain. In product design, properties and parameters are used for quantifying requirements, for setting agreed upon targets, and for assessing the qualities of different solutions. Product data management (PDM) therefore places properties at the centre of attention, and properties are perhaps the most important kind of elements in PDM standards, cf. independent property definition in STEP, and e.g. the DIN product property dictionary. Design methodology processes are defined according to what kind of properties are defined, related, mapped, balanced, estimated, calculated etc. in each step. Generally, required and target properties are defined long before the objects that will eventually possess them are properly identified or classified.
Yet in IT, properties and attributes are normally treated as second class citizens compared to objects. In database schema, they define the columns of entities, while in object oriented design, they are just subordinate features of object classes. OWL (Web Ontology Language) is a notable exception. It supports property modeling independent of object classes. In the reflective variant OWL Full users may remove the differences between objects and properties, to model features of and relationships between properties. This variant is however seldom applied, because it cannot guarantee sound formal reasoning for automatic execution. In information systems research, Jeffrey Parsons has shown how properties determine classification structures, rather than vice versa. These examples, however, are exceptions to the common practice. This is why our modeling principles include the representation of properties as first class citizens. Read the rest of this entry »
Principles for Model-Driven Applications
March 13, 2009
Based on 10-15 years of experience in research and development of model-driven applications, I here propose some design principles for active modeling platforms. The objective is to provide end users with a modeling framework that is simple enough for their use, yet powerful enough to define complete executable applications. While most of these principles are known to modeling experts, few are fully supported by the modeling tools currently on the market. The principles deal with modeling language, openness and evolution, reuse and inheritance, multiple views, modeling tools and methodologies. Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Lillehagen
Håvard Jørgensen
Active Knowledge Modeling 
