Reducing costs, increasing speed and leveraging the intelligence of partners involved during product design processes are important benefits of Internet-enabled collaborative product design and realization environments. The options for cost-effective product design, re-design or improvement are at their peak during the early stages of the design process and designers can collaborate with suppliers, manufacturers and other relevant contributors to acquire a better understanding of associated costs and product viability. Collaboration is by no means a new paradigm. However, companies have found distrust of collaborative partners to be the most intractable obstacle to collaborative commerce and Internet-enabled business especially in intellectual property environments, which handle propriety data on a constant basis. This problem is also reinforced in collaborative environments that are distributed in nature. Thus trust is the main driver or enabler of successful collaborative efforts or transactions in Internet-enabled product design environments. Focus is on analyzing the problem of ¡®trust for services¡¯ in distributed collaborative service provider assessment and selection, concentrating on characteristics specific to electronic product design (e-Design) environments. Current tools for such collaborative partner/provider assessment are inadequate or non-existent and researching network, user, communication and service trust problems, which hinder the growth and acceptance of true collaboration in product design, can foster new frontiers in manufacturing, business and technology. Trust and its associated issues within the context of a secure Internet-enabled product design & realization platform is a multifaceted and complex problem, which demands a strategic approach crossing disciplinary boundaries. A Design Environment Trust Service (DETS) framework is proposed to incorporate trust for services in product design environments based on client specified (or default) criteria. This involves the analysis of validated network (objective) data and non-network (subjective) data and the use of Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methodology for the selection of the most efficient service provision alternative through the minimization of distance from a specified ideal point and interpreted as a Dynamic (Design) Trust Index (DTI) or rank. Hence, the service requestor is provided with a quantifiable degree of belief to mitigate information asymmetry and enable knowledgeable decision-making regarding trustworthy service provision in a distributed environment.

Design is functionality driven. All products and parts have some intended reason behind their existence. Although computer aided systems have made considerable advances in capturing and representing geometrical shape, not much progress has been made in capturing and modeling product functionality and its physical realization. This research proposes a methodology to assist designers during the first stages of design. This methodology provides a framework to help the designer translate functional specifications into conceptual forms. This research develops a translation tool to model functionality and to carry out conceptual design with the aid of the computer. This tool serves as a bridge between the conceptual design phase and the detailed design phase of a product. The translation tool developed in this research supports the conceptual design phase by providing a functional data model, a function server model, and a conceptual product model. The functional model includes the use of operands and relations to define and capture product functionality. The function server model represents the physical realization of the specified functions. The conceptual product model organizes and documents the product information in both the functional and the physical domains. The knowledge base for the function servers is stored in a function driven database. This database allows the designer to view design possibilities that may never have occurred to them. Models provided in this work have been implemented as a relational database system by using MySQL. A web-based graphic user interface is developed with PHP to provide an interactive environment for modeling and for searching the function driven database. Propagation of functional and physical information to downstream design activities has been enabled by the use of the XML data format. The models and concepts developed in this research are validated through a case study of a realistic mechanical device.

There is a widespread, but not universal, belief in the software community that software organizations and projects can systematically improve their ability to meet commitments and build high-quality products using principles of software quality management. Quality affects cost and schedule, therefore the engineering practices that affect quality are also a management concern. Understanding the factors that influence software quality is crucial to the continuing maturation of the software industry; an improved understanding of software quality drivers will help software engineers and managers make more informed decisions in controlling and improving the software process. My research is motivated by a desire to understand the effect of disciplined processes and effective teams on improving performance and lessening variability with respect to software quality. Classroom data provides insight into interpersonal differences between competent professionals as increasingly disciplined processes are adopted. Project data using similar processes enables an exploration of the impact of effective teams on software quality. My results show that: * Program size, programmer ability, and disciplined processes significantly affect software quality. * Factors frequently used as surrogates for programmer ability, e.g., years of experience, and technology, e.g., programming language, do not significantly impact software quality. * Recommended practices are not necessarily followed even when processes are consistently performed, e.g., peer reviews may be consistently performed, but the review rates may exceed recommended practice for effective reviews. * When moving from ad hoc processes to disciplined processes, top-quartile performers improve more than 2X; bottom-quartile performers improve more than 4X. * Rigorous statistical techniques that allow for individual differences confirm the importance of process discipline and following recommended practice for improving software quality.

Despite great advances in the field of ergonomics, its integration into computer-aided product design remains a great need, especially during conceptual design. In order that a product be designed for safety and comfort, it is essential that pertinent ergonomic principles be imposed as design constraints during design conceptualization. Further, it is vital that these constraints be propagated to downstream design activities so that they can be considered along with other design constraints such as manufacturing and assembly, in deriving design alternatives and subsequently in determining the outcome of the final product. This should enable the design of safer and more comfortable products, minimize design iterations that often result from ergonomic violations, reduce design cycle time and hence minimize product lifecycle cost. The objective of this dissertation was to provide an efficient and effective method for integrating ergonomics into computer aided product design. To achieve this objective, first, the principles of ergonomics in relation to product design were stated and then represented algebraically so that these principles can easily be integrated into computer aided design. Next, discrete products were categorized into twelve classes on the basis of the function(s) users would perform on them. Ergonomic principles constraining each product class were then provided. As such, by means of this categorization a designer should easily acquire ergonomic rules that constrain a design within a product category. Thirdly, to make ergonomic constraints available to downstream design activities for the generation of design alternatives and subsequently, the derivation of the final product, a means, based on Extensible Markup Language technology, was provided for ergonomic constraints propagation. This work was implemented in a Java-based software application and demonstrated in the design of a wheelchair seat cushion. For validation, the results obtained were compared to those of an existing product.

Dynamics of wage determination of industrial employees

There is an increasing interest in research and development in the area of information security. Areas of computer misuse include the theft of computational resources, disruption of computational services, unauthorized disclosure of computer information and unauthorized modification of computer information. In the recent past decades, there have been myriads of computer security implementations. Nevertheless, there have also been numerous computer break-ins and security breaches. This is a thesis on Information Security Management in Web-Based Product Design and Realization, which is a sub-cluster of a broader currently on-going research project called Pegasus, at the Automation and Robotics Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh. Pegasus is a proposed scalable, flexible, and efficient collaborative web-based (or Internet-oriented) product design system, which will involve continuous transfer of sensitive information across seamless and possibly, international boundaries. The thesis commences with a statement of the problem of information security and presents a comprehensive summary of previous and current related research along with applicable results and application areas. With the dawn of the 21st century upon us and use of the Internet growing exponentially, secrecy in the realm of technology has become an important issue. A managerial approach for alleviating the problem of information security or reducing it to the barest minimum is proposed in this thesis through the design and development of an Information Security Management Model (ISM Model) to monitor, enforce and manage information security. The design of the ISM Model incorporates a methodology for referencing activities in Pegasus with information security technologies.

Designs are conceptualized in terms of the functions they need to accomplish. The need for a new product design arises as a result of the identification of a new functionality to be accomplished by the product. That is, design is functionality driven. However, existing CAD tools are not equipped to capture functionality or reason in such a fashion to support design for product functionality. This research proposes a new design formalism to enable functionality-driven design of mechanically engineered products. This procedure provides a methodology that allows a designer to model product functionality and to carry out conceptual design with the aid of a computer. It also serves as a bridging tool between the conceptual design phase and detailed design phase of a product. Thus, the primary objective of this research is to develop a methodology that will support the following activities in CAD systems: functionality modeling, functionality data structuring, and form conceptualization. The functionality modeling methodology developed in this work includes the use of operands, operators, and coupling bonds to describe product functionality in CAD systems. The Universal Modeling Language (an object-oriented programming technique) is used to model product functionality in computer systems. The tools developed in this research provide a means of modeling and propagating product functionality information to downstream design activities. The propagation of functionality as a constraint is achieved using Extensible Markup Language (XML) data files. These tools also provide a mechanism for verifying and enforcing constraints on solid CAD models. The functionality definition interface is implemented with a customized Microsoft Visio graphics engine. The tools developed in this research provide a means of modeling and propagating product functionality information to downstream design activities. It also provides a mechanism for verifying and enforcing constraints on solid CAD models. The functionality definition interface is implemented with a customized Microsoft Visio graphics engine.

The process of lapping has been long considered an art due to the tremendous amount of variability and subjectivity involved. The quality of lapping differs from operator to operator and the results are highly inconsistent. The material removal rate, surface finish, and flatness all depend on the proper control of lapping parameters such as lapping pressure, lapping speed of rotation, lap ring material, weight and size, abrasive size and type, workpiece material and hardness. To attain the desired outcomes, it is imperative to select proper values for the lapping control parameters. Moving the art of lapping into a science and quantifying the results can solve many of the above problems. In this research, a portable mechanical lapping tool was designed and tested along with manual lapping. Lapping processes were studied by conducting designed experiments, literature search, and consulting experts. The results from the experiments were explored in detail using various statistical techniques to explain the relationships among potential parameters and to see the possibility of lapping model development. A preliminary intelligent computerized lapping system (advisory system) was also developed as a framework for future work. Representative qualitative models and rules for lapping were proposed based on lapping literature and lapping experts knowledge. However, it was found that the domain knowledge obtained from different sources was often clouded by imprecision and uncertainty, and the available data of manufacturing problems were frequently imprecise and incomplete. To overcome this problem, fuzzy logic concepts were applied in developing a protocol for the knowledge-based system. This research is an initiative of well-designed experiments and data analyses in investigating potential parameters of flat surface lapping with an application on reconditioning valve discs and nozzle seats.

The purpose of this dissertation is to develop an instrument to measure the quality, quality changes and the efficiency of a service system with dependency loops on an ongoing basis in order to provide timely feedback for decision-makers and to set the basis for a continuous improvement cycle. This instrument is developed using an engineering educational system as the prime example. The first outcome has been a data driven Strengths and Weakness (SW) analysis. It consists of four steps - data collection, data summarization, display of proportions (data aggregated into positive, neutral and negative perceptions), and the construction of a SW table by using a set of heuristic rules that reflects the decision-maker's desired level of sensitivity for the methodology. The core of the method resides in selecting the category with the largest proportion for a finite population where each element is classified into exactly one of k mutually exclusive categories. The heuristic rules used for classification are justified using the concepts of statistical ranking and selection procedures. Applications of the SW table in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses are given. Special graphs, e.g. the one-dimensional and two-dimensional arrows that help the analysis have been constructed so as to provide aid to the decision makers in the engineering educational system. The second outcome provides a scheme for the evaluation of the relative efficiency of processes within this type of service system. Data Envelopment Analysis has been used iteratively to evaluate the efficiency of levels and programs within an engineering educational service system. This is used to chart the changes in students' perceptions as they progress during their career from the freshmen to the senior level.

Cooperative query answering for approximate answers has been utilized in various problem domains. Many challenges in manufacturing information retrieval, such as: classifying parts into families in group technology implementation, choosing the closest alternatives or substitutions for an out-of-stock part, or finding similar existing parts for rapid prototyping, could be alleviated using the concept of cooperative query answering. Most cooperative query answering techniques proposed by researchers so far concentrate on simple queries or single table information retrieval. Query relaxations in searching for approximate answers are mostly limited to attribute value substitutions. Many hierarchical structure information systems, such as manufacturing information systems, store their data in multiple tables that are connected to each other using hierarchical relationships aggregation, generalization/specialization, classification, and category. Due to the nature of hierarchical structure information systems, information retrieval in such domains usually involves nested or jointed queries. In addition, searching for approximate answers in hierarchical structure databases not only considers attribute value substitutions, but also must take into account attribute or relation substitutions (i.e., WIDTH to DIAMETER, HOLE to GROOVE). For example, shape transformations of parts or features are possible and commonly practiced. A bar could be transformed to a rod. Such characteristics of hierarchical information systems, simple query or single-relation query relaxation techniques used in most cooperative query answering systems are not adequate. In this research, we proposed techniques for neighbor knowledge constructions, and complex query relaxations. We enhanced the original Pattern-based Knowledge Induction (PKI) and Distribution Sensitive Clustering (DISC) so that they can be used in neighbor hierarchy constructions at both tuple and attribute levels. We developed a cooperative query answering model to facilitate the approximate answer searching for complex queries. Our cooperative query answering model is comprised of algorithms for determining the causes of null answer, expanding qualified tuple set, expanding intersected tuple set, and relaxing multiple condition simultaneously. To calculate the semantic nearness between exact-match answers and approximate answers, we also proposed a nearness measuring function, called Block Nearness, that is appropriate for the query relaxation methods proposed in this research.