A method has been created that addresses the issues that prohibit the conversion of product artifacts into a secure, efficient and reliable Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) environment. These issues include automatic import of data into a PLM system and revision control of such data. A test case is shown which specifically addresses these issues as they pertain to the management of both legacy and new engineering data in a PLM system.

How do we as art educators help adolescents maintain artistic creation as a way of visual expression? This study reviews artistic approaches among kindergarten through eighth grade students as they relate to the U-curve model of development (Davis, 1997; Pariser & van den Berg, 1997). As an art educator, my observation has been that as students approach seventh and eighth grades they lose confidence in their art making abilities as they try to draw in a realistic manner. When asked if they think they are artists, most are certain that they are not. This lack in confidence is in stark contrast to the lower elementary students, who when asked the same question, are certain that they are artists and create in an uninhibited manner. The problem addressed in this thesis is the decline in artistic confidence in older children and ways we as art educators can help adolescents maintain artistic creation as visual expression. A survey was conducted in response to this problem that explored the artistic approaches of kindergarten through eighth grade students to address the decline of artistic activity in older children. This survey included questionnaires that were given to the seventh and eighth grade students I taught to help answer the question as to why adolescents become more inhibited and lose the desire to create art the same way they did when they were younger. The questionnaires were given to each student before and after the Core Knowledge based art curriculum asking students if they thought they were artists and how confident they were in making art. The findings showed a measurable increase in students' self-confidence as artists after experiencing a Core Knowledge based art curriculum. A review of current textbooks revealed that not enough curricula which included contemporary practices were included in many elementary and secondary art programs. Only 2 percent of the art textbooks examined included units that dealt with contemporary art and postmodern practices after 1980. Much is being taught in art history and the historical functions of art, leaving large gaps in contemporary art and postmodern practices. A Core Knowledge based art curriculum was designed in response to the ostensible demise of art making as a way of visual expression in adolescent children. Historical practices bridged with contemporary practices such as appropriation, Conceptual art, and Installation art are included in the curriculum and designed to boost students' confidence and interest in artistic creation. A Core Knowledge based art curriculum for seventh and eighth grades consists of three units: Pre-modern, Modern, and Postmodern. Three periods of time, the Renaissance, High Modernism, and Contemporary art are covered within these units. The first two lesson units, the Renaissance and High Modernism, lead up to the Contemporary art unit which includes Conceptual art and culminates in an installation piece. Each unit contains two lesson plans. The first lesson in each unit covers historical aspects of that particular era, and the second lesson ties current practices with the historical content of each specific unit. Within each unit, students explore different ways of making art through appropriation, borrowing ideas, Conceptual art, and Installation art. As students build on various concepts and learn new ways to make art, they are more able to sustain artistic creation as visual expression through new methods and materials. The three lesson units included in the Core Knowledge based curriculum are not only designed to sustain artistic creation and help students to gain self-confidence in their own abilities, but also to gain a better understanding of the contemporary art world around them. Students' understandings are broadened as they learn about the artists and art movements from previous eras and their connections to artists, ideas, and art movements today.

Yes / Global manufacturing industry mostly depends on new product development and processes to become competitive. The product development process for automotive industry is normally complicated, lengthy, expensive, and risky. Hence, a study of lean manufacturing processes for low volume manufacturing in automotive industry is proposed to overcome this issue by eliminating all wastes in the lengthy process. This paper presents a conceptual design approach to the development of a hybrid Knowledge Based (KB) system for lean process in Low Volume Automotive Manufacturing (LVAM). The research concentrates on the low volume processes by using a hybrid KB system, which is a blend of KB system and Gauging Absences of Pre-requisites (GAP). The hybrid KB/GAP system identifies all potential waste elements of low volume process manufacturing. The KB system analyses the difference between the existing and the benchmark standards for lean process for an effective implementation through the GAP analysis technique. The proposed model explores three major lean process components, namely Employee Involvement, Waste Elimination, and Kaizen (continuous improvement). These three components provide valuable information in order for decision makers to design and implement an optimised low volume manufacturing process, but which can be applied in all process manufacturing, including chemical processing.

Yes / The current healthcare systems have numerous gaps that need to be filled to reach the best practice. This paper presents a novel approach to design and validate a hybrid knowledge-based system (KBS) to evaluate QM of healthcare environment (QMHE) using a hybrid system that has not been used before. It will be combined with gauge absence perquisite (GAP) method to sustain a successful operation of the large number of key performance indicators (KPIs) that involved in QMHE and to detect the gap between each KPI and the anticipated point. Out of 354 KB rules answered, the system has categorised 225 as GPs and the remaining 128 as BPs. The 128 bad points are categorised into different problem categories (20 PC-1, 34 PC-2, 34 PC-3, 40 PC-4, and 0 PC-5) where they represent the actions that need to be enhanced to reach the desired level of quality management.

The agile creation of 3D CAD platforms (3D CAD models that can be configured to obtain a family of Products) has become an important factor for increasing competitiveness of organizations that create discrete products. Design Automation (DA) is a powerful tool that can be used for speeding up and optimizing the design process of those 3D CAD platforms. Nonetheless, for effectively applying DA on the development of 3D CAD platforms it is desirable to count on tools that address the three fundamental hurdles that are also obstructing the wide adoption of DA in practice. These hurdles are the lack of identification of DA opportunities, the absence of performance metrics, and the absence of methods for continuous improvement. This dissertation contributes a set of methods and tools to incrementally improve the process for creating 3D CAD platforms towards increased automation. The tools proposed include the development of a Metrics Framework (MF) for assessing the capabilities of an organization for creating 3D CAD platforms; a method for increasing the organizational capabilities for creating 3D CAD platforms, and a method for identifying optimal improvement efforts for creating 3D CAD platforms in a multi-objective scenario

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It is a notoriously difficult task to find winningstrategies for multi-agent games. Especially if one or multipleagents lack the information required to determine which statethe game is in. When this type of uncertainty arises in a gameit is referred to as a multi-agent game of imperfect information.In this project we designed and built a tool for strategysynthesis of multi-agent games against nature. The strategysynthesis was knowledge-based and therefore a multi-agentextension of the Knowledge Based Subset Construction, builtby a previous project group, was applied to the input games.This construction creates a new knowledge-based game, withreduced uncertainty compared to the initial multi-agent game ofimperfect information. We constructed the tool using a forwardsearch heuristic which meant that it would locate all existingwinning strategies.We study the performance of the tool by comparing itto a baseline approach relying solely on randomisation. Thiscomparison was performed on five different games. Our toolfound every relevant strategy for each game at least 35% fasterthan the baseline found the same amount of unique winningstrategies. If a strategy can win without transitioning througha state, then that state is not relevant and is not part of thestrategy. The comparison test for this game shows that the toolis working very well. / Det är ökänt svårt att hitta strategier för spel för fleragentspel. Speciellt om en eller flera agenter saknar informationen som krävs för att avgöra vilket tillstånd de befinner sig i. Dessa spel kallas för spel av imperfekt information.  I det här projektet designade och byggde vi ett verktyg för att syntetisera en strategi för fleragentspel mot naturen. Syntetisering var kunskapsbaserad och därför applicerades ett verktyg, Knowledge Based Subset Construction för fleragentspel som skapats av en tidigare grupp, på det önskade spelet. Denna konstruktion skapar ett nytt kunskapsbaserat spel, med minskad osäkerhet jämfört med det initiala flerspelarspelet av imperfekt information. Vi skapade vårt verktyg med en heuristik som bygger på framåt-sök. Detta resulterar i att den hittar alla vinnande strategier.  Vi valde att jämföra vårt verktyg med en slumpbaserad strategisyntes, för att undersöka hur snabbt verktyget är. Vi jämförde med fem olika spel. Verktyget fann alla relevanta vinnande strategier för spelen minst 35% snabbare än vad den slumpbaserade metoden kunde finna lika många unika vinnande strategier som vi. Om en strategi var vinnande utan att passera ett tillstånd var det tillståndet inte relevant och därför inte med i strategien Detta gör att vi anser verktyget som väl fungerande. / Kandidatexjobb i elektroteknik 2020, KTH, Stockholm

Yes / The cost of medical care is snowballing at an alarming and unmaintainable rate universally. Consequently, the need for a trusted quality management (QM) system at healthcare organizations is a must. Such system will aid the healthcare governance to increase the effectiveness and decrease the cost. It will help in minimizing the risk and enhancing patient safety. Several challenges facing healthcare QM in Oman are creating computerizing monitoring tool and confirming commitment of decision makers at all levels. The Report of Quality and Patient Safety (RQPS) in Oman 2016 highlighted the low level of patient safety and quality culture among staff. It recommended to inaugurate a well-defined organizational chart based on each healthcare organization’s vision and mission. Therefore, it is important to design a national accreditation system that is accredited by an international accreditation body. Such step will help in prioritizing the needs and minimizing the cost of maintaining and upgrading systems. To overcome these challenges, this article is presenting a novel methodology of hybrid knowledge-based (KB) system to assess QM in healthcare environment (QMHE) using gauging absence of prerequisites tool for benchmarking and analytical hierarchy process for prioritizing. The KB-QMHE model can be used as a standard to assess QM at any healthcare organization around the globe. The results showed that 852 questions were answered by the quality managers in a tertiary hospital in Oman; the percentage of bad points in this hospital was 32%. The KB-QMHE model has clearly shown that the priority 1, in level 0, is to focus on the patient-centered dimension in the healthcare quality dimensions submodule. Output, also, suggested a prioritized action plan covering healthcare governance module, healthcare leadership module and healthcare organization’s resources module in level 1–3.