Managing Information Risks in asset management - Experiences from an in-depth case study in the utility industry

Information is one of the most important resources in our globalized economy. The value of information often exceeds the value of physical assets. Information quality has, in many ways, an impact on asset management organisations and asset managers struggle to understand and to quantify it, which is a prerequisite for effective information quality improvement. Over the past few years, we have developed an innovative management concept that addresses these new asset management challenges: a process for Total Information Risk Management (TIRM), which has been already tested in a number of asset management industries. The TIRM process enables to manage information quality more effectively in asset management organisations as it focuses specifically on the risks that are imposed by information quality. In this paper, we show how we have applied the TIRM process in an in-depth study at a medium-sized European utility provider, the Manx Electricity Authority (MEA), at the Isle of Man.

The process of making the business case for technology: A sales and marketing perspective for technologists

Technological investment is a key driver of innovation and the evaluation of technology potential is becoming increasingly important in this context. There is a range of approaches and tools for developing an understanding of the value of technology. However the process of communicating this potential to possible customers is not well documented in terms of theory and practice and falls outside the skill set of many technologists. This paper seeks to integrate the concepts of marketing and consultative selling into making business cases for new technologies. It describes an exploratory study which results in an outline process activity model for technologists wishing to build an effective business case for securing investment internally or when selling a technology externally. Following a review of literature, we suggest that there is potential to learn from market research and consultative sales techniques, and propose a five step process. The work has been industrially validated and forms a novel foundation for further development. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

Understanding and communicating the value of technology: A process perspective

Technological investment is an important driver of innovation and the evaluation of technology potential is becoming increasingly important in this context. Although there is a range of possible approaches and tools for understanding and communicating the value of technology to potential customers, not all are useful or accessible in practice, where the situation is often complex and constantly evolving. Although many companies have their own customised processes in place for securing approval for technology development, often combining several techniques, very few empirical studies have been performed to learn from these practices and provide an overall view of the process of ";selling"; technologies internally or externally. In this paper, the current literature and practice related to technology valuation is reviewed and summarised in a five step process for building a business case for technology investment that gives guidance on where and when to use specific valuation tools. The seller or proposer's perspective is taken and consultative sales techniques incorporated. This provides a flexible reference for R&D managers and adds to the body of literature on the selection and use of valuation tools. A user friendly guide has been published detailing the five step approach. © 2011 IEEE.

Improving turbomachinery design process management

It is widely acknowledged that a company's ability to aquire market share, and hence its profitability, is very closely linked to the speed with which it can produce a new design. Indeed, a study by the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry has shown that the critical factor which determines profitability is the timely delivery of the new product. Late entry to market or high production costs dramatically reduce profits whilst an overrun on development cost has little significant effect. This paper describes a method which aims to assist the designer in producing higher performance turbomachinery designs more quickly by accelerating the process by which they are produced. The adopted approach combines an enhanced version of the 'Signposting' design process management methodology with industry-standard analysis codes and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It has been specifically configured to enable process-wide iteration, near instantaneous generation of guidance data for the designer and fully automatic data handling. A successful laboratory experiment based on the design of a large High Pressure Steam Turbine is described and this leads on to current work which incorporates the extension of the proven concept to a full industrial application for the design of Aeroengine Compressors with Rolls-Royce plc.