Calling Home

Through the exhibition implicit conceptions of home held by the participating artists and those viewing the exhibition were externalized. Represented as images, the conceptions conveyed different as well as shared understandings categorized as physical, cognitive, emotional, instrumental and existential. Unlike written papers on the meaning of home, the exhibition enabled access to a richer understanding of home as facilitating a way of being-in-the-world.

Business process modeling : current issues and future challenges

Business process modeling has undoubtedly emerged as a popular and relevant practice in Information Systems. Despite being an actively researched field, anecdotal evidence and experiences suggest that the focus of the research community is not always well aligned with the needs of industry. The main aim of this paper is, accordingly, to explore the current issues and the future challenges in business process modeling, as perceived by three key stakeholder groups (academics, practitioners, and tool vendors). We present the results of a global Delphi study with these three groups of stakeholders, and discuss the findings and their implications for research and practice. Our findings suggest that the critical areas of concern are standardization of modeling approaches, identification of the value proposition of business process modeling, and model-driven process execution. These areas are also expected to persist as business process modeling roadblocks in the future.

Likelihood-maximising frameworks for enhanced in-car speech recognition

Speech recognition in car environments has been identified as a valuable means for reducing driver distraction when operating non-critical in-car systems. Likelihood-maximising (LIMA) frameworks optimise speech enhancement algorithms based on recognised state sequences rather than traditional signal-level criteria such as maximising signal-to-noise ratio. Previously presented LIMA frameworks require calibration utterances to generate optimised enhancement parameters which are used for all subsequent utterances. Sub-optimal recognition performance occurs in noise conditions which are significantly different from that present during the calibration session - a serious problem in rapidly changing noise environments. We propose a dialog-based design which allows regular optimisation iterations in order to track the changing noise conditions. Experiments using Mel-filterbank spectral subtraction are performed to determine the optimisation requirements for vehicular environments and show that minimal optimisation assists real-time operation with improved speech recognition accuracy. It is also shown that the proposed design is able to provide improved recognition performance over frameworks incorporating a calibration session.

Does a high UV environment ensure adequate vitamin D status?

This study assesses the Vitamin D status of 126 healthy free-living adults aged 18–87 years, in southeast Queensland, Australia (27°S) at the end of the 2006 winter. Participants provided blood samples for analysis of 25(OH)D (the measure of an individual’s Vitamin D status), PTH, Calcium, Phosphate, and Albumin, completed a questionnaire on sun-protective/sun-exposure behaviours, and were assessed for phenotypic characteristics such as skin/hair/eye colour and BMI. We found that 10.2% of the participants had serum 25(OH)D levels below 25 nmol/l (considered deficient) and a further 32.3% had levels between 25 nmol/l and 50 nmol/l (considered insufficient). Our results show that low levels of 25(OH)D can occur in a substantial proportion of the population at the end of winter, even in a sunny climate. 25(OH)D levels were higher amongst those who spent more time in the sun and lower among obese participants (BMI > 30) than those who were not obese (BMI < 30). 25(OH)D levels were also lower in participants who had black hair, dark/olive skin, or brown eyes, when compared with participants who had brown or fair hair, fair skin, or blue/green eyes. No associations were found between 25(OH)D status and age, gender, smoking status, or the use of sunscreen.

Technology strategy : findings from adoption and adaptation of Japanese manufacturing management (JMM) to ASEAN and Australasian automotive manufacturers

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the appropriateness of “Japanese Manufacturing Management” (JMM) strategies in the Asian, ASEAN and Australasian automotive sectors. Secondly, the study assessed JMM as a prompt, effective and efficient global manufacturing management practice for automotive manufacturing companies to learn; benchmark for best practice; acquire product and process innovation, and enhance their capabilities and capacities. In this study, the philosophies, systems and tools that have been adopted in various automotive manufacturing assembly plants and their tier 1 suppliers in the three Regions were examined. A number of top to middle managers in these companies were located in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Viet Nam, and Australia and were interviewed by using a qualitative methodology. The results confirmed that the six pillars of JMM (culture change, quality at shop floor, consensus, incremental continual improvement, benchmarking, and backward-forward integration) are key enablers to success in adopting JMM in both automotive and other manufacturing sectors in the three Regions. The analysis and on-site interviews identified a number of recommendations that were validated by the automotive manufacturing company’s managers as the most functional JMM strategies.

Business process modeling : perceived benefits

The process-centered design of organizations and information systems is globally seen as an appropriate response to the increased economic pressure on organizations. At the methodological core of process-centered management is process modeling. However, business process modeling in large initiatives can be a time-consuming and costly exercise, making it potentially difficult to convince executive management of its benefits. To date, and despite substantial interest and research in the area of process modeling, the understanding of the actual benefits of process modeling in academia and practice is limited. To address this gap, this paper explores the perception of benefits derived from process modeling initiatives, as reported through a global Delphi study. The study incorporates the views of three groups of stakeholders – academics, practitioners and vendors. Our findings lead to the first identification and ranking of 19 unique benefits associated with process modeling. The study in particular found that process modeling benefits vary significantly between practitioners and academics. We argue that these variations may point to a dangerous disconnect between research projects and practical demands.

Towards model round-trip engineering : an abductive approach

Providing support for reversible transformations as a basis for round-trip engineering is a significant challenge in model transformation research. While there are a number of current approaches, they require the underlying transformation to exhibit an injective behaviour when reversing changes. This however, does not serve all practical transformations well. In this paper, we present a novel approach to round-trip engineering that does not place restrictions on the nature of the underlying transformation. Based on abductive logic programming, it allows us to compute a set of legitimate source changes that equate to a given change to the target model. Encouraging results are derived from an initial prototype that supports most concepts of the Tefkat transformation language

Using ontology for the representational analysis of process modelling techniques

Selecting an appropriate business process modelling technique forms an important task within the methodological challenges of a business process management project. While a plethora of available techniques has been developed over the last decades, there is an obvious shortage of well-accepted reference frameworks that can be used to evaluate and compare the capabilities of the different techniques. Academic progress has been made at least in the area of representational analyses that use ontology as a benchmark for such evaluations. This paper reflects on the comprehensive experiences with the application of a model based on the Bunge ontology in this context. A brief overview of the underlying research model characterizes the different steps in such a research project. A comparative summary of previous representational analyses of process modelling techniques over time gives insights into the relative maturity of selected process modelling techniques. Based on these experiences suggestions are made as to where ontology-based representational analyses could be further developed and what limitations are inherent to such analyses.