Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
8.5
The Case of Leading Designer 4
After the changes in the political and economic systems in Poland, the doors to
technology transfer were opened wide, at least in theory. In practice, a very restric-
tive technology transfer process took place, as described above. Again, as described
above, Leading Designer 4's attempts to work with the large corporations involved
in technology transfer as either an ICT and automation expert or a translator were
unsuccessful. He therefore decided to continue to work as a translator and to use the
resulting income to finance his work in ICT and automation.
He determined appropriate projects through visits to numerous people in the
industry to learn their needs and expectations with regard to ICT and automation
and defined appropriate problems. The design and research teams had a social ori-
entation and developed the designs up to the feasibility study level of the extended
or detailed technical design. They also aimed to solve the associated research prob-
lems. To validate the resulting solutions and disseminate the results, a number of
presentations were made at prestigious scientific conferences. Some of the main
project themes are discussed briefly below.
8.5.1
Computer-Integrated Manufacturing and Management System
(CIMMs)
Drawing on numerous talks with representatives of industrial manufacturing firms
(in particular, metallurgical plants), Leading Designer 4 and his teams developed a
proposal for a safe approach (with a low risk of high financial losses in the case of
design mistakes) to the design and development of CIMMs. The approach involved
thinking about the design and learning first and only subsequently standardising.
This is counter to the more commonly used approach of standardising first and
thinking later, if ever. This latter approach is generally expensive and rarely leads
to the best results for users of the system. However, it can lead to very high
profits.
The general structure of the System Media, which Leading Designer 4 used to
develop CIMMs, is depicted in Fig.
8.16
.
8.5.2
E-Train-Diabetes
This project involved the development of a distance learning system to provide
rapid education in the principles of diabetes to about 20,000 basic healthcare nurses
to enable them to provide significant support to the diabetes diagnosis and treatment
process (Abramczyk et al.
2005
). Leading Designer 4's design and development
team was supported in this work by the technical and research communities,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search