HYPERMEDIA INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: A NEW PARADIGM
Richard Crowder and Gary Wills
Department of Electrical Engineering University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ
Ian Heath and Wendy Hall
Multimedia Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science,
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ
ABSTRACT
As information relating to manufacturing becomes more complex, it is inevitable that information overload will occur. When the information can not be retrieved with ease, it is human nature to work without it. This paper discusses the use of open hypermedia system, to provide a solution. To be viable the hypermedia resource base must operate factory wide, and not centred on a single piece of plant, however the scale of the problem introduces a wide range of problems. The development of a successful authoring strategy is presented.
1. Introduction.
2. Industrial Requirements
3. The Pirelli Case Study
3.1 The current
authoring model
4.
Authoring Large-scale Industrial Hypermedia systems
4.1 Large size documents
4.2 Automatic link
generation.
4.3
Mini-Hypermedia Applications and Information Reuse
4.4 Link clusters
5. Discussion
Acknowledgements
References
As the volume of information increases, the provision of up to date and easily accessible information in a manufacturing enterprise is a major, and continual problem for management. For an information system to be successfully introduced the strategy must result in the integration of information resources and allow personnel effective and controlled access to the information required by their task..
A solution being explored by the Multimedia Research Group at Southampton to manage the information space is the use of an open hypermedia. This allows associations to be made between information in different media in a manner similar to that naturally undertaken. The concept of industrial strength hypermedia was initially discussed by Malcolm [Malcolm 91]. The information problems facing industry world-wide are largely the same, the movement of information between design, sales, procurement and manufacturing facilities. Crowder et al [Crowder 96], have demonstrated that, by using an open hypermedia system, a common information resource can be used for operator training, planned maintenance, and diagnostics. This paper discusses the approach taken by Southampton’s Multimedia Research Group to develop of industrial strength hypermedia, by examining the issues involved in introducing such a system for use across a manufacturing enterprise.
A hypermedia system is where the concepts of hypertext are applied to multimedia information resources. When hypertext is applied to unstructured text, with associations between the text being made with links. In practice hypermedia allows association to be made between different types of media, including documents, engineering drawings, databases, and spreadsheets. With the ever increasing volume of interrelated information within manufacturing industry, a number of difficulties arise in particular:
As the information provided with an organisation become more complex, it is inevitable that information overload will occur, making the information less usable. When the information can not be retrieved with ease, it is human nature to work without it. Users will increasingly rely on previous knowledge and intuition rather than coping with the cumbersome documentation. As a result, tasks are poorly performed, and take an excessive time, [Ventura, 88].
Figure 1 summarises how the documentation problems can be addressed. However the switch to electronic document provision is not straight forward, largely due to the poor understanding of how paper documents are authored and used.
Figure 1: Solution to the documentation problem using hypermedia technology
If hypermedia is to be used in such an environment, then a significant effort is required in integrating information resources and systems already present in the organisation. Large-scale enterprises already have methodologies in place to control the flow and quality of information (for example ISO 9000). These practices will have to be embraced if industrial strength hypermedia system are to be adopted. In general this implies that any proposed industrial strength hypermedia model must be simple to maintain and implement whilst providing a real benefit for the organisation as a whole.
When considering the provision of information on the industrial scale, a significant number of problems become apparent. In particular the amount of information that could possibly be accessed becomes vast. There are now a large number of information sources that have to be brought together, covering not only specific equipment but also general practice and company policy. To prove the concepts outlined in this paper we are working with the Supertension Cable manufacturing area at Pirelli Cables Eastleigh, in particular the Supertension Sheathing line. The line extrudes the crossed-linked polyethylene insulator onto the cables. The hypermedia application resource base will consist of all the information (drawings, manuals, procedures, etc.) required by the factory-floor operators and the maintenance personal to carry out their work.
Our original work highlighted some of the problems with constructing an industrial hypermedia system, but as the application was only concerned with one particular piece of plant equipment the information was manageable. It was also easily controlled, as the hypermedia application was very self contained as it dealt only with information generated by the author. In the current application the information resource will consider a complete production line, the increase in documentation is effectively logarithmic! To handle an information system of this size a detailed authoring methodology is required, supported by a range of tools to take the manual effort out of the process.
Controlled access to the information becomes of paramount importance. When considering the use of the system factory-wide, a large range of users with vastly differing computing skills have to be supported. Also, the range of information available will be greater, coming from all aspects of the company. Filtering of the information based on various attributes of the user (for example, their job function or specific requirements) is essential to stop the user from being overwhelmed.
3.1 The current authoring model
In order to make the development of very large-scale hypermedia applications possible, there has to be a move away from monolithic information sets that contains all of the required information. When considering the requirements for delivering and maintaining information on a factory wide scale, the ability to reuse the same information wherever it is required becomes a critical factor. For a production line there may be many cases where the same component is used in many different locations, forming part of a larger assembly. If this information is to be accessible electronically, there must be methods for sharing this type of information between the different assemblies (or instances).
The design process can be classed as a creative process involving a multi-discipline team of personnel. The actual design process will involve aspects of authoring and interface considerations, which are covered fully in other technical reports. The general requirements for a large project management for a large-scale hypermedia application are similar to those of any engineering project. For industrial hypermedia research the proposed strategy must take into account the requirement and constraints of an industrial environment. Namely, the existence of the current information structures, legacy systems, and revision control must be noted, together with the wide range of users' requirements. As with all information systems the time and hence cost of implementation, compared with the benefits need to be accurately assessed.
4. Authoring Large-scale Industrial Hypermedia systems
The authoring process is summarised in Figure 2. The process can be considered in two stages, the collection and processing of the information to form the resources, followed by the linking, either automatically or manually.
For industrial hypermedia applications the authoring strategy must take into account the requirement and constraints of an industrial environment. These including current information structures, legacy systems, revision control, and users' requirements, In addition the time and cost of implementation must be considered. Our work has developed solutions to overcome the limitations with the conventional hypermedia authoring process.
Figure 2 The authoring process of an industrial hypermedia application.
Electrical and mechanical schematics in electronic format is an example of how information can become unusually complex and disorientating. The most efficient way to view a drawing is as a whole, but at some point the scale on a screen will result in the drawing becoming unusable. One solution is to sub-divide the complete diagram into a large number of small sheets, however this requires users to chase connections between sheets. If the schematic is displayed using open hypermedia, it is possible to develop a linking structure and navigational support that will give the user the feel of using the complete sheet. However as the user zooms into a particular area, it is possible to become disorientated and loose detail, [Marland, 97], without the provision of birdseye views, which are provided on a number of our viewers.
4.2 Automatic link generation.
The current high cost of linking results from the time spent by an experienced person collect and collating, and then to manually linking the information into a structure that is easy to navigate. The majority of effort is spent on producing structural and explicit links, for example the linking of the table of contents to the relevant section, list of tables or table to their reference in the text. These links can be automatic generated, and has been demonstrated using the word-processing macros on a large system document. This approach does depend on the original document conforming to a defined or known standard, even with certain restrictions the authoring process is considerable simplified.
4.3 Mini-Hypermedia Applications and Information Reuse
In any large industrial plant, there is a large degree of information sharing, with a particular sub-component may be use in several production facilities, or used several times in one facility. The documentation regarding the sub-component is, however, the same irrespective of its location.
The information for a particular sub-component can be collected and built into a mini hypermedia application (MHA), or component, containing all the necessary documents and their associated links. This component can then be included as part of a larger hypermedia application. This provides a hierarchical structured authoring environment where individual information systems are built out of smaller components, together with any specific documents and links.
This process can be extrapolated, to include all the other information within the manufacturing enterprise. As the production plant can be considered to be made up of sub-systems, the information space for a complete industrial strength hypermedia application can be authored out of a series of pre-authored mini-hypermedia applications. As the mini-hypermedia applications can be created off-line, it is envisaged that equipment will be supplied by vendors with a standard electronic document, as a hypermedia application, pre-linked and ready to slot into the hypermedia application for the production facility.
The use of generic linking to represent higher level information about a component is a proven technique. To extend the set of documents contained within the resource base regarding a particular component, as all the author had to do was create another generic link with the source anchor referencing the component's name and the destination pointing to the new material. However, there were several drawbacks with this approach, which has led to the development of the link cluster concept,
In the industrial environment, it is clear that, the provision of this technology will not, on its own, bring the required results. To fully benefit from the technology, a company's culture must, and will change. The provision of information on the scale proposed, even with limits to dissemination, will lead to democratisation of an organisation's decision making process. For industrial strength hypermedia to be successfully implemented, a top down approach with strong project leadership is required.
The changes to a company's culture will be profound. This will not only be effect how people work, it will change may aspects of their work, and the procedures to be followed. The documentation and information generated needs to be in a format suitable for electronic dissemination, not as paper what is to be further processed. Hence the change in culture will impact on all the members of an organisation, not just the people who are directly involved with the its implementation and use.
The authors acknowledge the EPSRC for funding the work under grant numbers GR/H/43038 and GR/L/10482. The contribution of the other members of Southampton’s Multimedia Research Group is fully, and gratefully acknowledged.
[Crowder, 96] Crowder R M, Hall W, Heath I, Bernard R and Gaskall D. A Hypermedia Maintenance Information System. IEE Computing and Control Engineering Journal, 7(3),1996, 109-13.
[Malcolm, 91] Malcolm K, Poltrock S and Schuler D, Industrial Strength Hypermedia: Requirements for a Large Engineering Enterprise. Proceedings of Hypertext’91, December 1991.
[Marland, 97] Marland P. Lost in Inner Space. University of Southampton, PhD Transfer Theses, January 1997.
[Ventura, 88] Ventura, C A. Why Switch from Paper to Electronic Manuals. ACM Conference on Document Processing Systems, Santa Fe, December 1988.