H J Powell and S B Jones
Paper presented at meeting of TWI Automotive Industry Panel, March 1998
JoinIT TM is the product name TWI has given for the delivery of information and knowledge in joining and allied technologies through electronic media. JoinIT TM is Internet based and is aimed at addressing many of the difficulties in improving the service delivered to industry by an expert- based organisation into the next century.
Introduction
TWI has pursued the development of 21 st Century Knowledge trading concepts since 1995 and in order to test and refine mechanisms for delivery of information and knowledge, it has worked in association with a major centre of telecommunications expertise to develop an experimental knowledge-trading platform. The developments involved aim to collect and present data, information and knowledge in the fields of joining and allied technologies via an internet platform for consumption by users in all industry sectors, and with a range of security requirements. By combining TWI's knowledge of technical content and its presentation in the correct user context via advanced communications, this development has become a flagship exemplar for knowledge trading.
Industrial Background
The impetus for the JoinIT
TM product came from a strategic appraisal by TWI of patterns of competition and technology use in large and small companies. All organisations are increasingly experiencing competition from global competitors, and this trend is often accompanied by progressive reductions in core research staffing under financial control programmes.
The result is that increasing levels of reliance are placed on supply chain contacts, administered by scarce expert resources, while ever-increasing flexibility and response are demanded to meet competition. This translates to a need for increased levels of technical advice and support from organisations such as TWI, whose function is to advise industry at all levels.
A study of TWI's ability to meet market demand for information revealed that all markets were unsaturated. In the small business area, although TWI has contacted many of the 140 000 small UK manufacturing businesses who use joining technology, only a small proportion need to access high level experts, and still fewer are prepared to pay market rates for these services.
Large companies similarly have problems in accessing expert services, and many of TWI's established blue-chip customers only communicate via a small number of staff. The potential for improving information access and service quality is large, but the problems involved are enormous. Getting the right information to the right person in the right form at the right place and at an acceptable cost is easier said than done. This is especially true for a business like TWI, where delivery of the service is usually via human-human communication.
This situation is tolerable now, because all parties are used to the difficulties and inefficiencies of conventional communication. The globalization of the information business will make such a situation less stable in the future as customers demand greater levels of service quality, faster delivery, and 24-hour service at lower prices.
A New Business Combination between Communications and Content Providers
Resolving the basic problem of service delivery demands action on three fronts:
- Technical content needs to be stored, retrieved and presented in forms which suit the needs of individual users;
- Computing is essential to minimise the labour involved;
- Communications are required which allow cheap and rapid delivery of the service.
While all three of these areas are within TWI's expertise, the amounts of investment required to keep abreast of modem communications would have made a go-it-alone strategy difficult to sustain. For this reason a teamed approach with a major telecommunications provider was sought - the objective being to produce a hybrid team which could combine the strengths of both organisations and deliver a new type of industrial service.
The result of this liaison, which started in October 1995, is JoinIT TM , a new product for TWI, which delivers information and knowledge in joining and allied technologies through the Internet media. The key features of the JoinIT TM product are:
- Capability of delivering both information and knowledge in the form of expertise over the whole range of TWI's activity: Joining, design, structural integrity, materials, equipment, quality, certification and training.
- Fulfilling the requirements of the "data hit" concept (right information, right user, right time, and right cost, right context).
JoinIT
TM Technologies One of the biggest challenges addressed during the development of the JoinIT
TM product was a clear definition of "knowledge" which is simplified in terms of-
Information + clarification (in contact with expert guidance) = knowledge Most on-line content delivery services presently available concentrate on information trading, rather than knowledge. Tonnage information is certainly available through the Internet, you just have to know how and where to find it and question its relevance and pedigree.
The basis of the JoinIT TM product is a relational database, which stores individual elements of information for retrieval and presentation in ways, which meet the needs of individual customers (context and clarification). Multimedia features heavily, as do expert on-line knowledge based software packages "Toolkits" as well as the more conventional reports, data sheets and best practice guides. There is also provision for electronic discussions mediated by TWI and invited experts at a variety of security levels, from public to company-restricted access.
The delivery of JoinIT TM is through an experimental knowledge-trading platform, which includes security and billing functions, as well as provision in the future for intelligent agents, data visualization, data mining and other techniques for personalizing the service.
Current Status
The JoinIT
TM product is in the stages of a development trial with over 130 registered users in the automotive and aluminium sectors. Results of the trial are being used to plan an imminent rollout to other industry sectors. Further work is being carried out to develop technical and business templates, which can be used by other organisations that wish to improve their information supply routes. TWI is also in discussion with a number of organisations who are interested in adopting the technologies involved for their own internal use.
JoinIT TM may be accessed at http://aspect.labs.bt.com/pricingtwi/ [now http://joinit.grantapark.com]
