To provide a context for the projects used as examples in this article, it is
relevant to give a brief overview of the international GNOSIS community whose
support has been a focus of the major projects. IMS TC7 `GNOSIS', is one of 6
one-year test cases under the international Intelligent Manufacturing Systems
research program which started in the second quarter of 1993. The project
(GNOSIS, 1994) involves over 100 participants in 31 industry and university
organizations in 14 countries, with the objective of developing a post mass
production manufacturing paradigm involving reconfigurable artifacts. The
project has made extensive use of electronic mail and electronic document
archives to coordinate its activities, and the studies reported are part of an
investigation to improve such coordination in the main 10-year study commencing
in 1995.
Figure 2.1 shows the partners involved in the GNOSIS consortium together with
their geographic locations. Figure 2.2 shows the meetings during the first year
of the project and the cost impact of coordinating such a dispersed
project--that meetings accounted for some $1.1M of the estimated $5M budget for
the 1-year test case. The meetings and associated costs were probably necessary
in the initial stages of a major collaborative venture involving partners many
of whom had never previously interacted. However, the costs involved draw
attention to two considerations relevant to multi-media communication:
- Each major meeting should be treated as an expensive resource and every
effort made to maximize the value received. In particular, the discourse at
meetings should be recorded, indexed and archived, as should the slides
presented, documents circulated, and so on.
- Other communication media such as telephone, tele- and video-conferencing,
fax, email, list servers, document archives, and so on, should be used
effectively to reduce the need for physical meetings.
Figure 2.3 shows the
digital document archives and list servers set up to support the GNOSIS
community. The logic behind the locations is interesting. Technically, the
primary concern is to have a site with a reasonably high-speed connection to
the Internet and spare capacity to carry additional traffic. There may also be
considerations relating to specialist resources--for example, some GNOSIS
partners in Europe did not have email access, and the Fraunhofer Institute was
able to offer an automatic email-to-fax connection that was most
cost-effectively located in Europe. Administratively, an archive or list server
can be managed over the Internet from anywhere in the world. However, a local
administrator may have more influence in ensuring that the facilities are
restored with high priority in the even of a system fault, such as computer or
disk drive failure. Socially, it may be desirable that the sites are
distributed so that there is no appearance of control of a major resource by
any particular special-interest group.
Figure 2.1 The GNOSIS consortium
Figure 2.2 GNOSIS meeting costs in first year of operation
Figure 2.3 GNOSIS digital archives and list servers
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