There has been at least one exciting development in batteries
in recent years. A convenient name is liquid metal batteries.
They offer low manufacturing costs, extreme power density,
and suitability for grid-scale storage.
Sodium-sulfur batteries were known in the 1980's, as a well-
publicized research effort by Ford Motor Company. Those
devices differ from the new liquid metal batteries, particularly
in the form of the separator (electrolyte) between the
electroactive materials. They are closely related.
One of the key advantages of batteries with liquid electroactive
materials is that there are no morphology changes on cycling,
such that the cycle life of the active materials may approach
infinite. In the sodium-sulfur cells, this condition is met for
the anode and cathode materials (being molten sodium and
molten sulfur, respectively), but the solid electrolyte (a beta-
aluminum oxide ceramic ion conductor) is susceptible to
mechanical degradation by the phase change occurring as the
sodium ions are reduced to the metallic state, as well as by
the corrosive effects of liquid sodium.
In the new liquid metal batteries, molten salt serves as both
the separator and electrolyte. Density differences allow two of
the three liquid layers to float on the heaviest layer. In some
sense, the battery is self-assembling. The very high ionic
conductivity of the electrolyte allows for extreme power
density, well suited to grid-scale power storage. The safety
issues implicit in molten materials make them not particularly
attractive for use in electric vehicles, but in time may be
resolved. In the proof-of-concept cell by Donald Sadoway's
research group at MIT, the three layers, from bottom to top,
are antimony, sodium sulfide and magnesium. During
discharge, the top and bottom layers are consumed to form
magnesium antimonide, which dissolves in the electrolyte.
Upon recharge, the metal layers are reformed. If corrosion
issues for the electrodes and container can be resolved, the
cycle life may be nearly infinite.
I was pleased to receive from Mark Mack, a consultant to the
chemical industry, www.markmackllc.com, the article linked
below. It discusses state-of-the-art battery technology and
research and it reminded me about the important innovation in
battery technology represented by the liquid metal cells, so
directly led to this article. Dr. Mack, his coathor, Dr. Pitchai,
and Batteries International have kindly given permission to
distribute their article as part of the Techbriefing series.
The article can be found here:
http://sites.google.com/site/matbriefing/home/filecabinet/Batteries2010.pdf
Mark Mack is organizing a marvelous conference styled
Charged2020 http://www.charged2020.com/ to be held in San
Diego 30 June to 02 July 2010 to address energy storage
challenges. The importance of energy to the global economy
cannot be overstated.
Donald Sadoway of MIT discusses his invention of one liquid
metal battery:
http://www.buildbabybuild.com/news/prof-donald-sadoway-talks-about-liquid-battery-technology-review
An earlier article on innovations in battery technology can be
found here:
http://sites.google.com/site/matbriefing/home/filecabinet/SCAMPER2010.pdf
Another type of electrical energy storage device that employs
liquid electroactive materials has been called a flow battery,
a redox battery and redox regenerative fuel cell. Those devices
will be the subject of a future Techbriefing post.
Full disclosure: I have owned US Antimony (UAMY) stock for the past
5 years and this article made me think that it might be a good
idea to buy more. So I did. This is not investment advice. I
am not an investment adviser. Do not confuse this free article
with a recommendation to buy or sell any stock or other
financial vehicle.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
miniature arc lamp with double the efficiency of LED lighting
This note describes a new light source that is a very small
microwave-excited xenon lamp. The plasma temperature is
in the range of 6000K, so it is very bright and very white. It
is quite remarkable that a bulb of approximately 5 mm diameter
and 10 mm length can put out as much light as a 400-watt
metal arc bulb. The color rendering is much better than the
various metal arc lamps. The manufacturer claims that the
efficiency is double that of solid state LED lighting devices.
There probably are some possibilities for using these devices
in several types of spectrometers. I am not endorsing the
company or the technology, but noting that it is very clever.
A nice photograph of it is here:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Luxim_Corporation
A video of it in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTGsM9pplUs
How it works:
http://www.luxim.com/pdfs/TB1.pdf
The company website:
http://www.luxim.com/
The Company History
http://www.luxim.com/dynamic/display.php/32
7,638,951 Plasma lamp with stable feedback amplification and method therefor
7,525,253 Microwave energized plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,518,315 Microwave energized plasma lamp with solid dielectric waveguide
7,498,747 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,429,818 Plasma lamp with bulb and lamp chamber
7,391,158 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,372,209 Microwave energized plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,362,056 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,362,055 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,362,054 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,358,678 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,348,732 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
6,922,021 Microwave energized plasma lamp with solid dielectric waveguide
6,737,809 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
Some recent newsclips describing the devices:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bridgelux-expands-led-bulb-options-while-luxim-does-a-plasma-street-light
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/luxim-plasma-lifi-light-bulb-led-cfl.php
microwave-excited xenon lamp. The plasma temperature is
in the range of 6000K, so it is very bright and very white. It
is quite remarkable that a bulb of approximately 5 mm diameter
and 10 mm length can put out as much light as a 400-watt
metal arc bulb. The color rendering is much better than the
various metal arc lamps. The manufacturer claims that the
efficiency is double that of solid state LED lighting devices.
There probably are some possibilities for using these devices
in several types of spectrometers. I am not endorsing the
company or the technology, but noting that it is very clever.
A nice photograph of it is here:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/
A video of it in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
How it works:
http://www.luxim.com/pdfs/TB1.
The company website:
http://www.luxim.com/
The Company History
http://www.luxim.com/dynamic/
LUXIM was founded in the year 2000 by technologists in the fields of plasma physics and high-frequency electronics to commercialize breakthrough developments in energy efficient, long-life lighting technology.
After engineering verification and receiving investment funding from Sequoia Capital and Worldview Technology Partners, LUXIM designed, manufactured and commercialized the first series of market leading LIFI solid state plasma lighting products.
They have been patenting diligently:7,638,951 Plasma lamp with stable feedback amplification and method therefor
7,525,253 Microwave energized plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,518,315 Microwave energized plasma lamp with solid dielectric waveguide
7,498,747 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,429,818 Plasma lamp with bulb and lamp chamber
7,391,158 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,372,209 Microwave energized plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,362,056 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,362,055 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,362,054 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,358,678 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
7,348,732 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
6,922,021 Microwave energized plasma lamp with solid dielectric waveguide
6,737,809 Plasma lamp with dielectric waveguide
Some recent newsclips describing the devices:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/
http://www.treehugger.com/
Thursday, December 24, 2009
EEStor ceramic ultracapacitors in the news, again and Holiday Greetings! from MAT
We take this opportunity to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year in 2010. There is a lot of good news coming in the decades ahead. While the short term will be very challenging, to say the least, there will be some bright spots, which include exciting new technologies. Ultracapacitors have the potential to revolutionize many technology areas, particularly electric vehicles, power grid load leveling, electric aircraft and directed energy weapons.
Techbriefing (via Gmail) is a free service from Manning Applied Technology. Previous iterations of Techbriefing were sent using a Pegasus mail list via the appl-tech.com domain.
Manning Applied Technology offers other services, many of which are described here:
http://www.appl-tech.com/Briefing_Charts/Brochure.pdf
No more than once a day and occasionally less than once per month, important technology news will be delivered directly to your desktop via email. This is a non-commercial activity comprising scholarship in the area of new technology. If you know someone that would like to subscribe to the Techbriefing service, please forward this note to them. If you do not wish to receive Techbriefing, please let me know.
EEStor is said to have the technology for producing a type of ceramic ultracapacitor that can store energy at densities in the range of lithium-polymer batteries, with a lifespan in excess of 1 million complete charge-discharge cycles, the potential to be fully charged in a few seconds to a few minutes, and to release energy in milliseconds instead of minutes. The technology is premised on a ferroelectric ceramic called barium titanate, which has a very high dielectric constant.
EEStor is a privately held company. Their investors include Kleiner Perkins, which gives them a fair amount of credibility. The EEStor company is partially owned by Zenn Motor Company (ZMC):
www.zenncars.com/html/investor/EEStor/index.html
ZMC holds the exclusive worldwide rights to use EEStor devices in cars under 1400 kilograms (and various other vehicles).
Zenn Motor Company stock trades on the Vancouver exchange:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ZNN.V
and in the US as a pink sheet
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ZNNMF.PK
This is not a solicitation to buy or sell any stock or other financial vehicle. I am not a financial adviser and this free content does not constitute financial advice. Full disclosure: I have placed a bid for a very modest number of Zenn shares.
News leaks about EEStor continue and this one may be particularly illuminating:
http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-lockheed-energy-exec-excited-about.html
excerpt 1:
Today at the National Press Club, Lockheed Martin held a hastily thrown together press conference to lay out its vision for its future in energy. Unfortunately, talking about EEStor was not on the agenda. However, thanks to a gutsy anonymous blogger, we have one heck of a post-event interview whereupon two of Lockheed's senior most executives demonstrate REAL TROUBLE hiding their enthusiasm about EEStor.
excerpt 2:
Key take aways from the interviews:
1) Lockheed Martin execs smile when you ask them about EEStor
2) They have trouble wiping the smile off their faces once they start smiling
3) The slightest hint of an EEStor concept brings the smile back
4) Why are they so happy?
5) What do they know?
6) Are you still reading this list?
7) Go to bed.
8) Now.
9) I mean it.
10) No, I am not the one who captured the video. ;-)
see also:
http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2009/12/darryl-siry-on-doe.html
Techbriefing (via Gmail) is a free service from Manning Applied Technology. Previous iterations of Techbriefing were sent using a Pegasus mail list via the appl-tech.com domain.
Manning Applied Technology offers other services, many of which are described here:
http://www.appl-tech.com/Briefing_Charts/Brochure.pdf
No more than once a day and occasionally less than once per month, important technology news will be delivered directly to your desktop via email. This is a non-commercial activity comprising scholarship in the area of new technology. If you know someone that would like to subscribe to the Techbriefing service, please forward this note to them. If you do not wish to receive Techbriefing, please let me know.
EEStor is said to have the technology for producing a type of ceramic ultracapacitor that can store energy at densities in the range of lithium-polymer batteries, with a lifespan in excess of 1 million complete charge-discharge cycles, the potential to be fully charged in a few seconds to a few minutes, and to release energy in milliseconds instead of minutes. The technology is premised on a ferroelectric ceramic called barium titanate, which has a very high dielectric constant.
EEStor is a privately held company. Their investors include Kleiner Perkins, which gives them a fair amount of credibility. The EEStor company is partially owned by Zenn Motor Company (ZMC):
www.zenncars.com/html/investor/EEStor/index.html
ZMC holds the exclusive worldwide rights to use EEStor devices in cars under 1400 kilograms (and various other vehicles).
Zenn Motor Company stock trades on the Vancouver exchange:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ZNN.V
and in the US as a pink sheet
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ZNNMF.PK
This is not a solicitation to buy or sell any stock or other financial vehicle. I am not a financial adviser and this free content does not constitute financial advice. Full disclosure: I have placed a bid for a very modest number of Zenn shares.
News leaks about EEStor continue and this one may be particularly illuminating:
http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-lockheed-energy-exec-excited-about.html
excerpt 1:
Today at the National Press Club, Lockheed Martin held a hastily thrown together press conference to lay out its vision for its future in energy. Unfortunately, talking about EEStor was not on the agenda. However, thanks to a gutsy anonymous blogger, we have one heck of a post-event interview whereupon two of Lockheed's senior most executives demonstrate REAL TROUBLE hiding their enthusiasm about EEStor.
excerpt 2:
Key take aways from the interviews:
1) Lockheed Martin execs smile when you ask them about EEStor
2) They have trouble wiping the smile off their faces once they start smiling
3) The slightest hint of an EEStor concept brings the smile back
4) Why are they so happy?
5) What do they know?
6) Are you still reading this list?
7) Go to bed.
8) Now.
9) I mean it.
10) No, I am not the one who captured the video. ;-)
see also:
http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2009/12/darryl-siry-on-doe.html
Monday, December 15, 2008
First Cut on Knowledge Management
A Brief Treatise on Knowledge Management
by Chris Manning
copyright Manning Applied Technology, all rights reserved
www.appl-tech.com
14 December 2008
Introduction
This white paper addresses knowledge management. The subject area is multifaceted and also includes or touches on artificial intelligence, project management, information management, and collaboration tools. This paper is cast in terms of engineering, but the concepts will be useful in almost all fields of endeavor. Critiques of this document are actively solicited from interested parties. Some reviewers will have useful insights on where technology is going in this subject area and may be able to point out relevant new developments.
Humans have only scratched the surface of how to use computers efficiently. The terminus of that trajectory is artificial intelligence, when the systems that humans have designed continue to optimize and extend themselves. "Real men write self-modifying code" is how one prescient programmer put it. Very few do knowledge creation, management, use and reuse as well as Toyota. Their development of personnel is equally noteworthy. The instant project in particular and collaborative projects in general will benefit greatly from effective knowledge management. Any approach undertaken at present requires discipline in two key areas; first, the knowledge must be entered into a data system in a useful format, and second, users must access and employ the knowledge base appropriately. Both of these tasks hinge on user interfaces and training. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Engineers are intrinsically adept at doing design work, discussing design work, and project history, but perhaps are not adept at entering data in computer readable formats. The modest fraction of engineers and scientists that write well tend to become managers.
Purposes
The advantages of effective information management in an engineering project can be summarized succinctly, roughly in order of importance:
1.efficient design execution; avoiding duplication of effort
2.management of subsequent manufacturing processes
3.troubleshooting of fielded systems
4.extension of system capabilities (i.e., subsequent reengineering)
5.knowledge and design reuse
6.estimation of return on investment (i.e., estimating overall project cost)
7.estimation of related project costs (similar future efforts)
8.failure analysis, forensics
Countless related areas can be identified. These include early identification of critical problems, sharing vendor/part information and design memes between projects and avoiding duplication of effort. In a sense, there are two types of duplication of effort, which both can be reduced by positive and negative feedback: sharing of successful design elements and sharing of problems to be avoided.
To the extent that project files, knowledge and information comprise company-proprietary information, access must be closely guarded. Further, to the extent that these files contain critical information that would be very expensive to replace, they must be backed up at independent locations. Access control is a straightforward function, as is backup. Both are routinely practiced in corporate information technology (IT) departments. However, for collaborative projects, access must be extended to subcontractors. Corporate IT policy must be satisfied by any vehicles used, and by their method of use.
Traditional solutions
Knowledge and information traditionally have been managed by writing reports and compiling build data repositories to hold assembly manuals, schematics, board layouts, and software files. These approaches are an acceptable baseline and enforce the capture discipline, to the extent that knowledge and information can be and are embedded successfully in these vehicles. A widespread and useful approach to managing data in these formats is the use of version control sofware. The two most common examples are Subversion from the open-source community and SourceSafe from Microsoft.
Improvements to the traditional approach
Thus, some aspects of improved knowledge/information management are straightforward. Simply putting project files in a common data structure and providing search tools (e.g., Google desktop tools) is a powerful step in the right direction. Each of the purposes described above may require navigating different paths through the data set. Ideally, each of the navigation paths could be customized and captured in a suitable user interface. This aspect of the subject area could be summarized as information management.
A further improvement to knowledge management that can be implemented now is recording conferences and meetings, then putting the resulting files in the same data structure with other project files. To be useful, these files must be readily searchable. Recently, Matt Williamson, one of MAT's contractors who is very knowledgeable on tech gadgets, demonstrated Google's new voice recognition features on an iPhone. Not only are Google already using speaker-independent speech-to-text capability for internet searching, but also are beginning to use speech-to-text tools to make the archive of Youtube videos readily (text) searchable without the need for manual keyword entry. Audio capture with speech-to-text conversion will be a very powerful tool for interfacing knowledge from humans, who are very comfortable in discussing projects, history and why things were done in a particular way. In the near future, it will be feasible to extract rules embodying the knowledge from the captured speech. This will be another important step on the path to artificial intelligence (AI). The text-searching capability will make it convenient to find segments by audio pattern matching (e.g., "please find the segment where Mike asked about 33 ohm resistors on the telecon last month.") Google's roadmap to the future started with text pattern matching and now includes audio pattern matching. It can be anticipated that Google's business plan includes picture pattern matching, then video pattern matching and ultimately artificial intelligence. A key aspect of AI is pattern recognition and matching.
One state-of-the-art practice at MAT is scanning scientific papers and documents using a Canon MP-780 all-in-one fax/copier/printer/scanner. The software provided with the MP-780 generates pdf files having embedded text generated via optical character recognition (OCR). The resulting files are text-searchable, using either the built-in Windows file search capability (slow) or Google desktop tools (fast). The files and Google search readily can be served over a network. This approach is very powerful and clearly a useful approach to project information management, particularly dealing with legacy paper. Packing lists are routinely scanned. In the past, MAT have written many comprehensive project reports, which already are computer files. The use of Google tols makes the information readily available via keyword search. MAT also has several internal Wiki pages. One is used for the routine task of tracking lunch orders. Another is used for experimenting with knowledge capture.
Commercial and open-source implementations
Collaboration tools can be divided into two areas, though not very cleanly; they are on-line, or real-time, and off-line. Some packages may include both types. On-line tools include videoconferencing and desktop sharing, which allows participants at different locations to access and share any information that can be displayed on a computer screen or in front of a video camera. The off-line aspect of collaboration tools is routine information sharing, which includes conference and meeting scheduling, tracking of project information and milestones, and access to project files. It is quite likely that fuel prices will move to record highs after the current worldwide recession. Combined with dropping bandwidth costs, this will drive significantly more business to videoconferencing.
A number of real-time collaboration tools have been on the market for several years to a decade. One of the earliest was Microsoft Netmeeting, which supported desktop videoconferencing with screen sharing at least as early as 1998. Desktop videoconference tools have become much more popular in recent years. Webex was acquired by Cisco in 2007 after achieving roughly 2/3 market share. Competitors in this space include Infinite Conferencing, Vidyo and Hewlett-Packard, and many others. Simple and free tools include the various instant messenger offerings, such as MSN Messenger, which support video, audio and text, but not screen sharing. It seems reasonable to guess that real-time tools will be integrated as part of the overall collaboration toolset, which will facilitate data capture and archiving of conference sessions. Gmail chat already allows archiving of sessions.
A wiki is a system of essentially blank web pages with a simple editor that allows users to create content and hyperlinks between pages. It satisfies many of the criteria described above, including the potential to embed knowledge and flexible navigation. The pages can include links to drawings, schematics, and any other file that are part of a design process. For each different type of navigation required, it is possible to set up a separate wiki page, or set of wiki pages, that provide the navigation. Confluence is a wiki-based tool, which is one of the simplest solutions to the problem of knowledge capture and information access. Confluence is offered by Atlassian (San Francisco, CA) and can be installed locally or run on their servers.
Another tool that combines information, project and knowledge management is product lifecycle management (PLM) software. Generally, PLM products also are advertised as collaboration tools. In a sense, this is a tautology, because almost all product development is collaborative. Examples include Teamcenter (Siemens), CATIA (Dassault Systemes), Windchill (Parametric Technologies Corporation) and numerous others. Teamcenter began as an a joint venture enhancement to computer drafting/CAD tools and was eventually acquired by Siemens. Teamcenter is used by several major automobile manufacturers, while CATIA is used by Boeing and Ford Motor, among others. The scale and expense of these enterprise-scale solutions may be inappropriate for small projects and small companies. Clearly this space is highly competitive, so it can be anticipated that these tools will continue to mature. These packages includes a suite of tools addressing most, if not all, aspects of project management.
Redmine (www.redmine.org) is a rapidly maturing free and open-source (FOSS) project that combines wikis, roadmaps, bug tracking, issue tracking, feature requests and forums with user data stored in a Source Control Management tool, such as Subversion or Git, documents, and other files. It is slightly programmer oriented, but any small- to medium-sized company can benefit from having all of features packaged into a single service. From an SBIR proposal point of view, a project planning tool that can capture the essence of a project would be very helpful for writing proposals.
Arguably, knowledge management is a database problem in which the knowledge elements are catalogued. The critical component that goes beyond simple database technology is expressing the relationships between the elements. The complexity of the connections is the essence of intelligence.
Conclusions
Significant value can be realized by effective use of knowledge management tools. At present, no clear winner has emerged, particularly for small projects. The market for these tools is not yet mature. One approach to the instant project is to put together inexpensive, off-the-shelf open-source tools, such as wikis and Subversion, or use the Redmine open-source toolset. Combined with Google desktop tools, this approach is very inexpensive and powerful. Clearly, all companies will have to choose standardized toolsets in the near future. Because the investment of project effort scales with the number of projects, larger companies must choose sooner and better.
Aknowledgements
Stefan Natchev for encouragement and for providing information on Redmine
Tom Old and Bob Hertel for providing input on Teamcenter
Sami Nuwayser for general critique and lots of good ideas
by Chris Manning
copyright Manning Applied Technology, all rights reserved
www.appl-tech.com
14 December 2008
Introduction
This white paper addresses knowledge management. The subject area is multifaceted and also includes or touches on artificial intelligence, project management, information management, and collaboration tools. This paper is cast in terms of engineering, but the concepts will be useful in almost all fields of endeavor. Critiques of this document are actively solicited from interested parties. Some reviewers will have useful insights on where technology is going in this subject area and may be able to point out relevant new developments.
Humans have only scratched the surface of how to use computers efficiently. The terminus of that trajectory is artificial intelligence, when the systems that humans have designed continue to optimize and extend themselves. "Real men write self-modifying code" is how one prescient programmer put it. Very few do knowledge creation, management, use and reuse as well as Toyota. Their development of personnel is equally noteworthy. The instant project in particular and collaborative projects in general will benefit greatly from effective knowledge management. Any approach undertaken at present requires discipline in two key areas; first, the knowledge must be entered into a data system in a useful format, and second, users must access and employ the knowledge base appropriately. Both of these tasks hinge on user interfaces and training. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Engineers are intrinsically adept at doing design work, discussing design work, and project history, but perhaps are not adept at entering data in computer readable formats. The modest fraction of engineers and scientists that write well tend to become managers.
Purposes
The advantages of effective information management in an engineering project can be summarized succinctly, roughly in order of importance:
1.efficient design execution; avoiding duplication of effort
2.management of subsequent manufacturing processes
3.troubleshooting of fielded systems
4.extension of system capabilities (i.e., subsequent reengineering)
5.knowledge and design reuse
6.estimation of return on investment (i.e., estimating overall project cost)
7.estimation of related project costs (similar future efforts)
8.failure analysis, forensics
Countless related areas can be identified. These include early identification of critical problems, sharing vendor/part information and design memes between projects and avoiding duplication of effort. In a sense, there are two types of duplication of effort, which both can be reduced by positive and negative feedback: sharing of successful design elements and sharing of problems to be avoided.
To the extent that project files, knowledge and information comprise company-proprietary information, access must be closely guarded. Further, to the extent that these files contain critical information that would be very expensive to replace, they must be backed up at independent locations. Access control is a straightforward function, as is backup. Both are routinely practiced in corporate information technology (IT) departments. However, for collaborative projects, access must be extended to subcontractors. Corporate IT policy must be satisfied by any vehicles used, and by their method of use.
Traditional solutions
Knowledge and information traditionally have been managed by writing reports and compiling build data repositories to hold assembly manuals, schematics, board layouts, and software files. These approaches are an acceptable baseline and enforce the capture discipline, to the extent that knowledge and information can be and are embedded successfully in these vehicles. A widespread and useful approach to managing data in these formats is the use of version control sofware. The two most common examples are Subversion from the open-source community and SourceSafe from Microsoft.
Improvements to the traditional approach
Thus, some aspects of improved knowledge/information management are straightforward. Simply putting project files in a common data structure and providing search tools (e.g., Google desktop tools) is a powerful step in the right direction. Each of the purposes described above may require navigating different paths through the data set. Ideally, each of the navigation paths could be customized and captured in a suitable user interface. This aspect of the subject area could be summarized as information management.
A further improvement to knowledge management that can be implemented now is recording conferences and meetings, then putting the resulting files in the same data structure with other project files. To be useful, these files must be readily searchable. Recently, Matt Williamson, one of MAT's contractors who is very knowledgeable on tech gadgets, demonstrated Google's new voice recognition features on an iPhone. Not only are Google already using speaker-independent speech-to-text capability for internet searching, but also are beginning to use speech-to-text tools to make the archive of Youtube videos readily (text) searchable without the need for manual keyword entry. Audio capture with speech-to-text conversion will be a very powerful tool for interfacing knowledge from humans, who are very comfortable in discussing projects, history and why things were done in a particular way. In the near future, it will be feasible to extract rules embodying the knowledge from the captured speech. This will be another important step on the path to artificial intelligence (AI). The text-searching capability will make it convenient to find segments by audio pattern matching (e.g., "please find the segment where Mike asked about 33 ohm resistors on the telecon last month.") Google's roadmap to the future started with text pattern matching and now includes audio pattern matching. It can be anticipated that Google's business plan includes picture pattern matching, then video pattern matching and ultimately artificial intelligence. A key aspect of AI is pattern recognition and matching.
One state-of-the-art practice at MAT is scanning scientific papers and documents using a Canon MP-780 all-in-one fax/copier/printer/scanner. The software provided with the MP-780 generates pdf files having embedded text generated via optical character recognition (OCR). The resulting files are text-searchable, using either the built-in Windows file search capability (slow) or Google desktop tools (fast). The files and Google search readily can be served over a network. This approach is very powerful and clearly a useful approach to project information management, particularly dealing with legacy paper. Packing lists are routinely scanned. In the past, MAT have written many comprehensive project reports, which already are computer files. The use of Google tols makes the information readily available via keyword search. MAT also has several internal Wiki pages. One is used for the routine task of tracking lunch orders. Another is used for experimenting with knowledge capture.
Commercial and open-source implementations
Collaboration tools can be divided into two areas, though not very cleanly; they are on-line, or real-time, and off-line. Some packages may include both types. On-line tools include videoconferencing and desktop sharing, which allows participants at different locations to access and share any information that can be displayed on a computer screen or in front of a video camera. The off-line aspect of collaboration tools is routine information sharing, which includes conference and meeting scheduling, tracking of project information and milestones, and access to project files. It is quite likely that fuel prices will move to record highs after the current worldwide recession. Combined with dropping bandwidth costs, this will drive significantly more business to videoconferencing.
A number of real-time collaboration tools have been on the market for several years to a decade. One of the earliest was Microsoft Netmeeting, which supported desktop videoconferencing with screen sharing at least as early as 1998. Desktop videoconference tools have become much more popular in recent years. Webex was acquired by Cisco in 2007 after achieving roughly 2/3 market share. Competitors in this space include Infinite Conferencing, Vidyo and Hewlett-Packard, and many others. Simple and free tools include the various instant messenger offerings, such as MSN Messenger, which support video, audio and text, but not screen sharing. It seems reasonable to guess that real-time tools will be integrated as part of the overall collaboration toolset, which will facilitate data capture and archiving of conference sessions. Gmail chat already allows archiving of sessions.
A wiki is a system of essentially blank web pages with a simple editor that allows users to create content and hyperlinks between pages. It satisfies many of the criteria described above, including the potential to embed knowledge and flexible navigation. The pages can include links to drawings, schematics, and any other file that are part of a design process. For each different type of navigation required, it is possible to set up a separate wiki page, or set of wiki pages, that provide the navigation. Confluence is a wiki-based tool, which is one of the simplest solutions to the problem of knowledge capture and information access. Confluence is offered by Atlassian (San Francisco, CA) and can be installed locally or run on their servers.
Another tool that combines information, project and knowledge management is product lifecycle management (PLM) software. Generally, PLM products also are advertised as collaboration tools. In a sense, this is a tautology, because almost all product development is collaborative. Examples include Teamcenter (Siemens), CATIA (Dassault Systemes), Windchill (Parametric Technologies Corporation) and numerous others. Teamcenter began as an a joint venture enhancement to computer drafting/CAD tools and was eventually acquired by Siemens. Teamcenter is used by several major automobile manufacturers, while CATIA is used by Boeing and Ford Motor, among others. The scale and expense of these enterprise-scale solutions may be inappropriate for small projects and small companies. Clearly this space is highly competitive, so it can be anticipated that these tools will continue to mature. These packages includes a suite of tools addressing most, if not all, aspects of project management.
Redmine (www.redmine.org) is a rapidly maturing free and open-source (FOSS) project that combines wikis, roadmaps, bug tracking, issue tracking, feature requests and forums with user data stored in a Source Control Management tool, such as Subversion or Git, documents, and other files. It is slightly programmer oriented, but any small- to medium-sized company can benefit from having all of features packaged into a single service. From an SBIR proposal point of view, a project planning tool that can capture the essence of a project would be very helpful for writing proposals.
Arguably, knowledge management is a database problem in which the knowledge elements are catalogued. The critical component that goes beyond simple database technology is expressing the relationships between the elements. The complexity of the connections is the essence of intelligence.
Conclusions
Significant value can be realized by effective use of knowledge management tools. At present, no clear winner has emerged, particularly for small projects. The market for these tools is not yet mature. One approach to the instant project is to put together inexpensive, off-the-shelf open-source tools, such as wikis and Subversion, or use the Redmine open-source toolset. Combined with Google desktop tools, this approach is very inexpensive and powerful. Clearly, all companies will have to choose standardized toolsets in the near future. Because the investment of project effort scales with the number of projects, larger companies must choose sooner and better.
Aknowledgements
Stefan Natchev for encouragement and for providing information on Redmine
Tom Old and Bob Hertel for providing input on Teamcenter
Sami Nuwayser for general critique and lots of good ideas
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