A Review of Problem Solving Techniques in Engineering Project Management - Mapping The Mind, Design Thinking Approach and Six Thinking Hats

In order to effectively manage and run a successful organization, problem-solving techniques are important for the successful leader/project manager. This paper introduced three problem-solving techniques in engineering project management which are Mapping the Mind, Design Thinking Approach, and Six Thinking Hats Methods. The objective of this paper is to review these three techniques, which consist of the descriptions of the techniques, the advantages/disadvantages, the highlights and the addition of suggestions, comments and analysis/comparison between the three techniques. This review had been made from various types of information, back in year 2000 until present which is year 2020. This article can be a good reference for engineering project managers, to be used by their project management team members, in order to solve associated problems during engineering processes or services.

Legal Entity Forms in Education: Law Harmonization Issues

The article reviews the issues of harmonization of the educational and civil legislation norms in regards to organizational and legal forms of legal entities in the sphere of education, taking into consideration constitutional norms and guidance norms of the model legislation. It examines advantages and disadvantages of legal entities in the sphere of education in organizational and legal forms of the institution, the autonomous non-profit organization. Problem solution is proposed in the line of enhancement of the educational legislation in regards to assignment of organizational and legal forms of legal entities in the sphere of education.

Collaborative Optimization of Car-flow Organization for Freight Trains Based on Adjacent Technical Stations

This paper proposes a collaborative optimization model of car-flow organization for freight trains based on adjacent technical stations to minimize the average dwell time of train cars in a yard. To solve the car-flow organization problems, a priority-based hump sequence, which depends on the cars available in two adjacent technical stations, is adopted. Furthermore, a meta-heuristic algorithm based on the genetic algorithm and the taboo search algorithm is adopted to solve the model, and the introduction of the active scheduling method improves the efficiency of the algorithm. Finally, the model is applied to the car-flow organization problem of two adjacent technical stations, and the results are compared with those from a single technical station without collaboration. The results demonstrate that collaborative car-flow organization between technical stations significantly reduces the average dwell time at the stations, thereby improving the utilization rate of railroad equipment. In addition, the results indicate that the hybrid genetic algorithm can rapidly determine the train hump and marshalling schemes.

The complex three-dimensional organization of epithelial tissues

ABSTRACTUnderstanding the cellular organization of tissues is key to developmental biology. In order to deal with this complex problem, researchers have taken advantage of reductionist approaches to reveal fundamental morphogenetic mechanisms and quantitative laws. For epithelia, their two-dimensional representation as polygonal tessellations has proved successful for understanding tissue organization. Yet, epithelial tissues bend and fold to shape organs in three dimensions. In this context, epithelial cells are too often simplified as prismatic blocks with a limited plasticity. However, there is increasing evidence that a realistic approach, even from a reductionist perspective, must include apico-basal intercalations (i.e. scutoidal cell shapes) for explaining epithelial organization convincingly. Here, we present an historical perspective about the tissue organization problem. Specifically, we analyze past and recent breakthroughs, and discuss how and why simplified, but realistic, in silico models require scutoidal features to address key morphogenetic events.

Analysis and directions of technological and organization problem updating in gas turbine aircraft engine repair

There are presented technological (requirements in new technologies for repair of gas turbine engines (GTE) repaired according to a technical state, growing requirements on reliability, high cost of repair, a limited access to new technologies) and organization (absence of repair localization, high competition etc.) problems of aircraft gas turbine engine repair. The direction for updating: development of new repair technologies at the transition to the concept of repair on a technical state; module technology application; repair production localization; creation of flexible repair techniques etc. is considered.

Geometric-Graphic Student Olympiad in St. Petersburg

Two geometric-graphic Olympiads are held in St. Petersburg: the urban Olympiad in descriptive geometry, initiated by BSTU “VOENMECH” since 1979, and the Olympiad called “Engineering Computer Graphics”, conducted by LETI and ITMO. The peculiarity of the Olympiad in descriptive geometry is its democracy. Its content and organization features are supervised by the professional community, which is united by the section “Geometry, Graphics, Design” of the House of Scientists named after M. Gorky. Competition tasks are developed not only by the organizers. Accepted and suggestions of participants. The content of the Olympiad eventually changes, contributing to its development. Thus, at the suggestion of a number of participants, a comprehensive task was introduced to know the main sections of the course, the task of composition of the task. Despite the withdrawal of the course of descriptive geometry from a number of standards, the fundamentals of this discipline are kept up to date with engineering graphics, which ensures participation in the Olympiad of 7–10 leading technical universities of the city. Olympiad in engineering computer graphics can be attributed to the problem: the level of tasks, focused exclusively on the bachelor degree; on the principles of organization (problem bank of tasks, features of the appeals process); authoritarian chairman of the jury. As a result, it was boycotted by universities, which, unlike the winners, show decent results at All-Russian Olympiads. Among the All-Russian Olympiads, the Olympiad held by MIT stands out. The organizers managed to create a complex competition, which included the ability to solve interesting applied problems on an orthogonal drawing, possession of tools for creating three-dimensional models and drawings of technical products. Given the experience of MIT, the need to create in St. Petersburg an alternative computer graphics competition that is not purely instrumental in nature, the GUT organized an Olympiad called “Total Drawing”. This competition, held under the direction of the chairman of the jury of Professor D.Voloshinov, is gaining popularity. The article discusses and analyzes the principles of organization and the content of these competitions, offers for their modernization and development.

Meta-subject competence development of future bachelors and specialists

Federal State Educational Standard of basic common education sets the demands to personal, meta-subject and subject results of learning after basic educational program of common education. So, according to the succession principle we should develop the competence of the students following these three directions transforming them into educational environment of the university. Thus, meta-subject competence should include ability to use intersubject definitions and universal learning activities performing them at learning, knowledge and social practice. The achievement of meta-subject results is connected with the nature of universal activity. The basis of nature-coordinated education should be basic values - and the most important is morality which is formed from the human nature. That is why the standards of the second generation formulate four blocks of universal learning activities: personal, regulative, common knowledge and communicative. According to their nature meta-subject activities are functional-oriented ones and they form the psychological basis and determine condition of the success of subject task solution. Meta-subject competence development supposes various forms of studying process organization. Problem learning implies active interrelation of the subjects of learning process allowing to form such students categories as readiness, activeness, ability to appreciate which are the key ones for the term competence. One of such organization forms can be the business game which can be used as the means of diagnosis and forecast of personal behavior in various situations. Project technology is also aimed to develop wide range of competence and creative abilities and that is why it suggests the integrity of research, searching, problem solving and comparison methods. It has been shown that nowadays the role of each discipline in meta-subject competence development has been growing rapidly.

Synthetic Optimization Model and Algorithm for Railway Freight Center Station Location and Wagon Flow Organization Problem

The railway freight center stations location and wagon flow organization in railway transport are interconnected, and each of them is complicated in a large-scale rail network. In this paper, a two-stage method is proposed to optimize railway freight center stations location and wagon flow organization together. The location model is present with the objective to minimize the operation cost and fixed construction cost. Then, the second model of wagon flow organization is proposed to decide the optimal train service between different freight center stations. The location of the stations is the output of the first model. A heuristic algorithm that combined tabu search (TS) with adaptive clonal selection algorithm (ACSA) is proposed to solve those two models. The numerical results show the proposed solution method is effective.

A Knowledge Worker Desktop Model (KWDM) Applied to Decision Support System

The concept of information system covers two notions: on the one hand, the reality of the evolving organization that collects, communicates, and records information; and, on the over hand, the digital information system, artificial object conceived by humans to acquire, process, store, transmit, and restore the information allowing them to carry out their activities within the context of the organization (Reix, 1995). We shall refer hereinafter to the digital information system. In the first part of this article, we present the knowledge worker desktop’s model (KWDM). This model highlights three types of data: “main-stream” data, shared-data, and source-of- knowledge-data. In the second part, we describe a group decision and negotiation system (GDNS) for operational performance management (OPM) implemented in an entertainment company based in France. This GDNS addresses a zero latency organization problem that is to provide decision makers, both strategic and operational, with the insight they need to interpret multiple and complex operational data, and take immediate decision close to the action. In the third part, in order to validate the KWDM model, we present the methodology that consists to match each system’s component with each model’s element, and the study’s outcomes. This analysis leads to highlight the formalization of the different data flows, the impact of the system on the organization, and to confirm the importance of human factor in the group decision and negotiation process. Furthermore, it opens new, perspectives particularly the influence of the intention, the importance of shared-data system and the role of the system in the organizational learning process to insure the business continuity plan.