Legacy Tools Research Articles

Difficult bosses: real strategies for surviving

PurposeThe plight of dissatisfied employees has become a recurring theme. A question often asked by management trainees is “How do I handle my difficult boss?” Hence, this paper aims to address the difficult boss problem successfully from the perspective of the subordinate.Design/methodology/approachThe conceptualized legacy framework had been presented to participants and who verified its accuracy by their experiences. They could apply the framework with relative ease. Workshops, interview and online questionnaires informed the development of the framework.FindingsThe framework proposes four legacy effects on subordinates that bosses leave after interaction, namely, tense, dark, false and calm legacies. The legacies assist subordinates in classifying their bosses as either a hammer, flat battery, fire-lighter or dynamo. Once the boss is categorized, strategies to assist subordinates in handling their difficult boss flow from the framework.Research limitations/implicationsWhile extremely useful for subordinates, bosses are limited in the use of the legacy model as it requires very high trust levels to exist. The nature of the difficult boss problem suggests that such trust does not exist.Practical implicationsBenefits of understanding the legacy framework has two benefits: subordinates can use the legacy tool to classify their bosses and find strategies for how to handle difficult bosses. For bosses, subordinate evaluation of their legacies presents an alternative avenue to seek feedback and improve “self-learning” through reflection.Originality/valueThe legacy matrix was shown to be applicable to all bosses at all levels in virtually all organizations. The value of the framework was also observed at the informal level.

A 67-item stress resilience item bank showing high content validity was developed in a psychosomatic sample

ObjectivesTo develop the first item bank to measure stress resilience (SR) in clinical populations. Study Design and SettingQualitative item development resulted in an initial pool of 131 items covering a broad theoretical SR concept. These items were tested in n = 521 patients at a psychosomatic outpatient clinic. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, as well as other state-of-the-art item analyses and item response theory were used for item evaluation and calibration of the final item bank. ResultsOf the initial item pool of 131 items, we excluded 64 items (54 factor loading <0.5, four residual correlations >0.3, two nondiscriminative item response curves, and four differential item functioning). The final set of 67 items indicated sufficient model fit in confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory analyses. In addition, a 10-item short form with high measurement precision (SE ≤ 0.32 in a theta range between −1.8 and +1.5) was derived. Both the SR item bank and the SR short form were highly correlated with an existing static legacy tool (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale). ConclusionThe final SR item bank and 10-item short form showed good psychometric properties. When further validated, they will be ready to be used within a framework of computer-adaptive tests for a comprehensive assessment of the stress construct.

Development and evaluation of a novel user interface for reviewing clinical microbiology results.

Microbiology laboratory results are complex and cumbersome to review. We sought to develop a new review tool to improve the ease and accuracy of microbiology results review. We observed and informally interviewed clinicians to determine areas in which existing microbiology review tools were lacking. We developed a new tool that reorganizes microbiology results by time and organism. We conducted a scenario-based usability evaluation to compare the new tool to existing legacy tools, using a balanced block design. The average time-on-task decreased from 45.3 min for the legacy tools to 27.1 min for the new tool (P < .0001). Total errors decreased from 41 with the legacy tools to 19 with the new tool (P = .0068). The average Single Ease Question score was 5.65 (out of 7) for the new tool, compared to 3.78 for the legacy tools (P < .0001). The new tool scored 88 ("Excellent") on the System Usability Scale. The new tool substantially improved efficiency, accuracy, and usability. It was subsequently integrated into the electronic health record and rolled out system-wide. This project provides an example of how clinical and informatics teams can innovative alongside a commercial Electronic Health Record (EHR).

Student-to-student legacies in exploratory action research

In 2013/2014, I conducted two consecutive cycles of exploratory action research aimed at improving the quality of my French engineering students’ oral presentations in English. Each cycle involved a different group of students. I collaborated with the students extensively throughout the project and found that the experience was highly beneficial for everyone involved. Presentation quality and the learner/teacher experience were enhanced through student engagement in each cycle and from cycle to cycle, with the second group of students building on the experiences of the first. I tried to exploit this positive dynamic by creating and testing two ‘legacy tools’ explicitly designed to communicate ideas and experiences from previous to future student-participants. This article focuses on the project’s subsequent third and fourth cycles, which took place the following year, and demonstrates that, despite their limitations, the tools proved to be an effective way of conveying the findings from one group of students to another, helping to produce richer learner/teacher experiences and better oral presentations.

The 3rd Reactive Synthesis Competition (SYNTCOMP 2016): Benchmarks, Participants &amp; Results

We report on the benchmarks, participants and results of the third reactive synthesis competition(SYNTCOMP 2016). The benchmark library of SYNTCOMP 2016 has been extended to benchmarks in the new LTL-based temporal logic synthesis format (TLSF), and 2 new sets of benchmarks for the existing AIGER-based format for safety specifications. The participants of SYNTCOMP 2016 can be separated according to these two classes of specifications, and we give an overview of the 6 tools that entered the competition in the AIGER-based track, and the 3 participants that entered the TLSF-based track. We briefly describe the benchmark selection, evaluation scheme and the experimental setup of SYNTCOMP 2016. Finally, we present and analyze the results of our experimental evaluation, including a comparison to participants of previous competitions and a legacy tool.

Advanced Carriers on Legacy CMP Tools - an Intelligent Solution for Flexible Production Environments and R&D Labs

Chemical Mechanical Planarization is more than ever a key technology, not only in advanced CMOS fabrication but also in emerging areas like the “Internet Of Things” (IOT). Whereas lower nm-CMOS-nodes require a perfect process control with nearly zero within-wafer-non-uniformity, “atomic layer CMP”, IOT applications introduce an almost unlimited number of new and partly contradictory process demands. “Crazy” layouts are accompanied by various substrate diameters and thicknesses. The list of materials, which need to be planarized, is almost as long as the periodic table of elements. On the other hand, the requirements on planarity and surface quality are not much less challenging than for advanced CMOS. All that comes along with a modest number of wafers. In conclusion, IOT device fabrication needs highly flexible CMP setups, which ensure a process quality and performance comparable to advanced CMOS fabrication. Actually, this is needed not only for fabrication but also for any process development and research in this field. How to deal with this situation? State of the art CMP equipment will certainly give the desired process quality, however, it is mostly dedicated to high throughput at specific process settings. One advantage of modern equipment is that advanced membrane heads are very forgiving when it comes to wafer thickness variation. The capability to handle substrate sizes with a reasonable conversion effort, however, is limited. Moreover, these machines are tremendously expensive in procurement and operation. Even refurbished equipment of a recent generation will only partially solve this problem. For research facilities like Fraunhofer, and probably for some small and medium IOT device manufactures, such tools are not a viable option financially. Against this background, depreciated legacy tools become an interesting alternative. The market is filled with this type of equipment. Refurbishing companies, often specialized to these machines, are able to give them a second life. The major issue: How to achieve the necessary process performance with reasonable conversion effort? In order to achieve exactly that, the equipment needs to be upgraded with state of the art/advanced options, such as advanced membrane polish heads (carriers). Within this paper we will present process results obtained from a remanufactured IPEC CMP tool, equipped with advanced membrane carriers. The necessary tool modification comprises a complete reconstruction of polish arm inner workings as well as new hardware and software to control the carrier, which will be briefly explained. As a result of this work, the tool is made able to work with 150 mm and 200 mm membrane carriers without tremendous conversion effort. Running the equipment in manual or semi automatic mode, as usually done in research and development environments, requires less than 15 minutes for a diameter change. For CMP of dielectric, Figure 1 shows that the upgraded head produces not only better non-uniformity for 200mm wafers, but also opens up the process parameter window to allow for improved removal rate as well. In addition, a 100mm membrane carrier has been recently developed. This carrier enables for the first time the advanced process capability of CMP for the 100mm non-Si wafers being used for the development of many novel devices. Figure 2 demonstrates that the non-uniformity, removal rate, and profile tunability of advanced carriers is now available for 100mm wafers. The main objective of this paper is to work out important process characteristics, such as within wafer non-uniformity and reproducibility. To that, a series of experiments was carried out and will be explained in detail.Based on the result we will discuss opportunities and limitations of such a tool modification. Finally, we will give selected application examples. Figure 1

Innovative Authoring Tools for Online-Courses with Assignments - Integrating Heterogeneous Tools of e-Learning Platforms into Hybrid Application Solutions

This paper is concerned with an essential topic in e-learning - course content authoring. Besides supporting the concept of Competence-Based Learning (CBL) our solution is aiming to make effective use of an open integration architecture fostering the interoperability of hybrid e-learning solutions. Modern scenarios ask for interoperable software solutions to seamlessly integrate existing e-learning infrastructures and legacy tools with innovative technologies while being cognitively efficient to handle. In this way, prospective users are enabled to use them seamlessly without learning overheads. At the same time, methods of Learning Design (LD) in combination with CBL are getting more and more important to produce and maintain easy to facilitate solutions. Our approach of developing a competence-based course-authoring and assignment-support software bridges the gaps between Moodle and established legacy infrastructures by embedding existing legacy tools via Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI). The underlying conceptual architecture for this integration approach and its components will be introduced; furthermore a Moodle plugin will be outlined, which enables Moodle for LD- and CBL-support including corresponding data exchange with our course authoring tool. The paper concludes with an outlook on future plans for our research and development.

The New wwPDB Deposition and Annotation System

In anticipation of continued growth in the number, size and complexity of the structures that are being studied and deposited in the PDB and EMDB, the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) has developed a new system for deposition and annotation of structural data. The new wwPDB Deposition &amp; Annotation (D&amp;A) system offers a single entry point for depositors from around the world to deposit X-ray, NMR, 3DEM data, receive detailed validation feedback, and preview annotations, all prior to submission. The system will assign not only PDB identifiers upon submission, but also EMDB and BMRB identifiers for 3DEM and NMR data, respectively. Furthermore, the new system is used at all wwPDB processing sites around the globe. After deposition, wwPDB annotators use the system for sequence annotation, ligand annotation, additional structure analysis and validation, and review. Validation functionality implements recommendations from the wwPDB X-ray Validation Task Force and produces a structure validation report for depositor review and submission to scientific journals. Depositors will have the option to use the new system or one of the legacy deposition tools (ADIT, AutoDep) through the end of 2014. At that time, the legacy tools will stop accepting new entries, and will only be available for a limited period of time to complete in-progress deposition sessions. An important feature of the new deposition system is its ability to accept and produce data in PDBx/mmCIF format, which has no limitations in the size or complexity of structures that can be represented. The PDBx/mmCIF Working Group, consisting of software developers from CCP4, Global Phasing Ltd., Phenix, and the wwPDB, have adapted structure determination software packages to produce PDBx/mmCIF format files suitable for deposition. The new wwPDB deposition and annotation will produce more consistent and higher quality archive entries, and will improve the efficiency and throughput of deposition and annotation. The modular design of the system will facilitate incorporating new functionalities and support for hybrid and other methods in the future. wwPDB members are RCSB PDB (supported by NSF, NIH, and DOE), PDBe (EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Trust, BBSRC, NIGMS, and EU), PDBj (NBDC-JST) and BMRB (NLM).

Virtual worlds, augmented reality, blended reality

The internet could be considered just another collection of digital tools, but it has had a more profound impact on how we live, work and play than most people would have predicted. The internet makes everywhere local. For the exchange of ideas and data, it does not matter where you are on the planet. For an industrialized society, or for one forming to emulate existing ones, this creates an interesting situation. If people can work and communicate at any distance the current organization of corporations, cities and even countries changes. However, the legacy set of tools available to communicate at distance miss many of the vital elements we use as humans. Telephones, email and web pages filter out much of who we are. It is very easy, therefore, to dismiss any new technology as more of the same and to stick with the legacy tools. We lose the notion of space, location, size, physical presence and nonverbal communication in the “traditional” internet tools. This tension between what we currently do and what we need to do acts as a flashpoint that causes new inventions to emerge.The internet helps spread these inventions, and acts as the expression of them. These evolutionary steps in our communication are not restricted to the keyboard and screen, so not only challenge our organizations they also challenge our ideas of what the norm is for computing. Looking at the components of some already exciting technologies and combining them with a changing society becoming well versed in freedom the internet can offer, leads us to a very close future, etc. One with a blended reality where digital and physical mixes in combinations that suit us as people. The future is already here we just have to join it.

Evaluation of a role functioning computer adaptive test (RF-CAT)

To evaluate the validity and participants' acceptance of an online assessment of role function using computer adaptive test (RF-CAT). The RF-CAT and a set of established quality of life instruments were administered in a cross-sectional study in a panel sample (n = 444) recruited from the general population with over-selection of participants with selected self-report chronic conditions (n = 225). The efficiency, score accuracy, validity, and acceptability of the RF-CAT were evaluated and compared to existing measures. The RF-CAT with a stopping rule of six items with content balancing used 25 of the available bank items and was completed on average in 66 s. RF-CAT and the legacy tools scores were highly correlated (.64-.84) and successfully discriminated across known groups. The RF-CAT produced a more precise assessment over a wider range than the SF-36 Role Physical scale. Patients' evaluations of the RF-CAT system were positive overall, with no differences in ratings observed between the CAT and static assessments. The RF-CAT was feasible, more precise than the static SF-36 RP and equally acceptable to participants as legacy measures. In empirical tests of validity, the better performance of the CAT was not uniformly statistically significant. Further research exploring the relationship between gained precision and discriminant power of the CAT assessment is needed.

Supporting the internet-based evaluation of research software with cloud infrastructure

Due to license restrictions and installation issues, it is often not feasible to experiment with software without making substantial investments. Especially in the case of legacy tools, it turns out that even free software is often too costly (i.e., time-consuming) to be installed for evaluating the quality of a research contribution. After organizing a series of events related to software modeling, we have constructed (and started to use) SHARE, a system for sharing practically any type of software artifact to reviewers and to other participants who have very limited time available. The system relies on cloud-computing technologies to provide online access to interactive environments containing all the tools, documentation, input and output models to reproduce alleged research results. The system also enables one to clone such an environment and add additional models or tools in order to extend a contribution or pinpoint a problem. In retrospect, we observe that the approach is not limited to software modeling and SHARE is in fact gaining acceptance in other fields already.

Theory and practice of unparsed patterns for metacompilation

Several software development tools support the matching of concrete syntax user-supplied patterns against the application source code, allowing the detection of invalid, risky, inefficient or forbidden constructs. When applied to compilers, this approach is called metacompilation. These patterns are traditionally parsed into tree patterns, i.e., fragments of abstract-syntax trees with metavariables, which are then matched against the abstract-syntax tree corresponding to the parsing of the source code. Parsing the patterns requires extending the grammar of the application programming language with metavariables, which can be difficult, especially in the case of legacy tools. Instead, we propose a novel matching algorithm which is independent of the programming language because the patterns are not parsed and, as such, are called unparsed patterns. It is as efficient as the classic pattern matching while being easier to implement. By giving up the possibility of static checks that parsed patterns usually enable, it can be integrated within any existing utility based on abstract-syntax trees at a low cost. We present an in-depth coverage of the practical and theoretical aspects of this new technique by describing a working minimal patch for the GNU C compiler, together with a small standalone prototype punned Matchbox, and by lying out a complete formalisation, including mathematical proofs of key algorithmic properties, like correctness and equivalence to the classic matching.

GeneFisher-P: variations of GeneFisher as processes in Bio-jETI.

BackgroundPCR primer design is an everyday, but not trivial task requiring state-of-the-art software. We describe the popular tool GeneFisher and explain its recent restructuring using workflow techniques. We apply a service-oriented approach to model and implement GeneFisher-P, a process-based version of the GeneFisher web application, as a part of the Bio-jETI platform for service modeling and execution. We show how to introduce a flexible process layer to meet the growing demand for improved user-friendliness and flexibility.ResultsWithin Bio-jETI, we model the process using the jABC framework, a mature model-driven, service-oriented process definition platform. We encapsulate remote legacy tools and integrate web services using jETI, an extension of the jABC for seamless integration of remote resources as basic services, ready to be used in the process. Some of the basic services used by GeneFisher are in fact already provided as individual web services at BiBiServ and can be directly accessed. Others are legacy programs, and are made available to Bio-jETI via the jETI technology.The full power of service-based process orientation is required when more bioinformatics tools, available as web services or via jETI, lead to easy extensions or variations of the basic process. This concerns for instance variations of data retrieval or alignment tools as provided by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI).ConclusionsThe resulting service- and process-oriented GeneFisher-P demonstrates how basic services from heterogeneous sources can be easily orchestrated in the Bio-jETI platform and lead to a flexible family of specialized processes tailored to specific tasks.

Special Issue: First International Workshop on Workflow Systems in Grid Environments (WSGE2006)

This special issue of Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience contains selected high-quality papers from the First International Workshop on Workflow Systems in Grid Environments (WSGE2006) which was sponsored by Hunan University of Science and Technology in China and held in the university on 23 October 2006 1. The WSGE workshop series aims to provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of research and development trends to support workflow in Grid environments. WSGE2006 attracted a number of international attendants. A keynote speech entitled ‘Time Management in Workflow Systems’ was delivered by Professor Yunshun Fan from Tsinghua University in China. A panel discussion was also part of this event, comparing ‘Business Workflow’ vs ‘Grid Workflow’. One of the conclusions reached by the panel members was that a Grid workflow is not significant in any way compared to other such approaches, with the key additional aspects being the computation and data resources used (over a Grid) to enact the workflow. Grid workflow has been under investigation for several years 2-6. In particular, GGF (Global Grid Forum) 10 was focused on it in 2004. GGF 10 was then concluded as a special issue in Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. The title of the special issue is ‘Workflow in Grid Systems’ 7, 8 and it was edited by Professor Geoffrey C. Fox and Professor Dennis Gannon from Indiana University in U.S.A. This WSGE2006 special issue is a follow-up of the GGF 10 special issue. Many existing research and development efforts have focused on the functional issues of Grid workflow, such as support for modelling languages or Grid workflow enactment engines 2, 4-6. Gradually, more and more attention is being paid to non-functional issues such as QoS (Quality of Service), time management, or verification and validation 9-12. Accordingly, this special issue has a focus on the non-functional issues. This special issue contains six papers based on those that were presented at WSGE2006. They are listed as 13-18. Particular attention was paid to the non-functional issues. Besides, research problems must be analysed systematically. For specific approaches or models, evaluation must be presented. Based on these, the six papers were selected and also reviewed thoroughly. They are briefed as follows. Zheng et al. 13 propose an enhanced workflow simulation model supporting the simulation of event-based interaction between composed (Grid) services. Using the proposed approach, the behaviour between composed services can be simulated and in particular evaluation of QoS for service composition can be carried out. An example is presented on the implemented prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. Brandic et al. 14 argue that there is a lack of a holistic environment for Grid workflows that supports QoS in all phases of the workflow lifecycle, i.e. from specification to execution. Existing Grid workflow systems either support the whole workflow lifecycle but lack QoS support, or provide only partial QoS support for certain stages of the workflow lifecycle. Hence, Brandic et al. 14 present ‘Amadeus’—a novel service-oriented environment for QoS-aware Grid workflows. A distinguishing feature of Amadeus is the holistic approach to QoS support during all stages of the workflow lifecycle from specification to execution. The architecture of Amadeus is described in detail. For each stage of the workflow lifecycle, experiments are conducted to evaluate the corresponding Amadeus components. Chen and Yang 15 propose a taxonomy of Grid workflow verification and validation. It classifies different issues in Grid workflow verification and validation into a particular set of categories. The relationship of some existing projects to the proposed taxonomy is also presented. Lee and Min 16 propose a PLC (Peak Load Control)-based orchestration system that can stably execute hybrid Grid services. The PLC mechanism uses the delay time algorithm for controlling a workflow engine's heavy peak load caused by request congestion for a short period of time. With PLC, the performance of workflow engines can be improved. Comparison and simulation analysis further demonstrate this point. Liu et al. 17 propose a time model for large-scale workflow execution spanning different working time zones. The model is called WdCM (Workday Calendar Model). WdCM can allow for the difference in world-wide working time zones. A case study is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of WdCM. Rygg et al. 18 present an intuitive workflow environment called GPFlow to support scientists with their research. The workflow in GPFlow wraps legacy tools and presents a high-level interactive Web-based graphical interface to scientists, so that they can access and execute their scientific workflows. Two bioinformatics experiments are performed to demonstrate its flexibility and simplicity.

GPFlow: an intuitive environment for web‐based scientific workflow

AbstractIncreasingly scientists are using collections of software tools in their research. These tools are typically used in concert, often necessitating laborious and error‐prone manual data reformatting and transfer. We present an intuitive workflow environment to support scientists with their research. The workflow, GPFlow, wraps legacy tools, presenting a high level, interactive web‐based front end to scientists. The workflow backend is realized by a commercial grade workflow engine (Windows Workflow Foundation). The workflow model is inspired by spreadsheets and is novel in its support for an intuitive method of interaction enabling experimentation as required by many scientists, e.g. bioinformaticians. We apply GPFlow to two bioinformatics experiments and demonstrate its flexibility and simplicity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Using a model-driven transformational approach and service-oriented architecture for service delivery management

IT (information technology) service providers often assume that efficient and effective service delivery can be achieved by migrating to a standard set of tools. This assumption is true only if the service provider has monolithic control over the scope and architecture of the customer environment. The trend, however, is toward selective outsourcing, customer control over the architecture of IT solutions, and retention of legacy tools. Target environments are extremely heterogeneous, and the ability of the service provider to control them is diminishing. Consequently, there is a need for a new approach to IT service workflow automation and a new generation of service-delivery management systems that support heterogeneity and collaboration. This paper introduces a new approach to automating complex and variable workflows, applies this approach to IT service delivery management (SDM), presents an SDM architecture based on this approach, and discusses an SDM implementation driven by this architecture. Our implementation architecture leverages service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles by defining loosely coupled service components and a service fulfillment pattern that dynamically integrates them. We discuss the modeling of performance metrics for service delivery and describe how the monitoring and management of key performance indicators (KPIs) are supported as an integral part of our SDM platform.

A Web Services Implementation of a User-Centered Knowledge Management Platform for the Construction Industry

The research described in this paper aims at specifying and developing an open model-based infrastructure and a set of tools that promote consistent knowledge management within collaborative environments in the construction sector. The specified solution emerged from a comprehensive analysis of the business and information/knowledge management practices of four construction organizations and makes use of a construction-specific ontology for specifying adaptive mechanisms that can organize documents according to their content and interdependencies while maintaining their overall consistency. The proposed Web-based infrastructure includes services allowing the creation, capture, indexing, retrieval, and dissemination of knowledge. It also promotes the integration of third-party services, including proprietary and legacy tools. The Web-services model is used as the underlying middleware technology that supports the solution. The research is sponsored by the European Commission under the Framework V Programme (Information Society and Technology).

Knowledge – Based Design and Decisions: Accommodating Multidisciplined Product Development Teams

Creating an effective work environment and process is necessary for successful product design and development. Literature and design managers explain their unique design processes in the hope of re-applying it or transferring it to others. Those who follow try to duplicate or use parts of the processes in an attempt to replicate creativity, innovation and product success. However, because all the variables cannot be taken into account, it is impossible to transplant the expert knowledge base, the experience of others, and the personal team dynamics or decisions that enabled successful product design.Delivering good product design, at a reasonable cost, within a given timeframe has always been the challenge of most companies. With this in mind, what tools and processes are overlooked? How can industrial designers enable communication, understanding and teamwork to achieve these goals within their own organization?The following paper proposes a specific process and communication tool that can be applied in its entirety or as components to current design development processes. The Product Development Bank, a prototype interface tool, is a visual database of text and image notation that is grouped and linked in a specific framework that mimics teamwork habits and styles. This tool recognizes that the design activity is based on one's own experience, education and history. As a legacy tool it has the propensity to become an educational or historical template while aiding the tracking of critical decision selection.This process tool can be categorized into two general areas: human-based and technology-based.The application of the shared knowledge-based tool utilizes both human experience and technology to draw upon expert experiences and document critical design and engineering issues for the team benefit. The design development bank's interface is tied into a relational database, Thinkmap™, to allow relevant subject matter to surface and move in proximity to the main subject matter.This paper will focus on the explanation and implementation of the knowledge-based tool for a range of disciplines concerned with product development – design, engineering, manufacturing and marketing. The paper will specifically use the design and manufacture of computer products as a case example. The overall intent is to provide communication and education on all levels for an extended period of time, at reasonable costs, and a low barrier of entry for implementation. The end purpose of the product development bank is to enable relevant dialogue while maintaining and developing expert knowledge for improved product design.