Title: Customisation of industrial training through standardised databases and object-oriented development environments

Authors: Timo Lainema, Olli-Pekka Hilmola

Addresses: Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Rehtorinpellonkatu 3, FIN-20500 Turku, Finland. ' Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Rehtorinpellonkatu 3, FIN-20500 Turku, Finland

Abstract: Currently, companies operate on a global basis, emphasising horizontal integration, innovation and customer satisfaction, while just focusing on the small number of business areas. Therefore, continuous personnel training is a vital part of the competitiveness. In this paper, we will introduce how business game, operating in a real time, through local area networks, could be customised for industrial training purposes. Items/tools such as standardised databases, information exchange and object-oriented programming have enabled the development of this application. According to our empirical results, we argue that companies are not necessarily only interested in directly copying their operations in a form of a business game, but have an interest in the same type of decisions and problems to be dealt during the training sessions.

Keywords: industrial training; customised business learning environments; business gaming; software customisation; simulation gaming; standards; personnel training; LANs; local area networks; information exchange; object-oriented programming; standardised databases.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSS.2006.008201

International Journal of Services and Standards, 2006 Vol.2 No.1, pp.54 - 68

Published online: 22 Nov 2005 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article