APPLICATION OF A WEB-BASED EDUCATION SYSTEM IN
INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES
Perfecto Mariño, Miguel Ángel Domínguez and Santiago Otero
Electronic Technology Department, University of Vigo, Spain
Miguel Merino
Industrial Management Department, University of Vigo, Spain
Keywords: Technology-transfer, Multimedia Tool, Industrial Processes, University-enterprise Collaboration.
Abstract: The authors present a multidisciplinary project called PROPYME, which is a team effort of the University
of Vigo (Spain) and the FEUGA autonomous government foundation (Galicia, North West of Spain), both
supported by several industrial enterprises from the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
market. The main purpose of PROPYME project was to accomplish an innovative technology-transfer task
from university industrial researchers, to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), for enhancing their
productivity by the automation of their industrial and management processes. This involves a SME´s effort
not only by a financial point of view, but adaptation, knowledge acquisition and organizational changes.
Moreover, embedding ICT´s involves adapting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools to integrate
vertically process and systems, owned by the SME itself, facing to decision challenges based on economic
value, knowledge and communication concepts. The PROPYME first phase is a portal Web with a
demonstration multimedia tool, text, graphics, animations, audio and video, that shows fifteen industrial
processes based on diverse technologies frequently used for industrial enterprises.
1 INTRODUCTION
The industrial sector should incorporate the
Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) in the business processes. The automation of
industrial and management processes supposes an
improvement of the productivity in small and
medium enterprises. It supposes an enhancement of
the resources of a country and a major boost to the
progress. Thus, it is necessary design and implement
environments with the aim to transfer information
about industrial automation to enterprises.
This paper shows a multidisciplinary project
called PROPYME. It was promoted from the
University of Vigo (Spain) and FEUGA (Enterprise-
Galician University Foundation) autonomous
government foundation (Galicia, North West of
Spain). It was developed with the collaboration of
several industrial enterprises, which supported the
project with documentation about their industrial
processes and allowing the access to their
installations to get multimedia material (videos).
The first phase of this project is a portal Web
(www.procesospropyme.com) with a demonstration
multimedia tool that shows fifteen industrial
processes based on diverse technologies frequently
used for industrial enterprises. The first phase of
PROPYME was accomplished during two years
with the following tasks: coordination, specification
and development (2004); implementation and
diffusion (2005).
The structure of the multimedia tool is unique for
all industrial processes to ease its understanding.
This structure depicts the most of elements involved
in the introduction of these industrial processes.
Eight implementing elements are included as buttons
in a user-interface upper bar such as (from left to
right): business process, engineering project,
technologies, technological components,
implementation, complexity, applications and cost.
The tool also includes six icons in the user-interface
bottom bar to ease further advanced consults and
direct contact with the experts (researchers team
452
Mariño P., Ángel Domínguez M., Otero S. and Merino M. (2008).
APPLICATION OF A WEB-BASED EDUCATION SYSTEM IN INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES.
In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 452-455
DOI: 10.5220/0001514404520455
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

biography, video, glossary, bibliography, regulations
or standards and team’s e-mail).
The seven concepts assessed in the development of
PROPYME´s multimedia tool were:
 Demonstrate to the industrial businessman
about the importance and value provided by
ICTs to its business processes.
 Have a global knowledge about advantages
and drawbacks using those technologies.
 How estimate resources, difficulties, costs and
teaching needs facing organizational changes.
 Learning the management of implementation
and maintenance about an automated industrial
process, assessing risks and trade-offs.
 Providing an understandable knowledge about
university capabilities and ICT´s enterprises
that give the needed know-how to increase
productivity.
 Rising of powerful knowledge elements to
provide a critical analysis about its own
organization.
 Supplying the right decision-making
knowledge.
2 STRUCTURE OF PROPYME
The PROPYME multimedia tool constitutes an
environment where businessmen and professionals
related to industrial processes can improve their
knowledge about this area. In the present, the tool is
made up of fifteen topics related to industrial
processes: Industrial plant data acquisition,
electronic commerce, production automatic control,
digital dashboard (Jonhson, 2004), ergonomics in
the job (Kohn, 1997), quality management ISO
9001, international knowledge management
(Tapscott, 1999), maintenance management
(Nyman, 2001), environmental management ISO
14000, radiofrequency identification, electronic
instrumentation (Barlett, 2002), automatic
maintenance in production lines (Fowler, 1995),
setup time reduction (Claunch, 1996), traceability
and artificial vision (Jain, 1995).
The structure of PROPYME web page is shown
in Figure 1.
MAIN PAGE
ProPyme
Explanatory text
Industrial processes
Industrial plant
data acquisition
Process Details
Quality managent
ISO 9000
Process Details
Ergonomics in job
Process Details
Authors
List of authors and
Information about them
Multimedia
Animation
Video
Descriptive
Explanatory
News
Late Previous
Electronic instrumentation
Process Details
Identification by
radio frequency
Process Details
Artificial vision
Process Details
Figure 1: Structure of PROPYME web page.
The user can see in an easy way a summary of every
industrial process included in the tool. The tool
shows one box for each process with a brief
description of the process and a descriptive
animation. Thus, the user can get the concept of the
process in a short time and in a friendly way. The
user can choice one process and see all the
information about it or only the details.
All the processes have the same structure to ease
its understanding. The access to the information of
the process is structured as it is shown in Figure 2.
The information is shown to the user in a
standardized way for all processes with the aim to
ease the use of the tool and reduce the time to get the
required information. This standardization is one of
the main advantages of this tool.
The user can access to different information
about the industrial process with the buttons placed
in the upper part of the user-interface. The
information is presented with an explanatory text
supplemented with an animation. The animations are
a very important contribution in this tool because
allow that the user understand the concepts better.
NAME OF THE PROCESS
Business
process
Engineering
project
Technologies
Technological
components
Implementation Complexity Applications Cost
ANIMATION
PROCESS
Explanatory test about the chosen item
Glossary Coordinator Video Bibliography Standard Contact
Figure 2: Components of the processes.
APPLICATION OF A WEB-BASED EDUCATION SYSTEM IN INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES
453

The user-interface enables the access to videos about
the selected topic. Videos are essential in any
multimedia tool because concepts that have a
difficult explanation with words are understood
better with a video about a real experience of an
industrial process including this concept.
Often, the explanatory texts of technical topics
include words or terms that their meanings are not
familiars. A complete glossary about industrial
processes terms has been development for this tool.
A lot of technical terms (bluetooth, fieldbus, data
logger, Electromagnetic Compatibility, etc.) are
defined in a clear and brief way. This glossary
supposes a considerable help for the user.
The tool also includes a complete bibliography
about every topic and information about standards so
that the users can deepen and increase their
knowledge.
3 EXAMPLE OF INDUSTRIAL
PROCESS
An example of an industrial process included in the
PROPYME tool is shown in this section to illustrate
better the philosophy of this environment.
The electronic instrumentation processes are
very important in the industry (Mariño, 2003). The
electronic instrumentation is a discipline dedicated
to measure any parameter, to converter these
parameters in electrical values and to manage these
values to provide the adequate information to a
control system, a human operator or both.
The multimedia PROPYME tool included
complete information about electronic
instrumentation, which is very important for
professionals in the field of the control systems. The
electronic instrumentation processes are described.
The user can get information about the aims,
main application fields, methodology for
implementation, used technologies, components,
requirements, development process, cost, application
examples and bibliography.
3.1 Business Process
The elements of an Electronic Instrumentation
System (EIS), aims, advantages, drawbacks and
main application fields are described in this section.
Each concept is illustrated by one video or
animation. For example, the user can see a video
about an electronic instrumentation system to
evaluate the injuries of persons in automobile
accidents. The video shows the crash of an
automobile against a wall. The automobile has
installed a crash test dummy with several sensors.
An instrumental laboratory captures data of these
sensors. The system also uses artificial vision to
extract data about the movement of the crash test
dummy and about the deformation of the automobile
Thus, report about injury levels in several body parts
and physical parameters (three axial acceleration,
force, moment of inertia, etc.) can be obtained.
3.2 Engineering Project
The engineering project informs to the user about
the project management (cost, profits, work
planning), methodology, enterprises of electronic
instrumentation and basic elements in an EIS. The
sequence of phases that should be followed in the
development of an EIS is:
 Requirements for the implementation.
 Element acquisition: selection of elements,
measurement processing and selection of
communication elements, visual display units,
actuators, etc.
 Development process (viability).
 Operation process (robustness).
3.3 Technological Components
One important concept in the EIS is the used
technologies and technological components. In these
sections, the user can get knowledge about the basic
components of an EIS, application fields, advantages
and drawbacks. A complete description of the
technological components taking part in an EIS and
different ways of integration of these components
are shown too.
3.4 Implementation and Complexity
The PROPYME tool explains in these sections the
development and operation processes and the
requirements for the implementation (specifications,
physical and human resources and applicability).
With respect to the complexity, the user can see that
an EIS is a set of diverse technologies. Knowledge
about electronic engineering, specialization on
physical, chemical, biological or environmental
phenomena, transducers, software engineering,
electrical engineering, system analysis,
communication engineering, mechanical engineering
and system integration are necessary to design,
install and implement an EIS in a satisfactory way.
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3.5 Applications and Cost
Some interesting applications of EIS, such as
meteorology and communications and transformer
monitoring, are exposed in these sections.
The user can know as an EIS is used to
design a data acquisition system for meteorology
integrating millimetre bands radio communication.
This project was implemented in the North West of
Spain. The read of meteorological variables is made
with automatic data acquisition system using
elements distributed in the covered area of
meteorological radar. Figure 3 shows a map with the
localization of the system elements (weather radar,
WS: Weather Stations, CWN: Central Wireless
Node, SWN: Secondary Wireless Nodes).
There are strategic and tactical reasons to
justify an EIS. The cost of the system should take
into account the cash flow in the time (costs and
profits). The result is a calculation of the Return Of
Investment (ROI). Each application should be
considered and justified by its own merits.
The PROPYME tool shows the parameters to
take into account in the cost calculation. The user
can see an example of the cost calculation of an EIS
for transformers monitoring in electrical power
distribution substations.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper introduces the PROPYME project that is
a multidisciplinary work for innovative technology-
transfer in industrial automation.
Figure 3: Elements of the meteorological System.
The first phase of this project is a computer and
Web-based software with fifteen industrial
processes. Users can access to a complete
documentation about these industrial processes with
a continuous support by the authors. The main
advantages of this multimedia tool are:
 A complete and classified documentation
about industrial automation processes.
 The structure is unique for all processes, which
makes the access to the concepts easier.
 The tool represents a great effort of
collaboration between university and
enterprises.
 The animations and videos help to understand
the concepts in a friendly way.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to the sponsors of
PROPYME project: University of Vigo, FEUGA,
IGAPE and COMUNITEL. We also want to
mention our debt to all industrial enterprises that
generously opened their facilities for filming real
video pictures about particular industrial processes,
providing us the necessary multimedia material for
developing this project.
REFERENCES
Barlett, T., 2002. Industrial control electronics, devices,
systems and applications, Thomson Learning.
Claunch, J., 1996. Set-up Time Reduction, Irwin.
Fowler, J., 1995. STEP for data management exchange
and sharing, Technology Approisals Ltd.,
Twickenham, UK.
Jain, R., Kasturi R., Schunck, B.G., 1995. Machine vision,
McGraw-Hill.
Jonhson, M., 2004. “Incoming intelligence”,
Computerworld, Vol. 38, Issue 25, p. 20.
Kohn, J.P., 1997. The ergonomic casebook: Real world
solutions, Lewis Publishers.
Mariño, P., 2003. Communications in enterprises:
Standards, networks and services (in Spanish), Ra-Ma,
2ª edition.
Nyman, L., 2001. Maintenance planning, scheduling and
coordination.
Tapscott, D. et al., 1999. Creating value in the network
esconomy, H.B.R. Book, Boston.
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