Selection of knowledge acquisition techniques based upon the problem domain characteristics of production and operations management expert systems

The application of expert systems to various problem domains in business has grown steadily since their introduction. Regardless of the chosen method of development, the most commonly cited problems in developing these systems are the unavailability of both the experts and knowledge engineers and difficulties with the process of acquiring knowledge from domain experts. Within the field of artificial intelligence, this has been called the 'knowledge acquisition' problem and has been identified as the greatest bottleneck in the expert system development process. Simply stated, the problem is how to acquire the specific knowledge for a well-defined problem domain efficiently from one or more experts and represent it in the appropriate computer format. Given the 'paradox of expertise', the experts have often proceduralized their knowledge to the point that they have difficulty in explaining exactly what they know and how they know it. However, empirical research in the field of expert systems reveals that certain knowledge acquisition techniques are significantly more efficient than others in helping to extract certain types of knowledge within specific problem domains. In this paper we present a mapping between these empirical studies and a generic taxonomy of expert system problem domains. In so doing, certain knowledge acquisition techniques can be prescribed based on the problem domain characteristics. With the production and operations management (P/OM) field as the pilot area for the current study, we first examine the range of problem domains and suggest a mapping of P/OM tasks to a generic taxonomy of problem domains. We then describe the most prominent knowledge acquisition techniques. Based on the examination of the existing empirical knowledge acquisition research, we present how the empirical work can be used to provide guidance to developers of expert systems in the field of P/OM.     

An Analysis of Knowledge Acquisition Roles and Participants

Much recent research effort in the field of knowledge acquisition (KA) has focussed on extending knowledge acquisition techniques and processes to include a wider array of participants and knowledge sources in a variety of knowledge acquisition scenarios. As the domain of expert systems applications and research has expanded, techniques have been developed to acquire and incorporate knowledge from groups of experts and from various sources such as text, video, and audio tapes. However, the dominant participant-role model remains that of the knowledge engineer eliciting knowledge from one or more human experts. This conceptual gap has contributed to the major divisions in the KA field between researchers interested in manual KA and those developing tools for automated KA. This article considers the wide variety of possible KA scenarios and presents a meta-view of KA participants and the roles they may assume.We suggest that it is more appropriate to think of knowledge acquisition participants as playing one or more roles. These include knowledge sources, agents and targets for KA processes. We also present a participant model drawn from research in decision support systems that more accurately characterizes the diversity of the entities participating in the KA process. This view is more inclusive as it allows us to consider both human-human and human-computer KA interactions as well as the whole variety of knowledge sources and targets. A careful consideration of the meta-view and its associated role-participant mappings also yields the new ideas of the elemental and composite role and the multi-role entity. These new constructs are then used to identify areas where research is currently needed and to generate specific research issues. Taken altogether, this view allows a more flexible consideration of the many possible combinations that can and frequently do occur in actual KA situations.     

Automated knowledge acquisition for the surface-mount PWB assembly domain

The development of knowledge-based (or expert) systems for the surface-mount printed wiring board (PWB) assembly domain requires the understanding and regulation of several complex tasks. While the knowledge base in an expert system serves as a storehouse of knowledge primitives, its design and development is a bottleneck in the expert system development life-cycle. Therefore the development of an automated knowledge acquisition (KA) facility (or KA tool) would facilitate the implementation of expert systems for any domain. This paper describes an automated KA tool that helps to elicit and store information in domain-specific knowledge bases for surface-mount PWB assembly. A salient feature of this research is the acquisition of uncertain information.     

Flexible control in expert systems for construction tasks

In most expert systems for constructional tasks, the knowledge base consists of a set of facts or object definitions and a set of rules. These rules contain knowledge about correct or ideal solutions as well as knowledge on how to control the construction process. In this paper, we present an approach that avoids this type of rules and thus the disadvantages caused by them.We propose a static knowledge base consisting of a set of object definitions interconnected by is-a and part-of links. This conceptual hierarchy declaratively defines a taxonomy of domain objects and the aggregation of components to composite objects. Thus, the conceptual hierarchy describes the set of all admissible solutions to a constructional problem. Interdependencies between objects are represented by constraints. A solution is a syntactically complete and correct instantiation of the conceptual hierarchy.No control knowledge is included in the conceptual hierarchy. Instead, the control mechanism will use the conceptual hierarchy as a guideline. Thus it is possible to determine in which respects a current partial solution is incomplete simply by syntactical comparison with the conceptual hierarchy. The control architecture proposed here has the following characteristics: separation of control and object knowledge, declarative representation of control knowledge, and explicit control decisions in the problem solving process. Thus, a flexible control mechanism can be realized that supports interactive construction, integration of case-based approaches and simulation methods.This control method is part of an expert system kernel for planning and configuration tasks in technical domains. This kernel has been developed at the University of Hamburg and is currently applied to several domains.     

Principled Modeling and Automatic Classification for Enhancing the Reusability of Problem Solving Methods of Expert Systems

Software reuse is widely believed to be a key to improving software productivity and quality in conventional software. In expert systems, much of the knowledge has been compiled (i.e., compressed and restricted into effective procedures) and this makes reusability difficult. One of the issues in modeling expert systems for enhanced reusability is capturing explicity the underlying problem solving designs. Principled knowledge representation schemes have been used to model components of complex software systems. However, the potential for applying these principled modeling techniques for explicitly capturing the problem solving designs of expert systems has not been fully explored. To overcome this omission, we use an Artificial Intelligence knowledge representation scheme for developing an ontology of the software components to facilitate their classification and retrieval. The application of our ontological approach is of both theoretical and practical significance. This method facilitates the reuse of high-level design. We illustrate the application of principled domain modeling using two real world applications of knowledge-based systems.     

初中几何专家系统中的知识获取及实现

描述了初中几何专家系统中知识获取及实现的一般过程,指出了知识获取及实现中的难点和重点。由于研究问题的复杂性,专家系统规则库中规则量往往十分庞大,这给规则库的管理和维护带来很大不便。专家系统知识库的冗余性是影响系统运行效率和知识库维护的一个重要方面,针对一个具体的专家系统——平面几何智能解题系统,分析了关于知识库规则生成时效率低的问题,然后利用基于粗糙集的约简理论来消除和减少规则库的冗余,使得系统规则库中的规则精炼、简洁,易于维护,同时大大提高了系统的效率。     

A reasoning method for a ship design expert system

Abstract: The ship design process is a highly data‐oriented, dynamic, iterative and multi‐stage algorithm. It utilizes multiple abstraction levels and concurrent engineering techniques. Specialized techniques for knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and reasoning must be developed to solve these problems for a ship design expert system. Consequently, very few attempts have been made to model the ship design process using an expert system approach. The current work investigates a knowledge representation–reasoning technique for such a purpose. A knowledge‐based conceptual design was developed by utilizing a prototype approach and hierarchical decompositioning. An expert system program called ALDES (accommodation layout design expert system) was developed by using the CLIPS expert system shell and an object‐oriented user interface. The reasoning and knowledge representation methods of ALDES are explained in the paper. An application of the method is given for the general arrangement design of a containership.     

I-DSS: an intelligent diagnostic support system

An intelligent diagnostic support system (I-DSS) for decision-making support in diagnostic processes is presented. I-DSS can be placed between diagnosis carried out by a human diagnostician, without any automatic support, and diagnosis carried out in a fully automatic way. Fully automatic diagnosis may be appealing if used in very complex domains and if the user is non-expert. However, in the case of an expert user, a fully automatic approach is not suitable. In the fully automatic approach the system should be equipped with a strategic knowledge base (the knowledge needed for making the 'best' choice) and as a consequence the expert user is prevented from making decisions on the basis of his or her own experience. This restriction causes, in general, a sort of psychological rejection, on the part of the expert user, of the traditional fully automatic approach. This is particularly true in those domains, such as medicine, where there is more than one approach to the solution and it is seldom that one approach can be considered 'right' and the others 'wrong'. Experience related to diagnostic expert systems applications shows that, whenever trade-off problems arise in choosing between alternative actions, it is preferable to leave decisions to the expert. Starting from these considerations we present a system (I-DSS) which, without being 'intrusive', aims to be an effective support for the decision-maker during the diagnostic process.