TOWARD A SYNERGY BETWEEN SIMULATION AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

The adoption of simulation as a powerful enabling method for knowledge management is hampered by the relatively high cost of model construction and maintenance. A two-step procedure, based on a divide and conquer strategy, is proposed in this paper. First, a simulation program is partitioned based on a reinterpretation of the model-view-controller architecture. Individual parts are then connected, in terms of abstraction, to guard against possible changes that resulted from shifting user requirements. We explore the applicability of these design principles through a detailed discussion of an industry case study. The knowledge-based perspective guides the design of architecture to accommodate the need of emulation without compromising the integrity of the simulation program. The synergy between simulation and a knowledge management perspective, as shown in the case study, has the potential to achieve the objectives of rapid development of models, with low maintenance cost. This could, in turn, facilitate an extension of the use of simulation in the knowledge management domain.     

省级风电场集中监控中心设计方案优化

结合风电行业的生产特点,对省级风电场集中监控中心设计方案进行优化,通过对系统结构和系统功能设计方案的优化,使得整个系统在硬件构架上更加安全可靠,在系统功能上更加完善,充分发挥了集中监控中心的技术优势,为实现统一管理、共享资源、减少运行维护成本打下了基础.     

Composing domain-specific design environments

Domain-specific integrated development environments can help capture specifications in the form of domain models. These tools support the design process by automating analysis and simulating essential system behavior. In addition, they can automatically generate, configure, and integrate target application components. The high cost of developing domain-specific, integrated modeling, analysis, and application-generation environments prevents their penetration into narrower engineering fields that have limited user bases. Model-integrated computing (MIC), an approach to model-based engineering that helps compose domain-specific design environments rapidly and cost effectively, is particularly relevant for specialized computer-based systems domains-perhaps even single projects. The authors describe how MIC provides a way to compose such environments cost effectively and rapidly by using a metalevel architecture to specify the domain-specific modeling language and integrity constraints. They also discuss the toolset that implements MIC and describe a practical application in which using the technology in a tool environment for the process industry led to significant reductions in development and maintenance costs     

An effective MBSE approach for constructing industrial robot digital twin system

Recently, the rapid development of digital twin (DT) technology has been regarded significant in Cyber-physical systems (CPS) promotion. Scholars are focusing on the theoretical architecture and implementing applications, in order to establish a high-fidelity, dynamic, and full-lifecycle DT model and achieve a deep fusion of real and virtual. As a typical complex system with multi-disciplines, multi-physics, and multi-domain characteristics, industrial robot (IR) involves various processes and elements from the two other levels of the system: components and production lines. Their complex relationships lead to a huge challenge to build a comprehensive DT model. Current researchers usually concentrates on single-layer services because of limited construction methodology, which results in enormous isolated models, and leads to low reusable system blocks, finite scalability, and high costs of design, adjustment, upgrade, and maintenance. To address these issues, a standardized methodology and a hierarchical, modular, and generic architecture are proposed to depict comprehensive and variable industrial robot digital twin (IRDT). Firstly, the ontology information model is presented by analyzing variable factors systematically. Then, model-based system engineering (MBSE) based methodology is introduced, including construction process and variants management. After modeling process of three levels (problem domain, solution main, and implementation domain) and four viewpoints (requirement, structure, behavior, and parameter), a generic architecture of IRDT is constructed and a feature-based variants management method is described. Besides, a six-axis IRDTS is implemented to illustrate the mapping of logical architecture and physical system as a multi-level elements and processes representation example. And the steps of numerical evaluations consist of system delay and derivation. Finally, results show the effectiveness and the potential of the proposed theoretical methodology for constructing IRDTS and other industrial applications.     

A transaction cost view of decision support systems

Research and practice in decision support systems have often been said to focus too much on individual decision-making, when decisions actually are made by groups. Another shortfall of current research is the absence of any established theory or framework on which to base it. A third shortfall is the lack of connections between theory and actual implementation in terms of information technology. The first two problems in particular are addressed in this study. Decision-making is considered to be a group activity— rather than an individual activity—in which as a matter of fact a contract between the decision-makers is established. The contracts incur transaction costs, which may or may not be covered by the extra value gained by the contract. Transaction costs in the contract formulation phase should be eliminated, and information technology in its various forms is a principal means by which to achieve this end. Different kinds of technologies support different kinds of contracts. This is why decision-makers should understand the nature of their decision-making situation and select the information technology tools most suitable for the situation. The different factors causing transaction costs in decision-making— contracting—are identified, and the means to eliminate them by information technology are presented. This study is based on a transaction cost perspective of organizations. Information technology is seen as a primary means to lower transaction costs. Thus, the necessary theoretical framework so often missing in information technology research is provided. The results of the study stem from empirical research, the aim of which was to investigate and to understand information technology from the viewpoint of transaction costs.     

Resilience analysis of service-oriented collaboration process management systems

Collaborative business process management allows for the automated coordination of processes involving human and computer actors. In modern economies, it is increasingly needed for this coordination to be not only within organizations but also to cross organizational boundaries. The dependence on the performance of other organizations should, however, be limited, and the control over the own processes is required from a competitiveness perspective. The main objective of this work is to propose an evaluation model for measuring a resilience of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) collaborative process management system. In this paper, we have proposed resilience analysis perspectives of SOA collaborative process systems, i.e., overall system perspective, individual process model perspective, individual process instance perspective, service perspective, and resource perspective. A collaborative incident and maintenance notification process system is reviewed for illustrating our resilience analysis. This research contributes to extend SOA collaborative business process management systems with resilience support, not only looking at quantification and identification of resilience factors, but also considering ways of improving the resilience of SOA collaborative process systems through measures at design and runtime.     

Choosing a Client/Server Architecture

The architectural design of a client/server system affects the initial development cost, day-to-day transactional performance, ongoing maintenance costs, and long-term flexibility and scalability of the application. The choice between a two- and three-tier architecture should be based on the scope and complexity of a project, the time available for completion, and the expected enhancement or obsolescence of the system. A three-tier architecture requires more planning and support than a two-tier architecture, but it offers advantages in openness, flexibility, scalability, and integration.     

A transaction cost view of decision support systems

Abstract

Research and practice in decision support systems have often been said to focus too much on individual decision-making, when decisions actually are made by groups. Another shortfall of current research is the absence of any established theory or framework on which to base it. A third shortfall is the lack of connections between theory and actual implementation in terms of information technology. The first two problems in particular are addressed in this study. Decision-making is considered to be a group activity— rather than an individual activity—in which as a matter of fact a contract between the decision-makers is established. The contracts incur transaction costs, which may or may not be covered by the extra value gained by the contract. Transaction costs in the contract formulation phase should be eliminated, and information technology in its various forms is a principal means by which to achieve this end. Different kinds of technologies support different kinds of contracts. This is why decision-makers should understand the nature of their decision-making situation and select the information technology tools most suitable for the situation. The different factors causing transaction costs in decision-making— contracting—are identified, and the means to eliminate them by information technology are presented. This study is based on a transaction cost perspective of organizations. Information technology is seen as a primary means to lower transaction costs. Thus, the necessary theoretical framework so often missing in information technology research is provided. The results of the study stem from empirical research, the aim of which was to investigate and to understand information technology from the viewpoint of transaction costs.     

Research on Variable Structure Parametric Design System of Ceramic Tile Mould Based on Modular

To solve the existing problems during the ceramic mold enterprises product design and development process, the variable structure parametric design system based on modular of ceramic mold has been developed. The system uses the object-oriented technology and top-down design concept as a guide, establishes a ceramic mold parametric design process, divides the process of ceramic mold design into modules of different levels and creates a component model library based on the functional analysis. Expanding modular thinking to parts structure design level is an effective solution to the difficulty of changing the structure during the product design process. Examples show that the system can achieve a ceramic mold product design, improve design efficiency.     

结构图ETL概念模型的设计方法

ETL过程是数据仓库获得高质量数据的重要环节,是任何数据仓库工程不可缺少的成功因素。为了便于ETL过程的设计和维护,降低ETL过程的设计、维护代价,提出一种基于结构图的ETL概念模型设计方法,给出一个用于描述ETL过程的模型,并基于CWM完成用以存储元数据的ETL元模型的设计。通过图形化ETL过程中的元素和关联,该模型清晰直观地反映了各个源数据库与目标数据仓库的内部结构和组成、数据的来源与流向、源数据和目标数据之间的映射和转换关系,辅助设计人员更好地进行ETL过程的设计和编码实现,使整个ETL的设计与维护过程更加方便、灵活、有效。     

适合中小型企业的IT运维系统架构设计

目前,中小型企业在IT运维方面,面临着多种尴尬的情况,例如技术人员少、运维经验不足、运维中重复性劳动过多、效率低下、资金紧张等诸多问题。对此．构建适合中小企业的IT运维系统来帮助企业实现低成本且高效率的运维就显得十分重要。针对中小型企业IT运维工作中的问题．并结合其运维特点来说明如何设计适合中小型企业的IT运维系统架构。     

Collaborative composition of processes in holonic manufacturing systems

Although it provides a flexible architecture to deal with changes and uncertainties, holonic manufacturing systems (HMS) also pose challenges in design and implementation. A challenge is to design a problem solving environment to guide the holons in HMS such that the decisions made by the individual holons as a whole collaboratively compose the production processes for the tasks. The objective of this paper is to propose a problem solving environment for the composition of minimal cost processes in HMS. Given a specific product type and due date, the problem is to dynamically compose a complete process in HMS to process the product by the due date. To achieve the objective, we combine multi-agent systems technology with Petri nets in this paper. We first propose architecture and a two-layer contract net protocol to describe the negotiation between order holons, product holons and resource holons in HMS. To determine whether it is feasible for a set product holons and resource holons to compose a process for an order holon, we propose Petri net models to capture the workflows and activities in product holons and resource holons, respectively. To optimize the cost in the composed manufacturing process, the concept of activity-based costing is adopted to assign the cost of the activities to Petri nets. The advantages of our design methodology include specification of workflows and resource activities with PNML to minimize the cost. To realize the two-layer contract net protocol relies on a mechanism for a holon to discover the services provided by other holons. We proposed a scheme for publication and discovery of holon services based on FIPA compliant multi-agent system platform. Based on the service publication and discovery scheme, interactions between holons with the two-layer contract net protocol can be realized. We develop a HMS system to solve the process composition problem.     

基于LoRaWAN的智慧农业系统

目前在智慧农业系统通信架构的实现上, 利用较多的往往是ZigBee、WiFi等技术, 虽然其基本能够实现较长距离传输、低功耗等需求, 但是在诸如抗干扰性、成本开销等方面上也还存在着许多缺点. 针对这些问题, 本文介绍了一种基于LoRaWAN技术设计的智慧农业系统. LoRa终端利用STM32单片机作为主控制器结合LoRa射频模块设计而成, 通过树莓派来搭建LoRa网关集中器进行数据转发, 在云服务器上部署ChirpStack服务与Flask Web应用实现了对农业作物生长环境的远程监测与管理功能, 并详细描述该LoRaWAN应用系统的工作原理以及系统设计. 最终所实现的系统数据传输稳定, 抗干扰性强, 同时也极大地降低了开发成本.     

基于SSH框架的网站设计与实现

SSH是基于J2EE的架构方案之一。基于SSH框架的网站设计以开源框架Spring为核心,整合Hibernate进行持久层访问,并且整合Struts进行MVC模式控制,清晰地划分了应用的层次,提高系统灵活性,降低了维护成本。通过实体关系映射工具将关系型数据库的数据映射成对象,很方便地实现面向对象方式操作数据库。     

Modular behavior-based control for team humanoids

When developing teams of humanoids — rather than an individual humanoid — there are a number of issues that become important to consider, including robustness, scalability, versatility, and also development and production costs. Therefore, we used a modern approach to AI that puts emphasis on the balance between control, electronic hardware, material, sensory system and energy in order to develop the team of Viki humanoid robots. In contrast to the top-down approach of equipping a humanoid with as many sensors, motors, power, etc., as possible, we developed a bottom-up approach to the construction of humanoids, regarding both hardware and software (modular behaviorbased control). The approach is shown with the development of the Viki humanoid team that won the RoboCup Humanoids Free Style World Championship 2002. In this paper, we focus on the main result of the behavior-based architecture with many layers of behaviors at different levels, which make it easy for both engineers to design new behaviors and for end-users to develop humanoid behaviors at different levels of complexity, dependent on the competencies of the individual end-user. With this architecture, it becomes possible to develop simple user interfaces with a user-guided implementation of our modular behavior-based approach, in order to allow any user to design performances with the humanoid robots.     

Modeling and real-time simulation architectures for virtual prototyping of off-road vehicles

Virtual Reality-based simulation technology has evolved as a useful design and analysis tool at an early stage in the design for evaluating performance of human-operated agricultural and construction machinery. Detecting anomalies in the design prior to building physical prototypes and expensive testing leads to significant cost savings. The efficacy of such simulation technology depends on how realistically the simulation mimics the real-life operation of the machinery. It is therefore necessary to achieve ‘real-time’ dynamic simulation of such machines with operator-in-the-loop functionality. Such simulation often leads to intensive computational burdens. A distributed architecture was developed for off-road vehicle dynamic models and 3D graphics visualization to distribute the overall computational load of the system across multiple computational platforms. Multi-rate model simulation was also used to simulate various system dynamics with different integration time steps, so that the computational power can be distributed more intelligently. This architecture consisted of three major components: a dynamic model simulator, a virtual reality simulator for 3D graphics, and an interface to the controller and input hardware devices. Several off-road vehicle dynamics models were developed with varying degrees of fidelity, as well as automatic guidance controller models and a controller area network interface to embedded controllers and user input devices. The simulation architecture reduced the computational load to an individual machine and increased the real-time simulation capability with complex off-road vehicle system models and controllers. This architecture provides an environment to test virtual prototypes of the vehicle systems in real-time and the opportunity to test the functionality of newly developed controller software and hardware.     

Developing a lean and agile work force

This article examines the contribution that human factors practitioners can make to improve work force capabilities in the lean and agile manufacturing environments. The article addresses the demands that lean and agile manufacturing initiatives will place on the current and emerging work force to achieve increasing levels of quality and flexibility with lower costs and shorter product life cycles. The issues of worker selection, continuous skill development, work place design, equipment maintenance, process improvement, mistake proofing, and process reconfiguration for new products are discussed from a human factors perspective. The article concludes that a new production system where human factors play a central role will be needed to help work force members achieve greater success in meeting these demands. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

基于前后端分离的内容管理系统

内容管理系统是企业信息化管理所不可或缺的一部分。然而依靠传统的 B/S 架构,现有内容管理系统前后端耦合,其代码管理与维护性问题解决不彻底。本文针对上述问题,结合相应的前端技术,提出了一种基于前后端分离的内容管理系统设计方案,并对建设过程中的关键问题,如前后端分离的系统架构、内容审核机制以及模板技术等方面进行了详细阐述。     

基于NB-IoT和OTA的云上智能井盖监控系统设计

针对智慧城市建设中城市排水管网各类井盖出现的安全隐患问题及管理难等弊端,提出并实现了基于NB-IoT和OTA的云上智能井盖监控系统。硬件上选用国产低功耗蓝牙芯片HS6621进行电路设计,采集井盖的位置、姿态和井下水位、溢水等信息,通过NB-IoT模块上报云平台;软件上采用微服务技术架构,将井盖的实时监测及日常维护管理等任务分解到不同的服务中,并利用OTA空中下载技术完成终端固件远程升级;经测试,终端硬件整机功耗为98.25μA,符合低功耗设计要求,终端可正常上报监测数据并及时触发报警,能达到实时监控效果;通过管理软件进行工单派发、任务验收和固件升级等日常管理,可降低终端维护成本,有效提高城市智能化管理水平,改善落后的管理方式。     

Learning from optimization: A case study with Apache Ant

ContextSoftware architecture degrades when changes violating the design-time architectural intents are imposed on the software throughout its life cycle. Such phenomenon is called architecture erosion. When changes are not controlled, erosion makes maintenance harder and negatively affects software evolution.ObjectiveTo study the effects of architecture erosion on a large software project and determine whether search-based module clustering might reduce the conceptual distance between the current architecture and the design-time one.MethodTo run an exploratory study with Apache Ant. First, we characterize Ant’s evolution in terms of size, change dispersion, cohesion, and coupling metrics, highlighting the potential introduction of architecture and code-level problems that might affect the cost of changing the system. Then, we reorganize the distribution of Ant’s classes using a heuristic search approach, intending to re-emerge its design-time architecture.ResultsIn characterizing the system, we observed that its original, simple design was lost due to maintenance and the addition of new features. In optimizing its architecture, we found that current models used to drive search-based software module clustering produce complex designs, which maximize the characteristics driving optimization while producing class distributions that would hardly be acceptable to developers maintaining Ant.ConclusionThe structural perspective promoted by the coupling and cohesion metrics precludes observing the adequate software module clustering from the perspective of software engineers when considering a large open source system. Our analysis adds evidence to the criticism of the dogma of driving design towards high cohesion and low coupling, at the same time observing the need for better models to drive design decisions. Apart from that, we see SBSE as a learning tool, allowing researchers to test Software Engineering models in extreme situations that would not be easily found in software projects.