Systematic modeling and model handling for manpower planning systems

The primary purpose of this paper is to show an efficient way of handling models and model data in a decision support system, in which it is usual to consider several variants of a model. The model data primarily consist of model-defining data, but the same approach may be used for the generated results as well. By efficient handling is meant the handling by the computer as well as by the user. For the user it is particularly important that new models can be conveniently defined as variants of existing models. The approach is introduced within the context of a decision support system for manpower planning based on Markov models. In the mean time the same approach has been used for the implementation of other decision support systems and has been found to be more generally applicable.     

Executive workstations: Issues and requirements

An executive workstation is an integrated hardware/ software system that can provide business executives with powerful capabilities for making and implementing decisions. In this paper, relevant and sometimes controversial, issues and workstation requirements are discussed in the context of a scenario that portrays an executive using a workstation. The scenario anticipates fifth generation computer technology and it guides a specification of features and functions. The goal is to clarify what is possible and desirable in an executive workstation design.     

Information systems control alignment: Complementary and conflicting systems development controls

This study presents a new concept called information systems control alignment, which examines the degree that the underlying characteristics of four main information systems (IS) control dimensions are mutually complementary. Using three case studies, our research uncovers two high-functioning control patterns – one with traditional characteristics and one with agile characteristics – that demonstrate positive alignment among the control environment, control mechanisms, socio-emotional behaviors, and execution of controls. By better understanding the circumstances that contribute to control conflicts, organizations can be increasingly mindful of cultivating a complementary relationship among the control dimensions when designing, implementing, monitoring and adjusting controls within IS processes.     

A GIS-based multicriteria spatial decision support system for planning urban infrastructures

The planning of urban infrastructures has important spatial implications. The evaluation of alternative courses of action in this setting requires the explicit consideration of multiple criteria as they have important social, economic, and environmental effects. This paper presents a decision support system aimed at offering the users (e.g., government or municipal agencies) a flexible and user-friendly environment to provide decision aid in urban infrastructure planning. The visualization of available alternatives on maps provides a value-added for decision support processes in urban infrastructure evaluation problems. The development of this system has been motivated by a real world urban case study.     

Anarchic manufacturing: Distributed control for product transition

Manufacturers are poorly equipped to manage product transition scenarios, when moving from one product to another. Most tools consider a mature system, yet during transition and ramp up disturbances and inefficiency are common. The traditional methods, using centralised planning and control structures are too rigid and often resort to simple dispatch heuristics in this highly dynamic environment. Distributed systems have been proposed to leverage their self-organising and flexible traits to manage highly volatile and complex scenarios.Anarchic manufacturing, a free market based distributed planning and control system, delegates decision-making authority and autonomy to system elements at the lowest level; this system has previously been shown to manage job and flowshop style problems. The system has been adapted to use a dynamic batching mechanism, where jobs cooperate to benefit from economies of scale. The batch enables a direct economic viability assessment within the free market architecture, whether an individual machine should changeover production to another product type. This profitability assessment considers the overall system state and an agent’s individual circumstance, which in turn reduces system myopia. Four experiments, including a real-world automotive case study, evaluate the anarchic manufacturing system against two centralised systems, using three different ramp-up curves. Although not always best performing against centralised systems, the anarchic manufacturing system is shown to manage transition scenarios effectively, displaying self-organising and flexible characteristics. The hierarchical system was shown to be impeded by its simplifying structure, as a result of structural rigidity.     

Designing for creativity: Considerations for DSS development

Decision support systems (DSS) can be designed to support the creative and intuitive aspects of decision making. Our purpose is to provide a new perspective for the design of DSS by focusing on the important external factors that have been shown to influence creative activity. Design guidelines can then be developed by viewing a DSS as a special environment that incorporates these factors.     

Production decision support system for computerized manufacturing systems

The introduction of Computerized Manufacturing Systems (CMS) into the mid-volume manufacturing industry has been an important new step in the development of automated manufacturing. CMS's are computer-integrated systems which incorporate Direct Numerical Control (DNC) capabilities with automatic material handling to manufacture parts. Due to its complex nature, the task of production control in an CMS cannot rely on human effort alone. It is essential to develop a software package in the form of a Production Decision Support System (PDSS) to assist the production decision maker in operating this complex manufacturing facility.     

Architectural requirements for rapid development of agile manufacturing systems

As product life cycle becomes shortened, high product quality becomes necessary for survival, and continuous and unexpected change becomes key obstacles in success, the need for a method of rapidly and cost-effectively developing products, production facilities and supporting software including design, process planning, shop floor control systems becomes urgent. The essence of this concept of manufacturing would be characterized by adopting a new term “agility”. Agile manufacturing can be successfully accomplished using various well-defined system architecture. This paper provides a primary sketch of architectural requirements for rapid development of agile manufacturing systems.There are several aspects of system architecture : control, function, process, information, communication, distribution, development, and implementation.In the past, the confusion of those architectures prohibited the successful construction of the automated CIM systems.     

Agent virtual machine for automation controllers: Example application: Shipboard automation

We are interested in providing an agent infrastructure for truly distributed control. Requirements include multiple language implementations, so that this agent host environment can exist in both real-time controllers and contain the ability to operate with external agent systems. Our first infrastructure, the Autonomous Cooperative System (ACS), accomplished these goals, but presented other issues. Although ACS has been successfully deployed on commercial controllers, new releases of controllers will cause complications in the evolution of the software and adoption of future functionality. We need to establish a formal integration procedure of the agent functionality with the controllers and to transform the underlying system into a fully integrated and open heterogeneous system. We use a shipboard automation example to demonstrate the use of the agent virtual machine. With this system, the shipboard automation system is designed as a distributed and survivable environment, thereby spreading intelligence throughout the controllers and not in central locations.     

Providing effective decision support: Modeling users and their requirements

The major premise of this paper is that in order for a DSS to be effective in a given problem domain, it is important to model the decision-making behavior of the user over and above traditional problem solving concerns. This is achieved by extending the traditional planning framework based on first-order logic to include modal logic. This extended framework is then used to represent beliefs and desires of the user, communicative actions performed by the user and the system, as well as the usual goals, task-related actions etc. The essence of this approach, then, is to view natural language utterances of the user of a DSS as speech acts which can be modeled using the extended framework; this view can, in turn, be used to interpret natural language utterances of the user.     

Motor planning: An architecture for specifying and controlling the behaviour of virtual actors

As virtual worlds become increasingly complex, task level interaction with virtual actors becomes correspondingly important. The control problem simply becomes unmanageable if we try to interact with synthetic agents at the wrong level of abstraction. However, it is not sufficient merely to implement a set of behaviours for a virtual actor; we require some mechanism for selecting and sequencing motor skills appropriate to the current behavioural goals and the states of other objects and actors in the virtual environment. In this paper we will describe a mechanism for linking perception and action to generate routine behaviours in a process we call motor planning. We present our implementation of the skill network, in which motor skills are the nodes and the arcs represent inhibitory and excitatory connections, including extensions to this architecture based on recent work in robotics. We characterize the domain of motor planning, i.e. what kinds of behaviour can it account for, and when will it fail? We close with a discussion of the limits of our current implementation and work that remains to be done.     

Distributed shared memory infrastructure for virtual enterprise in building and construction

This paper proposes a new approach to building a virtual enterprise (VE) software infrastructure that offers persistence, concurrent access, coherence and security on a distributed datastore based on the distributed shared-memory paradigm. The platform presented, persistent distributed store (PerDiS), is demonstrated with test applications that show its suitability and adequate performance for the building and construction domain. In particular, the successful adaptation of standard data access interface (SDAI) to PerDiS and a comparison with CORBA are presented as examples of the potential of the distributed shared-memory paradigm for the VE environment.     

Fault management in supervisory control: the effect of false alarms and support

Automation has changed the role of human operators from direct manual control to supervision. Their main task is to monitor whether system performance remains within pre-specified ranges and intervention is only required in unusual situations. One of the consequences is a loss of situation awareness, which significantly affects performance in abnormal, time-critical situation. The present study reports two experiments, both dealing with fault management in a maritime supervisory control task. The first experiment investigated to what extent false alarms would affect performance and diagnosis behaviour when multiple disturbances occurred. Thirty-nine students from maritime curricula diagnosed disturbances that could either be real or turn out to be a false alarm. The presence of false alarms not only affected the rate with which the subsystems under control were sampled, but it also increased problem-solving time. One of the reasons for suboptimal performance in dealing with fault propagation was tunnel vision: participants had a tendency to deal with disturbances sequentially. In the second experiment the effect of support on performance and diagnosis behaviour was investigated. Two types of support were distinguished: interactive support requiring participants to provide the symptom values and automatic support that directly provided the correct action. Thirty students from maritime curricula diagnosed disturbances with the help of either the interactive or the noninteractive support tool. The results indicated that even though both support tools gave the same advice on how to act, more incorrect actions were taken in the non-interactive support condition. Even though no differences in performance were found after the tool had been removed, it was shown that participants who were used to interactive support used a more structured problem-solving strategy than participants used to the non-interactive support. Consequences for system design are discussed.     

Decision support for marketing research and corporate planning

Marketing research and corporate planning are enhanced by an effective decision support system. A system developed and implemented in an insurance company is used to illustrate how computer cartography and statistical procedures can be combined as powerful analytical tools. It also demonstrates how a nonprocedural language (SAS with SASGRAPH) can be used to create modules of systems that are efficiently implemented and easily maintained by analysts with limited programming capabilities.     

Resolving the planning and control dilemma in modern manufacturing

This paper presents a methodology for applying computer based logic to control information in manufacturing. This methodology is evolutionary and reorganizes traditional planning and control activities on the basis of functional needs. The methodology is developed in the context of a high volume, repetitive, manufacturer of pressed metal products. Implementation of the methodology is conducted in a modular fashion. There are three major inter-related, integrated functional modules designed to operate within the current manufacturing environment including Just-in-Time manufacturing operations.     

Agent virtual machine for automation controllers: Example application: Shipboard automation

We are interested in providing an agent infrastructure for truly distributed control. Requirements include multiple language implementations, so that this agent host environment can exist in both real-time controllers and contain the ability to operate with external agent systems. Our first infrastructure, the Autonomous Cooperative System (ACS), accomplished these goals, but presented other issues. Although ACS has been successfully deployed on commercial controllers, new releases of controllers will cause complications in the evolution of the software and adoption of future functionality. We need to establish a formal integration procedure of the agent functionality with the controllers and to transform the underlying system into a fully integrated and open heterogeneous system. We use a shipboard automation example to demonstrate the use of the agent virtual machine. With this system, the shipboard automation system is designed as a distributed and survivable environment, thereby spreading intelligence throughout the controllers and not in central locations.     

Study and implementation of the virtual view in unix

The security of information systems is important. protecting them from the viewpoint of methodology has become the critical task of their planners and implementers. This article proposes a new idea about the virtual view based upon unix stemming from the usual view concept,analyzes the characteristics of the virtual view,and finally gives the way of realization of the virtual view.     

Computer-aided modeling and analysis techniques for determining business information systems requirements

The paper deals with the problem of determining the information requirements or needs of a business organization. Characteristics of the problem are discussed and several forms of models based on concepts in elementary matrix algebra and graph theory are described. We construct boolean matrices representing either data usage or creation by a process or function in a business organization. Products of the two matrices are represented as directed graphs to depict the flow of information. Two procedures are described for realizing the solutions obtained from the analysis. The applicability to other related areas of information systems research is discussed and an example is presented.