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.     

A continental philosophy perspective on knowledge management

Abstract.  Knowledge management is the computer's contribution to management 'science' and claims to be the successor of various trends in the business world, including, but not necessarily limited to information resources management, business process reengineering, management information systems and organizational memory. A number of definitions have been proposed for it. The very concept of knowledge used by knowledge management writers, however, is based on a dubious epistemology. This paper looks at the concept of knowledge from a continental perspective. With this perspective, we question whether what is being managed is, in fact, knowledge, and whether management will get business what it wants anyway.     

ObjectFlow: Towards a process management infrastructure

As businesses feel competitive and economic pressures to automate and streamline their operations, they examine their day-to-day business processes and look to business process reengineering pratices to provide solutions. Improved networking capabilities and the widescale adoption of open systems architectures have allowed businesses to tie their information systems together and share data across departments. The challenge now involves coordinating and automating the flow of work between people and groups in an organization. This has prompted the emergence of a new kind of infrastructure, workflow enabler, which provides a model for business processes, and a foundation on which to build solutions supporting the execution and management of business processes. This article examines the technology trends, business benefits, and requirements which have lead to this development. It describes the logical structure and an operational model of an open workflow system, and positions ObjectFlow, a software product, within this framework to illustrate the concepts.     

How information-sharing values influence the use of information systems: An investigation in the business intelligence systems context

Although the constituents of information systems (IS) success and their relationships have been well documented in the business value of information technology (IT) and strategic IS literature, our understanding of how information-sharing values affect the relationships among IS success dimensions is limited. In response, we conduct a quantitative study of 146 medium and large firms that have implemented a business intelligence system in their operations. Our results highlight that in the business intelligence systems context information-sharing values are not directly linked to IT-enabled information use, yet they act as significant moderators of information systems success dimensions relationships.     

石化企业供应链采购管理系统模型

本文研究了石化企业供应链管理系统的需求和总体结构,采用多种视图模型综合描述供应链管理系统中各类管理和技术要素.然后,本文详细介绍了石化企业供应链中原油采购管理系统的组织、功能、信息和产品视图模型的建立过程.     

Human resource management and its impact on strategic business-IT alignment: A literature review and avenues for future research

From an information systems perspective, organizations striving to leverage a strategic alignment between Information Technology (IT) and business areas often underestimate the role of human resource management in creating business value. This literature review analyzes 71 scholarly articles to assess the role of human resource management in supporting the strategic alignment between business and IT. We identify the organizational role of individual human resources in strategic alignment, their contribution to more effective strategic alignment, and how human resource management supports such contribution. Based on these insights, we formulate propositions and identify avenues for future research.     

Applying a systems thinking framework to assess knowledge assets dynamics for business performance improvement

Knowledge assets represent strategic resources and sources of organizational value creation. Their effective development and deployment is at the basis of organizational value creation capacity. However there is still a lack of applied approaches and tools explaining how knowledge assets dynamics take place in organizational value creation mechanisms. In particular, there is a managerial need to define decision-support frameworks that can enable managers to understand how knowledge assets interact each other and with organizational performance in order to support the achievement of company’s strategic objectives. A better understanding of why and how knowledge assets management initiatives can be turned into value creation mechanisms with positive impacts on business performance is fundamental to avoid misallocation of resources and to support management decisions.This paper proposes a systems thinking-based framework, the Knowledge Assets Dynamics Value Map (KAVDM), to explicate the working mechanisms by means knowledge assets can evolve on the basis of knowledge management initiatives and affect business performance improvements. The KAVDM offers a holistic view of the mechanisms at the basis of how knowledge assets are translated into organizational value. It supports the explanation and monitoring of how knowledge assets are interpedently and dependently linked, and how the management of one knowledge asset activates flow dynamics, that influence both other knowledge assets and business performance. Using the KAVDM managers can reflect upon the knowledge components grounding a company’s value creation and assess their mental models and views of the reality. Finally, an application of the KAVDM within a construction company is presented and its main managerial benefits addressed.     

基于PSL与XML的软件过程描述模型SPRM的设计和实现

本文在研究CMM的基础上提出了一种利用过程规范语言PSL对软件过程进行建模的思想,设计并给出了一个软件过程描述模型SPRM。该模型遵循CMM3级对软件过程定义的要求,采用XML Schema作为其统一描述语言,保证了软件过程的统一性和可扩展性,有利于实现软件过程的互操作与过程资源的共享,为实现统一的软件过程管理打下了基础。最后,本文利用SPRM模型实现了一个过程实例--简单评审过程,说明了如何利用SPRM定义企业的不同软件过程。     

基于构件运算的软件体系结构设计方法

软件体系结构对软件的稳定性、软件维护和软件演化等各方面的性能很重要。该文引入构件运算的方法描述体系结构,分析调用运算、协作运算和条件运算的相关性和构件的复杂度,综合体系结构的多方面因素,采取局部性能指标方案对体系结构的性能进行分析评估,利用最佳性能方法调整构件关系和体系结构性能指标,设计出最优性能的软件体系结构。     

基于业务无关的权限管理的设计与实现

在应用系统开发中,针对不同的业务功能及复杂权限的设置,都要重新编写权限控制代码,造成人力资源浪费的问题,提出利用功能掩码的方法实现一种通用的权限管理模块。利用该模块,只需设置功能点,不需再编写代码,就可以应用到不同的系统中,从而实现权限控制和业务的剥离,并在此基础上创建自己的角色、用户等,实现权限管理。     

Proactive workload management in dynamic virtualized environments

Recently, with the improvement of Cloud systems technologies and the essential advantages they can provide such as availability, scalability, and costs saving; massive domains in the IT industry are directing their business to the Cloud. To fit the computing demands of this trend along with nowadays fluky applications (e.g. social networks, media contents), Cloud systems require rapid resource changes. As a result, the workload management in a virtualized environment becomes a complex task. In this paper we propose a new proactive workload management model for virtualized resources to inspect the workload behavior of the running Virtual Machines, and to assent an appropriate scheduling and resource consolidation schema in order to improve the system efficiency, utilization, and throughput. We have carried out our model by modifying Xen Cloud Platform, then we tested the model performance through different representative benchmarks. The results show that the Proactive model can decrease the average response time remarkably.     

CRUDi framework proposal: financial industry application

The alignment of information systems with the business goals of an organisation, although a topic of great importance, is not always properly valued or taken into consideration. In general, managers have different opinions to chief information officers (CIOs) in relation to IS, especially with regard to their importance and value to the business and also in terms of investment needs. Here, we discuss and study new approaches to methods and tools for assessing the relative importance of each information system to business, focusing on the financial sector including banks and insurance companies. We suggest the introduction of new key indicators for better decision support and to identify investment priorities, and present results regarding the relative importance of each process to support the business strategy. The primary goal for the inherent research project is to analyse the main problems and difficulties encountered by IS and IT managers, featuring different players and how they relate. The main contributions of this work are the CRUDi framework as a tool to improve alignment between business and IS strategies and the CRUDi survey and its results qualifying the financial sector's opinion regarding the relative importance of processes and investments.     

Policies in network and systems management—Formal definition and architecture

The task of managing information technology resources becomes increasingly complex as managers must take heterogeneous systems, different networking technologies, and distributed applications into consideration. As the number of resources to be managed grows, the task of managing these devices and applications depends on numerous system and vendor specific issues. To prevent the operators from drowning in excessive detail, the level of abstraction needs to be raised in order to hide system and network specifics. Policies that are derived from the goals of management define the desired behavior of distributed heterogeneous systems and networks, and specify means to enforce this behavior. A formal definition of policies is presented and examples of policies from network and systems management are given to illustrate the concept. An architecture is introduced to show how a policy system can be realized.     

Using mobile agents to support interorganizational workflow management

This article argues that the mobile agent approach is well suited for sporadic communication in open distributed systems, especially for rather ''loose'' cooperations across local and organizational boundaries. In an increasing number of cases, management of distributed business procedures reaches beyond such boundaries. This means, for most existing workflow management systems, that cooperating partners are required to give up their local autonomy. However, for cases in which business partners intend to cooperate but still need to preserve their local autonomy, process participation on the basis of mobile agents represents an appropriate mechanism. This article shows how such process integration can be achieved. It also demonstrates how the Common Open Service Market (COSM) system software can be extended in order to use petri-net based process definitions that realize mobile agents in an integrated distributed system platform.     

Business processes—attempts to find a definition

Definitions of business process given in much of the literature on Business Process Management are limited in depth and their related models of business processes are correspondingly constrained. After giving a brief history of the progress of business process modeling techniques from production systems to the office environment, this paper proposes that most definitions are based on machine metaphor type explorations of a process. While these techniques are often rich and illuminating it is suggested that they are too limited to express the true nature of business processes that need to develop and adapt to today's challenging environment.     

Management of enterprise-wide systems integration programs

Automation and Information Systems play both tactical and strategic roles in the success of a business enterprise. They also pose an extremely challenging set of management issues concerned with the selection and management of technologies, management of the workforce to achieve successful implementation and operational use, and the integration of automation and information systems with business operations to capture the full benefits. Systems Integration programs involve high levels of technical and management risk commensurate with the significant business benefits that may be achieved. New and emerging automation and information technologies for Computer Integrated Manufacturing/Distribution, image processing, real-time transaction processing, and customer service cut across all organizational and functional units of an enterprise and require full system integration to capture their potential benefits. A wave of re-engineering programs are underway within commercial enterprises and the government to modify their business processes to take full competitive advantage of these technologies. There are numerous examples of both well managed and hopelessly mangled systems integration programs in both the public and private sectors that lead to the need for better management approaches. The management of software development has been a particularly troublesome area. This article presents a general model of the management structure to implement a systems integration program, using an enterprise-wide Information Systems Architecture (ISA) as a roadmap, and supported by a defined set of measures and metrics. Standards, although no panacea for systems integratio, play an important role in the architectural framework. The Information System Architecture approach described in this article is comprehensive in covering application software and data architecture as well as the computing and communications hardware infrastructure and other automation technologies that support the overall business process. The objective of the accompanying management model is to define a management structure, its essential functions, and methods that support a traditional systems development approach, as well as new approaches using prototyping and evolutionary development. Any of these management approaches require an ISA that is comprehensive in supporting business objectives, resilient in accommodating changing business conditions and technologies, and useful in producing a practical information architecture that can be applied to business operations. Examples of the ISA approach that support systems management are discussed for representative types of enterprise in the manufacturing sector and the service sector:

1. The Manufacturing/Distribution Enterprise example uses automated manufacturing and materials handling systems supported by MRPII software to integrate engineering, distribution, and financial systems; and
2. The Financial Services Enterprise example applies automated transaction processing using image processing and document management systems to achieve improved products and a more productive workflow with enhanced response to customers and/or clients.

     

Managing database server performance to meet QoS requirements in electronic commerce systems

The performance of electronic commerce systems has a major impact on their acceptability to users. Different users also demand different levels of performance from the system, that is, they will have different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Electronic commerce systems are the integration of several different types of servers and each server must contribute to meeting the QoS demands of the users. In this paper we focus on the role, and the performance, of a database server within an electronic commerce system. We examine the characteristics of the workload placed on a database server by an electronic commerce system and suggest a range of QoS requirements for the database server based on this analysis of the workload. We argue that a database server must be able to dynamically reallocate its resources in order to meet the QoS requirements of different transactions as the workload changes. We describe Quartermaster, which is a system to support dynamic goal-oriented resource management in database management systems, and discuss how it can be used to help meet the QoS requirements of the electronic commerce database server. We provide an example of the use of Quartermaster that illustrates how the dynamic reallocation of memory resources can be used to meet the QoS requirements of a set of transactions similar to transactions found in an electronic commerce workload. We briefly describe the memory reallocation algorithms used by Quartermaster and present experiments to show the impact of the reallocations on the performance of the transactions. Published online: 22 August 2001     

Business programmes and information systems methodologies

Abstract. An Information Systems Methodology is usually presented as a sequential set of tasks — planning, analysis, design and construction — resulting in a new business application. This classical 'forward-engineering' approach must be adapted to changing business needs — business process redesign, quality management, process and systems templates, advanced technologies, application packages, the reuse of existing information systems resources, and rapid delivery cycles. Using the most general concept of a Business Programme, this paper describes a methodological approach incorporating these modern themes that is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the classical model. It provides a framework for the integration of otherwise independent methodologies, and shows how an entire programme can be formulated, planned and executed. An example is provided, and the approach is justified.     

基于SSH架构的社区卫生管理系统设计与实现

针对传统社区卫生管理系统开发的不足,基于J2EE企业级应用开发平台,整合Struts、Spring和Hibernate（SSH）开源框架技术,提出了一种多层社区卫生管理信息系统模型,实践表明,该整合框架在构建复杂业务系统中提高了开发效率和系统的可维护性,同时增强了系统的可扩展性。