How the Web is used to support collaborative writing

We present 19 systems that have been developed over the past decade to support collaborative writing over the Web. The aim of this article is to present the state of the art on the use of the Web for collaborative writing and thus (1) help designers improve current systems or define future systems, and (2) help users choose the most appropriate system to support their needs. Among available systems, groups can select from tools to write a document (on- or off-line), collect comments about a document, or maintain a Web site. The lack of experimental data concerning Web-based applications forces designers to use other sources of information to guide their design choices, such as a list of functions that an ideal collaborative writing tool should offer. This list has revealed several potential points for improvement.     

How the Web is used to support collaborative writing

We present 19 systems that have been developed over the past decade to support collaborative writing over the Web. The aim of this article is to present the state of the art on the use of the Web for collaborative writing and thus (1) help designers improve current systems or define future systems, and (2) help users choose the most appropriate system to support their needs. Among available systems, groups can select from tools to write a document (on- or off-line), collect comments about a document, or maintain a Web site. The lack of experimental data concerning Web-based applications forces designers to use other sources of information to guide their design choices, such as a list of functions that an ideal collaborative writing tool should offer. This list has revealed several potential points for improvement.     

An objective, entropy-based approach to evaluating migration issues in computer IS

Recent breakthroughs in computing technology have created a set of perplexing new problems for information systems (IS) professionals. These revolve around decisions to be made about replacing current systems with newer technology, upgrading existing systems, and migrating to other platforms or environments. Many decision makers must rely on subjective assessments, such as their instincts or the recommendation of vendors rather than on an objective analysis of their information needs and how they can be met by various system alternatives. A model to quantify these issues, providing an objective measure for comparing system alternatives, including migration, would be valuable. Such a model is demonstrated here; it uses the Shannon-Weaver entropy model in conjunction with quality measures to quantify actual and potential system effectiveness.     

The future of the factory

The basic driving force that will determine the future of the factory is likely to be the margin of profitability. In rapidly changing high technology industry the advances in product design will enable them to increase the margin of profitability through increases in the selling price, whereas in more traditional industries it must be obtained by decreasing the total manufacturing cost. Among the most important factors that will affect the manufacturing cost are, in order of importance, information management (which determines the indirect cost), the materials cost, the direct labor cost, and the capital cost. In order to reduce the direct cost, computers will be used extensively to integrate the entire manufacturing system, ranging from design to manufacturing processes to quality control. For computer-integrated manufacturing systems to be effective, more intelligent machines should be developed to minimize the information flow. However, the single most important thing that will always have the most significant effect on margin of profitability, and thus on the factory of the future, will be the ability to make rational decisions during the synthesis of processes and products. The yield of electronic component fabrication processes, the efficiency of mechanical products, the productivity of a factory, and the portability and efficiency of software can be improved when design decisions are evaluated using the synthesis axioms. Therefore, the factory of the future should not only involve computer-integrated manufacturing systems, but also the computers should be provided with intelligence so as to enable them to make correct decisions and aid the decision makers at all levels of industrial hierarchy.     

Emergency management information systems: Could decision makers be supported in choosing display formats?

Recent information technologies make it possible to include sophisticated three-dimensional display formats in emergency management information systems (EMIS), decision-support systems that facilitate decision making in crisis situations. However, if decision makers are to improve their decisional performance, they must correctly identify appropriate situations for using these formats. We conduct two experiments and find that, as prior research has suggested, decision makers do not choose the most appropriate display format, but their performance improves when given prospective decisional guidance. We discuss implications of these findings for EMIS design, for the training of emergency management professionals, and for future research on display formats and decisional guidance.     

Intelligent support for systems development: The notion and the issues

Enterprise modelling and information systems modelling have traditionally utilized techniques developed in the earlier disciplines of systems analysis and operational analysis. However, these tools have proved insufficient even for information systems modelling and their inadequacies make them less than ideal for enterprise modelling. Furthermore, it has proved difficult to integrate the techniques into a uniform framework representation. Extensive research since the early 1980s has produced support tools for information systems engineering in the academic sector which have generally failed to reach widespread commercial use. Commercially developed integrated support systems aimed at enterprise modelling and information system modelling use traditional techniques, with a lack of formalism. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a technique which overcomes the major inadequacies and which provides an integrating framework to represent both the information and the processing, at enterprise and systems modelling levels of abstraction. The technique is based on the use of a transition network, but extended to represent enterprise and system models in a meaningful way. The use of an intelligent repository, with associated processing of the formally defined requirements, specification and design statements, is novel, and provides the additional support to make the technique amenable to handling the design process from informal to formal specification. The use of a graphical user interface, linked directly to the deductive system and repository, ensures intuitive ease of use.     

The impact of model performance history information on users' confidence in decision models: An experimental examination

Effective decision support systems must supply decision makers with information that allows them to make correct judgments. Unfortunately, human intuitive judgments are subject to a number of biases. Among the judgments that a user of a decision support system must make is the selection of an appropriate model. When a decision maker is presented with a history of a model's usage and frequency of success during that usage, the decision maker must judge how confident he/she is in the output that comes from that model. We show, in a laboratory setting using 75 student subjects and 48 managers, that decision makers can be manipulated into irrational confidence levels. In a corporate setting, over- and under-confidence will result in either overreliance on unreliable models or failure to take advantage of a useful tool.     

Risk-based systems security engineering: stopping attacks with intention

In most modern information systems (IS), functionality and security are competing design goals. Therefore, system designers are constantly forced to make security-related trade-off decisions. Systems security engineers must build systems that are secure against real-world attacks without overengineering against any particular one. By understanding which attacks are most likely and which risks are most serious, system designers can make informed security-related trade-off decisions. We describe a systems security engineering methodology designers can use to make these decisions.     

Software Engineering for Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are popular end-user programming tools. Many people use spreadsheet-computed values to make critical decisions, so spreadsheets must be correct. Proven software engineering principles can assist the construction and maintenance of dependable spreadsheets. However, how can we make this practical for end users? One way is to exploit spreadsheets' idiosyncratic structure to translate software engineering concepts such as type checking and debugging to an end-user programming domain. The simplified computational model and the spatial embedding of formulas, which provides rich contextual information, can simplify these concepts, leading to effective tools for end users.     

Technology tools to support learning design: Implications derived from an investigation of university teachers' design practices

The need to improve the quality of higher education has fostered an interest in technology tools to support effective design for teaching and learning. Over the past decade this interest has led to the development of tools to support the creation of online learning experiences, specifications to underpin design systems, and repositories to share examples. Despite this significant activity, there remain unanswered questions about what shapes university teachers' design decisions and how tools can best support their design processes. This paper presents findings from a study of university teachers' design practices that identified teachers' perceptions of student characteristics, their own beliefs and experiences, and contextual factors as key influences on design decisions. The findings extend our understanding of activities fundamental to higher education teaching and inform thinking about design support tools.     

Intelligent system to support judgmental business forecasting: thecase of estimating hotel room demand

Forecasting is an instrumental tool for strategic decision-making in any business activity. Good forecasts can reduce the uncertainty about the future and, hence, help managers make better decisions. Virtually all statistical forecasting techniques depend on the continuity of historical data and time series and may not predict a discontinuous change in the business environment. Often times, this discontinuity is known to managers who then must rely on their judgment to make forecast adjustments. We discuss the role of judgmental forecasting and take the problem of estimating future hotel room demand as a practical business application. Next, we propose IS-JFK: an intelligent system to support judgmental forecasting and knowledge of managers. To account for vagueness in the knowledge elicited from managers and the approximate nature of their reasoning, the system is built around fuzzy IF-THEN rules and uses fuzzy logic for decision inference. IS-JFK supports two methods for forecast adjustments: 1) a direct approach and 2) an approach based on fuzzy intervention analysis. Actual data from a hotel property are used in some case-scenario simulations to illustrate the merits of the intelligent support system     

Managing service facilities with endogenous arrival and service rates

We conduct a simulation‐based experiment to analyze how past experiences in a service facility system affect customers’ and service providers’ behavior. We study the problem faced by service providers in deciding by how much to adjust the capacity of their facility when captive repeat customers choose which facility to join based on their expected sojourn times. The customers’ decision‐making process differs from that of service providers in that the former is based on the customers’ experience, whereas the latter is based on the most recent information service providers have regarding demand. Customers use their previous experience and that of their neighbors to update their perceptions of the future average sojourn time, whereas service providers form perceptions of the future arrival rate. We use cellular automata to model the interaction between customers and service providers. We perform simulations to assess the way the customers’ and service providers’ decisions evolve and affect system behavior. Our findings demonstrate that the system we study possesses a certain degree of path dependence. The primary conclusion is that the more conservative service providers are regarding new information, the larger the market share they achieve, and the lower the probability that their facility will shut down.     

Model use in sustainability policy making: An experimental study

We examine whether decision makers who use a system dynamics model more readily create policies whose outcomes match their stated priorities or are on the Pareto Frontier of achieved outcomes, and whether model users are more likely to change their priorities. Comparing model use with other decision tools, we address these questions in a role-play simulation (serious game) experiment in which participants make multi-dimensional policy recommendations to address environmental, economic, and social equity dimensions of sustainability. Participants are randomly assigned to use one of four decision support tools: (1) actively using the model or passively being briefed. The briefings cover: (2) the insights of the model; (3) general, relevant information; or (4) irrelevant information (control). We find that model-users, group (1), discovered key insights about win-win opportunities—over-performing their priorities—and most readily created policies on the Pareto Frontier of achieved outcomes. Groups (2) and (3) best matched their policy outcomes to their priorities, missing the win-win.     

Model management systems: Design for decision support

Changes in computer technology have provided decision makers with the necessary tools for the design and implementation of computerized models for decision support. These models are frequently developed to solve a specific problem for a specific user and lack the flexibility and generalizability necessary to solve unstructured, strategic problems. In addition, problems of model redundancy, inconsistency, integrity and security have prompted an increased interest in the design of model management systems (MMS) that provide for centralized management of organizational models. This paper describes the use of a framework, developed by the authors, to design an MMS for support of planning decisions within an organization. The architecture of the MMS is described in detail and the rationale for the design decisions is presented.     

Multi-behavior agent model for planning in supply chains: An application to the lumber industry

Recent economic and international threats to western industries have encouraged companies to increase their performance in all ways possible. Many look to deal quickly with disturbances, reduce inventory, and exchange information promptly throughout the supply chain. In other words they want to become more agile. To reach this objective it is critical for planning systems to present planning strategies adapted to the different contexts, to attain better performances. Due to consolidation, the development of integrated supply chains and the use of inter-organizational information systems have increased business interdependencies and in turn the need for increased collaboration to deal with disturbance in a synchronized way. Thus, agility and synchronization in supply chains are critical to maintain overall performance. In order to develop tools to increase the agility of the supply chain and to promote the collaborative management of such disturbances, agent-based technology takes advantage of the ability of agents to make autonomous decisions in a distributed network through the use of advanced collaboration mechanisms. Moreover, because of the highly instable and dynamic environment of today's supply chains, planning agents must handle multiple problem solving approaches. This paper proposes a Multi-behavior planning agent model using different planning strategies when decisions are supported by a distributed planning system. The implementation of this solution is realized through the FOR@C experimental agent-based platform, dedicated to supply chain planning for the lumber industry.     

A logic-based approach to rule induction in expert systems

Rule induction is an important part of learning in expert systems. Rules can help managers make more effective decisions and gain insight into the relationships between decision variables. We present a logic-based approach to rule induction in expert systems which is simple, robust and consistent. We also derive bounds on levels of certainty for combining rules. We apply our approach to the development of rules for the entry decisions of new products. We then discuss how the logic-based approach of rule induction can be used to create a decision support system and the methodology to create such a system.     

Robust resource allocation in a cluster based imaging system

Recently there has been an increased demand for imaging systems in support of high-speed digital printing. The required increase in performance in support of such systems can be accomplished through an effective parallel execution of image processing applications in a distributed cluster computing environment. The output of the system must be presented to a raster based display at regular intervals, effectively establishing a hard deadline for the production of each image. Failure to complete a rasterization task before its deadline will result in an interruption of service that is unacceptable. The goal of this research was to derive a metric for measuring robustness in this environment and to design a resource allocation heuristic capable of completing each rasterization task before its assigned deadline, thus, preventing any service interruptions. We present a mathematical model of such a cluster based raster imaging system, derive a robustness metric for evaluating heuristics in this environment, and demonstrate using the metric to make resource allocation decisions. The heuristics are evaluated within a simulation of the studied raster imaging system. We clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the heuristics by comparing their results with the results of a resource allocation heuristic commonly used in this type of system.     

Representation of qualitative user preference by quantitativebelief functions

Many intelligent systems employ numeric degrees of belief supplied by the users to make decisions. However, the users may have difficulties in expressing their belief in terms of numeric values. The authors present a method for generating belief functions from symbolic information such as the qualitative preference relationships. The method of generating belief functions provides a practical interface between the users and a decision support system. It can be argued that the ability to generate numeric judgments with nonnumeric inputs is essential in the development of approximate reasoning systems. The proposed method can provide an important component for these systems by transforming qualitative information into quantitative information     

Improved usability and performance of SMT solvers for debugging specifications

It is now common to construct an extended static checker or software verification system using an SMT theorem prover as the underlying logical verifier. SMT provers have improved significantly in performance over the last several years. However, their usability as a component of software checking and verification systems still has gaps. This paper describes investigations in two areas: the reporting of counterexample information and the testing of vacuity, both of which are important to realistic use of such tools for typical software development. The use of solvers in verification is more effective if the solvers support minimal unsatisfiable cores and incremental construction, evolution and querying of satisfying assignments; current solvers only partially support these capabilities.