AI-based decision support tool for strategic decision making in the factory of the future

The process of strategic decision making is highly complex. Top executives make decisions based on uncertain information, much of which is difficult to quantify, often using intuitive feelings and experience as guiding factors. The demands placed upon high-level managers will increase in the factory of the future, as organizations become less hierarchical, cycle times decrease and customized production becomes a reality. Advances in process technologu will provide high levels of flexibility but knowledge technology, allied to strong and purposeful leadership, will provide the key to competitive success in many industries in future. This paper describes a prototype decision support system and learning tool which uses qualitative frame-based knowledge representation to encapsulate the intuitive knowledge of high-level decision makers. The system allows a user to construct a ‘mind set’ of a particular strategic problem domain, using qualitative relationships to describe the causal effects and interactions between concepts. The resulting knowledge base may then be used for experimentation by altering individual relationships and observing the effects of the change in the structure of the knowledge base.