Business intelligence to support NOVA IMS academic services BI system

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceKimball argues that Business Intelligence is one of the most important assets of any organization, allowing it to store, explore and add value to the organization’s data which will ultimately help in the decision making process. Nowadays, some organizations and, in this specific case, some schools are not yet transforming data into their full potential and business intelligence is one of the most known tools to help schools in this issue, seen as some of them are still using out-dated information systems, and do not yet apply business intelligence techniques to their increasing amounts of data so as to turn it into useful information and knowledge. In the present report, I intend to analyse the current NOVA IMS academic services data and the rationales behind the need to work with this data, so as to propose a solution that will ultimately help the school board or the academic services to make better-supported decisions. In order to do so, it was developed a Data Warehouse that will clean and transform the source database. Another important step to help the academic services is to present a series of reports to discover information in the decision making process

Integration of decision support systems to improve decision support performance

Decision support system (DSS) is a well-established research and development area. Traditional isolated, stand-alone DSS has been recently facing new challenges. In order to improve the performance of DSS to meet the challenges, research has been actively carried out to develop integrated decision support systems (IDSS). This paper reviews the current research efforts with regard to the development of IDSS. The focus of the paper is on the integration aspect for IDSS through multiple perspectives, and the technologies that support this integration. More than 100 papers and software systems are discussed. Current research efforts and the development status of IDSS are explained, compared and classified. In addition, future trends and challenges in integration are outlined. The paper concludes that by addressing integration, better support will be provided to decision makers, with the expectation of both better decisions and improved decision making processes

Feasibility of Warehouse Drone Adoption and Implementation

While aerial delivery drones capture headlines, the pace of adoption of drones in warehouses has shown the greatest acceleration. Warehousing constitutes 30% of the cost of logistics in the US. The rise of e-commerce, greater customer service demands of retail stores, and a shortage of skilled labor have intensified competition for efficient warehouse operations. This takes place during an era of shortening technology life cycles. This paper integrates several theoretical perspectives on technology diffusion and adoption to propose a framework to inform supply chain decision-makers on when to invest in new robotics technology

Analysis and Observations from the First Amazon Picking Challenge

This paper presents a overview of the inaugural Amazon Picking Challenge along with a summary of a survey conducted among the 26 participating teams. The challenge goal was to design an autonomous robot to pick items from a warehouse shelf. This task is currently performed by human workers, and there is hope that robots can someday help increase efficiency and throughput while lowering cost. We report on a 28-question survey posed to the teams to learn about each team's background, mechanism design, perception apparatus, planning and control approach. We identify trends in this data, correlate it with each team's success in the competition, and discuss observations and lessons learned based on survey results and the authors' personal experiences during the challenge

Cross-collaborative supply chains. How logistics services contribute to social responsibility.

Abstract Purpose - The collaboration between profit and nonprofit entities has become a burning topic in supply chain management studies and corporate strategies. The world’s largest logistics service providers (LSPs) have been developing several practices improving social responsibility while collaborating with nonprofit actors. In particular, their core competences and offered services become extremely relevant in the context of humanitarian logistics initiatives. A key purpose of this article is to examine the projects currently undertaken by LSPs in humanitarian logistics. Methodology/Approach - This research follows a qualitative approach based on multiple case studies. Findings - The paper provides an overview of the leading LSPs’ involvement in humanitarian logistics and presents an analysis of their current “best practices” services in disaster relief with high impact in terms of social responsibility. Research Limitations/implications - There has been increased interest on the part of international academic and professional communities in humanitarian logistics. This study constitutes a platform for benchmarking analysis of logistics services to assure effective implementation of social responsibility principles. Originality/Value of paper - Humanitarian logistics is a rather new field in logistics management. This paper addresses the innovative socially responsible initiatives undertaken by the main international LSPs in the area of humanitarian logistics. Keywords - logistics services, logistics service providers, humanitarian logistics and supply chain management, disaster relief, social responsibility, profit/nonprofit collaboration Type of paper - Research pape

Supply chain management: An opportunity for metaheuristics

In today’s highly competitive and global marketplace the pressure on organizations to find new ways to create and deliver value to customers grows ever stronger. In the last two decades, logistics and supply chain has moved to the center stage. There has been a growing recognition that it is through an effective management of the logistics function and the supply chain that the goal of cost reduction and service enhancement can be achieved. The key to success in Supply Chain Management (SCM) require heavy emphasis on integration of activities, cooperation, coordination and information sharing throughout the entire supply chain, from suppliers to customers. To be able to respond to the challenge of integration there is the need of sophisticated decision support systems based on powerful mathematical models and solution techniques, together with the advances in information and communication technologies. The industry and the academia have become increasingly interested in SCM to be able to respond to the problems and issues posed by the changes in the logistics and supply chain. We present a brief discussion on the important issues in SCM. We then argue that metaheuristics can play an important role in solving complex supply chain related problems derived by the importance of designing and managing the entire supply chain as a single entity. We will focus specially on the Iterated Local Search, Tabu Search and Scatter Search as the ones, but not limited to, with great potential to be used on solving the SCM related problems. We will present briefly some successful applications.Supply chain management, metaheuristics, iterated local search, tabu search and scatter search

Using Semantic Web technologies in the development of data warehouses: A systematic mapping

The exploration and use of Semantic Web technologies have attracted considerable attention from researchers examining data warehouse (DW) development. However, the impact of this research and the maturity level of its results are still unclear. The objective of this study is to examine recently published research articles that take into account the use of Semantic Web technologies in the DW arena with the intention of summarizing their results, classifying their contributions to the field according to publication type, evaluating the maturity level of the results, and identifying future research challenges. Three main conclusions were derived from this study: (a) there is a major technological gap that inhibits the wide adoption of Semantic Web technologies in the business domain;(b) there is limited evidence that the results of the analyzed studies are applicable and transferable to industrial use; and (c) interest in researching the relationship between DWs and Semantic Web has decreased because new paradigms, such as linked open data, have attracted the interest of researchers.This study was supported by the Universidad de La Frontera, Chile, PROY. DI15-0020. Universidad de la Frontera, Chile, Grant Numbers: DI15-0020 and DI17-0043