A Literature Survey on Information Logistics

The notion of information logistics (IL) has been introduced as a new information management paradigm. Goal is to enable the effective and efficient delivery of needed information in the right format, granularity and quality, at the right place, at the right point in time to the right actors. IL has received much attention in recent years, both from researchers and practitioners. In order to better understand the state-of-the-art and current research trends in the research field of IL, this paper presents a comprehensive IL literature survey. In total, we identified 53 scientific articles discussing IL concepts and approaches. These articles were systematically analyzed and finally classified in ten research clusters. Based on these clusters, a more comprehensive understanding of past, current, and future IL developments becomes possible

Knowledge composition methodology for effective analysis problem formulation in simulation-based design

In simulation-based design, a key challenge is to formulate and solve analysis problems efficiently to evaluate a large variety of design alternatives. The solution of analysis problems has benefited from advancements in commercial off-the-shelf math solvers and computational capabilities. However, the formulation of analysis problems is often a costly and laborious process. Traditional simulation templates used for representing analysis problems are typically brittle with respect to variations in artifact topology and the idealization decisions taken by analysts. These templates often require manual updates and "re-wiring" of the analysis knowledge embodied in them. This makes the use of traditional simulation templates ineffective for multi-disciplinary design and optimization problems. Based on these issues, this dissertation defines a special class of problems known as variable topology multi-body (VTMB) problems that characterizes the types of variations seen in design-analysis interoperability. This research thus primarily answers the following question: How can we improve the effectiveness of the analysis problem formulation process for VTMB problems? The knowledge composition methodology (KCM) presented in this dissertation answers this question by addressing the following research gaps: (1) the lack of formalization of the knowledge used by analysts in formulating simulation templates, and (2) the inability to leverage this knowledge to define model composition methods for formulating simulation templates. KCM overcomes these gaps by providing: (1) formal representation of analysis knowledge as modular, reusable, analyst-intelligible building blocks, (2) graph transformation-based methods to automatically compose simulation templates from these building blocks based on analyst idealization decisions, and (3) meta-models for representing advanced simulation templates VTMB design models, analysis models, and the idealization relationships between them. Applications of the KCM to thermo-mechanical analysis of multi-stratum printed wiring boards and multi-component chip packages demonstrate its effectiveness handling VTMB and idealization variations with significantly enhanced formulation efficiency (from several hours in existing methods to few minutes). In addition to enhancing the effectiveness of analysis problem formulation, KCM is envisioned to provide a foundational approach to model formulation for generalized variable topology problems.Ph.D.Committee Co-Chair: Dr. Christiaan J. J. Paredis; Committee Co-Chair: Dr. Russell S. Peak; Committee Member: Dr. Charles Eastman; Committee Member: Dr. David McDowell; Committee Member: Dr. David Rosen; Committee Member: Dr. Steven J. Fenve

Capturing design process information and rationale to support knowledge-based design and analysis integration

Issued as final reportUnited States. Dept. of Commerc

Configuration of actors and roles in establishing ICT

Establishing technologies has brought mixed socio-economic impacts across nations and regions. Researchers have studied the relationships between the establishment technologies and its impacts through identifying innovative processes, major actors, and available resources. However, the challenge to this literature is how less resourced countries have achieved greater prosperity than better resourced countries by establishing Information and Communication Technology (ICT). To understand and analyze this phenomenon, we propose a typology of the configuration of roles and actors in establishing ICT based on an innovation framework. The proposed typology can be used not only to explain different socio-economic impacts among countries or regions, but also to suggest a constructive way in establishing ICT through reconfiguring involved actors in the key roles

Mitigating response distortion in IS ethics research

Distributed construction of conceptual models may lead to a set of problems when these models are to be compared or integrated. Different kinds of comparison conflicts are known (e.g. naming conflicts or structural conflicts), the resolution of which is subject of different approaches. However, the expost resolution of naming conflicts raises subsequent problems that origin from semantic diversities of namings – even if they are syntactically the same. Therefore, we propose an approach that allows for avoiding naming conflicts in conceptual models already during modelling. This way, the ex-post resolution of naming conflicts becomes obsolete. In order to realise this approach we combine domain thesauri as lexical conventions for the use of terms, and linguistic grammars as conventions for valid phrase structures. The approach is generic in order to make it reusable for any conceptual modelling language

Automatic Identification of Structural Process Weaknesses – Experiences with Semantic Business Process Modeling in the Financial Sector

Business process reengineering (BPR) has been a core research topic for at least the last twenty years. As banks have realized the need to look on their business in a process-oriented way, they have been engaged in numerous business process reengineering projects to make their organizations more efficient. However, the success of BPR projects in banks varies significantly and it remains a challenge to systematically discover weaknesses in business process landscapes. Based on the Semantic Business Process Modeling Language (SBPML) this paper introduces a new approach for pattern-based automatic process model analysis, with a focus on identifying structural process weaknesses such as organizational process fragmentation, possibly unnecessary process complexity or multiple resource usage or other process inefficiencies. Additionally, this approach also allows for a benchmarking of different process path alternatives in the same process or among different processes. In this article, this approach is applied and evaluated in the financial sector, but it can possibly also be used in other domains. It contributes to a more efficient and more effective identification of possible weaknesses in process models in comparison to today’s manual analysis of process models

Eliciting Expertise

Since the last edition of this book there have been rapid developments in the use and exploitation of formally elicited knowledge. Previously, (Shadbolt and Burton, 1995) the emphasis was on eliciting knowledge for the purpose of building expert or knowledge-based systems. These systems are computer programs intended to solve real-world problems, achieving the same level of accuracy as human experts. Knowledge engineering is the discipline that has evolved to support the whole process of specifying, developing and deploying knowledge-based systems (Schreiber et al., 2000) This chapter will discuss the problem of knowledge elicitation for knowledge intensive systems in general