Gek Woo Tan

Knowledge management and data mining for marketing

Due to the proliferation of information systems and technology, businesses increasingly have the capability to accumulate huge amounts of customer data in large databases. However, much of the useful marketing insights into customer characteristics and their purchase patterns are largely hidden and untapped. Current emphasis on customer relationship management makes the marketing function an ideal application area to greatly benefit from the use of data mining tools for decision support. A systematic methodology that uses data mining and knowledge management techniques is proposed to manage the marketing knowledge and support marketing decisions. This methodology can be the basis for enhancing customer relationship management. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

A strategic analysis of inter organizational information sharing

In this paper we study the effect of inter organizational information sharing strategies on firm level performance under both stable as well as volatile market conditions. We use information exchange in a supply chain as a representation of inter organizational information sharing, and study five strategies for information sharing that range from minimal to near-complete information exchange. We present analytical evaluation of the relative performance of these strategies and experimental results from a proof-of-concept system. Our results show that near-complete information sharing that combines more than one type of information being shared has better performance in volatile market conditions.

An Empirical Study of Web Browsing Behaviour: Towards an Effective Website Design

Abstract Prior studies have suggested that a good Website design which facilitates a user’s Web browsing behaviour would generally lead to better user performance. In this research, we examine user Website behaviour as a way to understand Website design using a “think aloud” protocol analysis. Main theoretical contributions of this research are the illustration of the flow of cognitive processes during the Website browsing and the establishment of Website design dimensions – the meaning and content implied by Website content, its outward form, and the structure and navigation – in relation to user performance.

An intelligent-agent framework for concurrent product design and planning

This paper proposes a multi-agent framework to develop product design and planning using the concurrent engineering approach. The ideas in the framework draw on design-team behavior in many domains. The goal is to provide information that will help teams of designers, engineers and managers from various functional areas improve initial designs so that they satisfy a wider variety of concerns. Our model provides support to bring together constraints from the different team members in the development cycle. By integrating downstream constraints into the design phase, we reduce the need for redesign (due to design mistakes) later in the product development cycle. Our framework integrates a blackboard architecture with an intelligent agent (IA) network. Our methodology uses conflict-resolution (CR) techniques and design-improvement suggestions to refine the initial product design, and process plan generation and simulation to verify the manufacturability of the design. The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, our framework provides a more realistic way of modeling design teams by providing a way to model an individual team members perspective as a segment of a continuum of task knowledge. Second, we identify the essential components of concurrent engineering needs, and develop a framework for integrating these components so as to ensure adequate coordination among the processes involved. Third, our methodology uniquely meshes together design constraints with factory resource considerations, so that the final product design is ensured to be feasible and manufacturable.

Modeling supply-chain networks by a multi-agent system

The article proposes a multi-agent information system (MAIS) approach to model the order fulfilment process (OFP) in supply chain networks (SCNs). An order fulfilment process starts with receiving orders from customers and ends with delivery of the finished goods. As manufacturing practice is shifting toward the outsourcing paradigm, the OFP is more likely to be executed throughout SCNs. It becomes imperative to integrate the OFP into SCNs to improve the OFP. The proposed multi-agent information system (MAIS) approach is used for modeling the OFP in SCNs, and evaluating OFP performance by applying the proposed strategies. The objective of reengineering the OFP is to achieve agility of the process in terms of efficiency, flexibility, robustness and adaptability. A multi-agent simulation platform, called Swarm, is enhanced and applied for modeling the MAIS, and experiments are conducted to simulate the OFP in SCNs in a multi-agent environment. Based an the Swarm simulation platform, we model the OFP in SCNs, simulate the OFP, and then evaluate the potential OFP improvement strategies to identify useful strategies for improving the OFP. The results shed light on identifying the main effects of various strategies on OFP performance. The insights of utilizing various strategies in different SCNs help redesign the OFP in SCNs.

Web-based Supply Chain Management

A key constituent of supply chain management strategies is information sharing. Software component technology facilitates information sharing by providing a means for integrating heterogeneous information systems into virtual information systems. Extranet technology facilitates information sharing between an enterprise and its business partners as well as its customers through the Internet. These two technologies enable new strategies that integrate information systems and improve supply chain networks. We discuss the application of these strategies to supply chain processes.

Multiagent Enterprise Modeling

In this article, we study the dynamics of business processes and interactions between business units in an enterprise, and to this end, we developed a framework for enterprise modeling using the process hierarchy approach. We developed and implemented a multiagent information system (MAIS) for the supply chain network for capturing both the structure and the processes of an enterprise. The MAIS is implemented on the Swarm simulation platform and models the order fulfillment process (OFP) as one of the core tasks of supply chain networks. In addition to modeling the interactions in the OFP, the MAIS is also used as a simulation testbed to experiment with different strategies to improve the performance of the OFP.

Web-based Global Supply Chain Management

A key constituent of supply chain management strategies is information sharing. Software component technology facilitates information sharing by providing a means for integrating heterogeneous information systems into virtual information systems. Extranet technology facilitates information sharing between an enterprise and its business partners as well as its customers through the Internet. These two technologies enable new strategies that integrate information systems and improve supply chain networks. We discuss the application of these strategies to supply chain processes.

Mitigating the Impact of Member Turnover in Information Systems Development Projects

Team member turnover presents significant risks to the performance of information systems development (ISD) projects. While prior studies have identified various antecedents of turnover with the general objective of reducing its occurrence, turnover cannot be completely prevented in practice. This study examines practices for mitigating the negative impact of turnover when it occurs. Since ISD is knowledge intensive and turnover typically involves knowledge degradation, this study focuses on key practices for reducing such knowledge degradation, i.e., job enlargement, use of electronic knowledge repositories, and succession planning. Our model for explaining the effects of the practices, based on the human capital and organizational forgetting theories, is tested through a survey of 138 project managers of ISD teams experiencing turnover. The results indicate that the use of electronic knowledge repositories and succession planning reduce the negative effect of turnover on the project performance. In contrast, job enlargement does not have a significant mitigating effect. This study contributes to research by looking beyond the antecedents and prevention of turnover to understand how it can be managed effectively. The findings also offer pragmatic suggestions for alleviating the detrimental effects of team member turnover on the ISD project performance.

Concurrent Product Design

uct’s life depends on its acceptance by the consumers; a “failed” product could be “pulled from the market shelves” in a matter of months. A short product development cycle is crucial as it enables the company to deliver new products to the market quickly. Insufficient information and communication between phases are two reasons for long development cycles. In a typical cycle, each phase receives information from the previous phase, and feedback from the next phase. For example, the marketing representative gathers a set of customer requirements about the product and passes the information to the designer. The designer generates several designs that meet those requirements and passes one of these designs to the manufacturing engineer. The first problem that arises from a traditional approach is the loss of abstract information as the product specification is passed down the chain. Each phase in the chain receives a more concrete and often more distorted interpretation of the product description from the previous phase. Consequently, the final product does not always meet the needs of the customer. The second problem is that much time and effort is spent on returning the design to earlier phases to correct design mistakes that are discovered “downstream.” This results in a long, costly development. The third problem is the loss of optimization opportunities. A product design is the interpretation of the functional requirements of the product in physical form. Theoretically, there are many physical interpretations. By finalizing a product design, the designer is choosing one interpretation, and passing it to the manufacturing engineer. This interpretation, the “best” from the designer’s point of view, may not be manufacturable. The designer may not know this because he or she does not have detailed manufacturing knowledge. The manufacturing engineer, on the other hand, has the knowledge to decide whether a design is manT product introductions. The duration of a prod-