María Rosa Galli

A conceptual model and technological support for organizational knowledge management

Knowledge Management (KM) models proposed in the literature do not take into account all necessary aspects for effective knowledge management. First, to address this issue, this paper presents a set of requirements that any KM model or initiative should take into account to cover all aspects implied in knowing processes. These requirements were identified through a critical and evolutionary analysis of KM. Second; the paper presents a new distributed KM Conceptual Model whose building blocks are the knowledge activities involved in knowing processes. These activities are: knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge representation and retrieval. This model provides a holistic view of KM whose purpose is helping managers understand the scope of this initiative, and supplying a guide for research and implementation in organizations. In this sense, the model presents KM as a highly social rather than technological process. Third; the paper briefly describes an architecture to provide a technological support for knowledge representation and retrieval activities of the proposed KM Conceptual Model. This architecture allows implementing a distributed organizational memory that helps to represent the knowledge context through an ontological model, providing a local perspective of each knowledge domain within the organization. Strategies for knowledge annotation, knowledge retrieval, and ontology evolution are briefly described and results of preliminary performance analysis are shown. Finally; based on the available literature, a comparative analysis of different KM models shows their adequacy for previously presented requirements. A KM background and a discussion of failure factors associated to KM are presented.A set of requirements that any KM model or initiative should met is defined.A comprehensive KM model based on the defined requirements is depicted.An architecture for distributed organizational memory is developed.Semantic treatment of knowledge sources by information retrieval strategies is proposed.

Synthesis of flexible heat exchanger networks—I. Convex networks

Abstract A new methodology for the optimal synthesis of structurally flexible heat exchanger networks is presented. Since the stream supply temperatures are specified by ranges rather than fixed values, the sought network design must be able to reach the target temperatures for any realization of the uncertain parameters. Moreover, it should always require a minimum utility consumption. To this end, an optimal heat recovery strategy is derived by using the notion of transient and permanent process streams. Based on it, a novel version of the heat cascade which assumes a continuous pinch behavior is developed to determine: (i) the heat recovery targets to be achieved by the network; and (ii) the dominant pinch temperatures constraining the heat exchanges and defining the problem subnetworks. They constitute the building blocks of an MILP mathematical formulation through which a structurally flexible network featuring the least number of units is found. Unlike prior attempts, a feasibility condition handled as a model restriction eliminates the need for flexibility tests. A couple of examples involving convex pinch domains have been successfully solved in a short computer time. This shows a slight increase with the number of uncertainties. The method has been extended to the synthesis of nonconvex networks in Part II.

An Ontology-driven Document Retrieval Strategy for Organizational Knowledge Management Systems

Enterprises are inserted in a competitive environment in which knowledge is vital to survive in the current global market. Competition is no longer conceived as it was in traditional markets. In this global market, knowledge is considered an asset that has an economic value for an organization and a strategic resource used to increase productivity and offer stability in dynamic competitive environments. Such significance of knowledge implies the need for protecting this vital resource by safeguarding the right access, its persistence over time, and its adequate retrieval. In this work, we propose an organizational memory architecture, and annotation and retrieval information strategies based on domain ontologies that take in account complex words to retrieve information through natural language queries. To test these strategies, we implemented a flexible framework to experiment with knowledge retrieval approaches. Finally, experimental results are evaluated and analyzed through standard measures.

Synthesis of flexible heat exchanger networks—III. Temperature and flowrate variations

Abstract A general algorithmic approach to the synthesis of flexible heat exchanger networks which explicitly accounts for prespecified uncertainties in both supply temperatures and flowrates is presented. The synthesis procedure includes four major steps: (1) an LP transshipment problem is developed to discover a usually small discrete set of dominant pinch points controlling the network design; (2) knowledge of the dominant pinch set permits to derive an MILP formulation that provides an optimal network at the level of units. An iterative scheme is not necessary because the proposed mathematical modelling includes explicit flexibility constraints; (3) the set of design conditions for the synthesis of the whole network at the level of structure is established through the use of an MILP pinch-“jump“ test. Appropriate design points, usually a single one, are assigned to each subnetwork; and (4) the structure of every subnetwork is sequentially found by often using a synthesis technique for fixed stream conditions (Floudas et al. , AIChE Jl 32 , 276; 1986). Selection of heat exchanger areas is not addressed in this paper. Four examples involving temperature and flowrate disturbances have been successfully solved in a short computer time. No deterioration in the computational efficiency of the algorithm has been observed as the number of uncertainties increases.

Developing a knowledge management multi-agent system using JaCaMo

Recent research on social and organisational aspects of multi-agent systems has led to practical organisational models and the idea of organisation-oriented programming. These organisational models help agents to achieve shared (global) goals of the multi-agent system. Having an organisational model is an important advance, but this model needs to be integrated to an environment infrastructure and agent-oriented programming platforms. JaCaMo is the first fully operational programming platform that integrates three levels of multi-agent abstractions: an agent programming language, an organisational model, and an environment infrastructure. For better showcasing the advantages of a fully-fledged multi-agent platform, this paper presents a concrete agent-based architecture to proactively supply knowledge to knowledge-intensive workflows which has been designed using JaCaMo.

Organizational Knowledge Sources Integration through an Ontology-Based Approach: The Onto-DOM Architecture

Nowadays, there is a large number of Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives implemented in organizations, which often fail to manage the natural heterogeneity of organizational knowledge sources. To address heterogeneity, documentation overload and lack of context we propose Onto-DOM, a question-answering ontology-based strategy implemented within a Distributed Organizational Memory. Onto-DOM is a portable question-answering system that accepts natural language queries and, using a domain ontology, transforms and contextualizes the query eliminating the inherent natural language ambiguity. At the same time, it recovers those knowledge objects that are most likely to contain the answer.

Synthesis of heat exchanger networks featuring a minimum number of constrained-size shells of 1-2 type

Abstract In chemical plants requiring a high number of heat exchangers, standard sizes are established so that most of the services can be satisfied through arrays of a limited number of different standard-type units. If such an industrial practice is not taken into account during the heat recovery network synthesis task, the optimality of the proposed design could be doubtful. This paper addresses the HENS problem allocating multiple constrained-size shells rather than a single one to accomplish a heat match. Two cases are considered: (a) pure countercurrent exchangers and (b) shell-and-tube exchangers of 1–2 type. The neighbor-based HENS framework of Galli and Cerda (1998) has been generalized in order to adopt a more realistic fixed-cost target, i.e. the overall number of constrained-size shells. Therefore, new 0–1 variables have been defined to stand for the additional shells needed to get both, a shell size below the specified upper bound, and simultaneously, an F T correction factor above the threshold value everywhere. The resulting MILP problem formulation is now able to find network structures reaching the heat recovery target, under some structural constraints on the network design specified by the user, at near-minimum capital cost. The proposed algorithmic approach has been successfully applied to the solution of a couple of example problems and produced significant capital cost savings compared with prior HENS techniques.

Ontology and XML-based Specifications for Collaborative B2B Relationships

A collaborative B2B relationship implies jointly executing business processes. This relationship demands a complete access to available information and knowledge to support decision-making activities between trading partners. To support information interchange between enterprises in collaborative B2B ecommerce there are some XML-based standards technologies, like RosettaNet, ebXML and OAGIS. However, XML does not express semantics by itself. So, these standards only provide an infrastructure to support the information interchange. They are suitable to integrate information but not to support decision-making activities where a common understanding of the information is needed. In this paper we analyze the integration of these standards with ontology to describe the meaning of the information and knowledge interchanged between trading partners to jointly execute business processes. Furthermore, we define the main components of an ontology development environment to support the entire ontology lifecycle.

Agent-based monitoring service for management of disruptive events in supply chains

HighlightsSubsystem able to manage the distributed nature of disruptive events.Agent technology made it possible to address the complexity of monitoring services.Tailored monitoring processes are dynamically generated at execution time.Model-driven development approach used to generate tailored monitoring processes.Subsystem able to decide on the most appropriate tool to perform the monitoring task. Schedules of supply chains are generated with buffers to absorb the effect of disruptive events that could occur during their execution. Schedules can be systematically repaired through specific modifications within buffers by using appropriate decision models that consider the distributed nature of a supply chain. To this aim, information of disruptive events at occurrence or in advance allows decision models to make better decisions. To detect and predict disruptive events along a schedule execution, a service-oriented monitoring subsystem that uses a reference model for defining monitoring models was proposed. This subsystem offers services for collecting execution data of a schedule and environment data, and assessing them to detect/anticipate disruptive events. Because of the distributed nature and the complexity of these services functionalities, this paper presents an agent-based approach for their implementation. This technology allows dealing with supply chain monitoring by structuring monitoring subsystem functionalities as a set of autonomous entities. These entities are able to perform tailored plans created at execution time to concurrently monitor different schedules. A case study is described to try out the implemented prototype system.

OntoQualitas: A framework for ontology quality assessment in information interchanges between heterogeneous systems

Abstract Nowadays, Internet technologies and standards are being systematically used by enterprises as tools to provide an infrastructure to connect people, enterprises, and applications they are using. In such complex networked enterprises, it is increasingly challenging to interchange, share, and manage internal and external digital information. In this context, to achieve interoperability between information systems is a challenging task. In order to solve the interoperability problem at semantic level, several ontology-based approaches have emerged. Although methodologies, methods, techniques, and tools to support the ontology building process were proposed, there are no mature models to measure this process, and the quality of implemented ontologies remains a major concern. This paper presents a framework, OntoQualitas, for evaluating the quality of an ontology whose purpose is the information interchange between different contexts. OntoQualitas includes previous and new measures to evaluate the ontology considering its specific purpose. Additionally, an empirical validation of OntoQualitas is presented.