Maziani Sabudin

Solving flexible manufacturing system distributed scheduling problem subject to maintenance using harmony search algorithm

Flexible manufacturing system is one of the industrial branches that highly competitive and rapidly expand. Globalization of the industrial system has encouraged the development of distributed manufacturing, including flexible manufacturing system. As such, the complexity of the problem faced in this new environment promotes current researcher to develop various approaches in optimizing the production scheduling. Approaches such as petri net, ant colony, genetic algorithm, intelligent agents, particle swarm optimization, and tabu search are used to apprehend optimization issues. In reality, maintenance is one of the core parts which is important to the manufacturing scheduling as it will affect greatly toward the manufacturing scheduling when the machine breakdown happen. Unfortunately, most approaches disregard the preventive maintenance in the production scheduling problem. In this paper, a harmony search algorithm is introduced to address the problem which includes maintenance. The problem description is successfully represented and the algorithm performance is studied with several parameter tunings.

A Hybrid of Rule and Frame Based Approach in Solving Hajj Complex Problems

Hajj is the fifth commandment in Islamic religion that is compulsory to all able bodied Muslims to perform at least once in their whole life. Hajj pilgrims must be well prepared before going to Mecca. They may face complex problems when preparing for and performing hajj. In such situations they require experts’ guidance. Accessing information from explicit and tacit knowledge from hajj experts has some limitations in the aspects of availability, time and cost. Thus, it motivates us to propose a hybrid of rule and frame based knowledge representation approach to eliminate current drawbacks on using both methods separately. The main objective is to solve complex and layered problems with regards to hajj rituals. The proposed hajj knowledge base applies the hybrid approach due to several factors such as more structured, support large number of conditions and rules, support complex tasks, more flexible and easy to use. We implement the approach in a prototype. We conducted both lab experiment for comparative study and usability study to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The result shows that the hybrid approach never fails to solve problems given since this approach predetermine the problems and solutions before transforming the knowledge into the hajj knowledge base. The knowledge becomes cases to be used in future reasoning. In addition, the approach reduces the time to solve a problem as compared to searching static information via the Internet.

A point-based semi-automatic expertise classification (PBaSE) method for knowledge management of an online Special Interest Group

An online Special Interest Group is a group of people with the same interest gather to form an online community through the Internet. In certain cases where the knowledge is being manipulated, the portal of a Special Interest Group is in a form of knowledge portal. This portal allows interaction among its community members. Interaction through forum in the portal makes activities such as discussion of problems and knowledge sharing among each other possible. The need to classify users’ expertise in a Special Interest Group is crucial task. This paper describes a Point-based Semiautomatic Expertise classification method to classify users’ expertise in a Special Interest Group knowledge portal.

Perspectives on Knowledge Sharing System for Special Interest Group (SIG): Culture, Power Issues and User Interface

Electronic community (e-community) has been a vital platform among members of a special interest group (SIG). Compared to other interest groups, technical SIG groups require more beneficial communications and materials to be shared among the members. However, they may encounter a lot of challenges to draw the interest among the members in sharing their knowledge voluntarily. A lot of knowledge sharing researches focuses on how to develop a knowledge sharing system. Hence, they overlook the need to integrate social aspects in the design of such systems. As the result, the systems face inactive participants among the members. In fact, the most crucial part of developing such online communities is on how to encourage users to contribute and share their knowledge. We must discover the underlying problems on why the users are reluctant to share their knowledge through the knowledge sharing system. This paper discusses the survey conducted in order to gain users’ perspectives towards such systems for SIG.

Vehicle Tracking Device

This paper discuss the process of developing a Vehicle Tracking Device (VTD). VTD is a tracking device focusing on vehicles that use Short Message Service (SMS). VTD will give information of location coordinate to mobile phone whenever there is a request for it through the SMS. The integrated Global Positioning System and Global System for Mobile communication (GPS-GSM) is used to track vehicle using application such as Waze or Google Maps. VTD is an integration of both hardware and software. The hardware components include a microcontroller, Arduino Uno board, sim-card slot, voice-alarm module, signal antenna, battery and mobile phone as well as a program controller interface. The prototype of VTD has been successfully developed to track vehicle using GPS via SMS.

Exploring the Key Determinants of Successful ICT Innovation Adoption: A Case Study of a Fishing Community in Thailand

This study aims at shedding some light on identifying the key deter-minants of successful innovated ICT adoption in a fishing community in Thai-land. The innovated ICT delivered a medium for fishing community and the authorities to communicate over many kinds of information like tides and appropriate fishing strategy, new fishing techniques and practices, government an-nouncement, news sharing, and more. In this study, interviews were carried out with the fishermen to recognize the factors involved in their adoption process. The result of the analysis showed that the adoption process is first initiated by the task-technology fit which examine how the technology characteristics fit with the task requirement. As the fit is met, livelihood assets like human capital, social capital, and financial capital will be gained as the result of the usage of the technology. Fishermen then utilized the livelihood assets to develop living strategies and subsequently improve their living quality.