Wei-Jung Shiang

Research on using ANP to establish a performance assessment model for business intelligence systems

In order to compete in the rigorous environment, the electronization has enabled business to deploy business intelligence (BI) systems for the purpose of decision-making. However, to avoid the ineffective experiences during the deployment, it is important to clarify the impact factors of a BI system and find out a suitable assessment method to evaluate the performance of BI systems. In this paper, an analytic network process (ANP) based assessment model was constructed to assess the effectiveness of BI systems. Furthermore, an expert questionnaire was used to filter out useful performance matrices, used as the sub-criteria of the ANP model. Finally, a real case was analyzed using the constructed ANP-based effectiveness assessment model for Business Intelligence systems. The results indicate that the most critical factors that impact the effectiveness of a BI system are: output information accuracy, conformity to the requirements, and support of organizational efficiency. Utilizing this model to assess the BI performance of the studied case, it reveals that 24% improvement in effectiveness has been reached, which consists with the perception of the management level. Therefore, this effectiveness assessment model can be used to evaluate the performances of a BI system. It can also provide performance indices and improvement directions for BI users and vendors, respectively, for the total succession in system effectiveness and satisfaction.

Learning-based automated negotiation between shipper and forwarder

This paper studies an automated negotiation system by means of a learning-based approach. Negotiation between shipper and forwarder is used as an example in which the issues of negotiation are unit shipping price, delay penalty, due date, and shipping quantity. A data ratios method is proposed as the input of the neural network technique to explore the learning in automated negotiation with the negotiation decision functions (NDFs) developed by [Faratin, P., Sierra, C., & Jennings, N.R. (1998). Negotiation Decision Functions for Autonomous Agents. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 24 (3), 159-182]. The concession tactic and weight of every issue offered by the opponent can be learned from this process exactly. After learning, a trade-off mechanism can be applied to achieve better negotiation result on the distance to Pareto optimal solution. Based on the results of this study, we believe that our findings can provide more insight into agent-based negotiation and can be applied to improve negotiation processes.

Exploring the Interface Design of Mobile Phone for the Elderly

This study evaluated the influences of mobile phone interface design on the operating performance of aged people. To achieve the objective, the present research adopted a 2×2 within subject experimental design to develop different experimental treatments based on two types of software interfaces and two types of hardware interfaces. A total of 20 subjects including 10 younger participants (15-30 years old) and 10 older participants (over 40 years old) were tested in this experiment. Three dependent variables were under study. One measure refers to the operating time of subjects who were requested to perform several tasks in the experiment. The second measure refers to the error frequency, defined by the number of incorrect steps that subjects make when they perform the tasks. The third variable was the subjective convenience that was measured by a seven-point Likert scale. Finally, this study discussed design directions in cell phone design for the aged people. The conclusions from this study provided a useful reference for the mobile phone designer.

AN INTERACTIVE TOOL BASED ON XML TECHNOLOGY FOR DATA EXCHANGE BETWEEN HETEROGENEOUS ERP SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT Data exchange between enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in a supply chain system needs to fulfill requirements of both schema integration and message translation. Since ERP systems with relational database systems are developed independently, schema conflicts between databases is a common problem for schema integration. Thus, supply chain partners need to preserve the data integrity of transacting messages with respect to the ERP database systems. The core technique of this kind of data exchange is matching XML documents and relational database schemas. An interactive tool is proposed here to simplify the integration and implementation efforts of data exchange between heterogeneous database systems in the supply chain system. The interactive tool is Web-enabled and it applies XML and XSL to translate trading messages. In order to store XML documents into the relational database, the structure and content of the XML document should be matched with the database schemas and verified by the users. The data contents of the XML document need to be matched not only with data types of the database but also with relational constraints to preserve the data integrity. XML schema and XSL transformation are applied to translate data and solve schema conflicts between XML documents and the database system. Using this interactive tool, the matching methods provide mapping suggestions, and it relies on users with specific schema knowledge to provide final verification of the matching results. This tool provides an environment for administrators and designers of heterogeneous database systems to communicate data requirements, to resolve semantic conflicts, and to preserve data integrity.

Application of simulation to the scheduling problem for a LED sorting system

The scheduling problem of LED chip sorting workstation is a multiprocessor open shop scheduling problem which is categorized as a NP-hard problem. In practice, this problem is usually solved with finding a dispatching rule to achieve certain performance indices through simulation. To find the most effective rule from five proposed dispatching rules was considered in this study. Experimental design was applied to find significant factors, and a two-stage process was used to select the best dispatching rule. In the first stage, where make-span as the performance index, three dispatching rules are selected for the next stage comparison, and they are common in applying LPT in bottleneck machines. In the second stage, a dispatching rule with applying SPT in non-bottleneck machines has least average queuing time among those three, and this rule is recommended for practical application.

Development of an agent-based negotiation model for buyer-supplier relationship with multiple deliveries

In the recent decade, the relationship between supplier and buyer has transferred from trade-off relationship to coordination relationship. Many researches focuses on finding overall maximal profit between supplier and buyer, but their shortage is assuming that either supplier or buyer knows his opponents complete information. Actually, it is not true, and enterprises usually reach agreements via negotiation. This study develops an agent-based negotiation model between buyer and supplier with consideration of multiple deliveries. It is a nonlinear problem with multiple decision variables; thus, we use objective programming to resolve it. In example illustration, we use negotiation thread and the difference between joint total cost and minimum joint total cost to measure negotiation result. In addition, an ANOVA analysis is performed to discuss the influence of negotiation parameters on negotiation performance. We believe that the results of this study can serve as a tool for facilitating the practice.

Comparing the Usability of the Icons and Functions between IE6.0 and IE7.0

Microsoft has presented the newest net browsing interface , Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) in 2007. The purpose of this study was to compare the design of icons and functions between IE 7.0 and IE 6.0 for the effect of operating performance. Thus, we designed two experiments and a program which was constructed in Builder C++ 6.0. Participants were given missions, and then we recorded the mission completed time as operating performance. The results showed that the difference of icon design and functions between IE 7.0 and IE 6.0 do affect the operating performance.

An in-process adaptive control of surface roughness in end milling operations

In recent years, the computer numerical control (CNC) in machining manufacturing processes plays a positive and important role. A CNC machine enhances both quality and productivity. However, the variance of machining processes still occurred and the quality was still an issue for engineers to solve. To solve the issue, a quality inspection was conducted to ensure the satisfaction of customers. The quality inspection takes time and it should be eliminated from the aspect of lean production. To eliminate the wasting time of inspection, the in-process quality inspection was proposed to measure the quality characters during the machining processes without wasting time. Surface roughness (Ra), a key index to evaluate and determine the quality of a product, is influenced by the machine parameters and other factors resulting from the cutting tool. Surface roughness has a direct effect on the functional characteristics of the workpiece such as fatigue, fracture resistance, and surface friction. The traditional measurement of surface roughness always takes time and if the quality were not within the specification, the machine should stop and make adjustment. Therefore, to maintain the quality assurance and eliminate the inspection and adjusting time, an in-process neural-based adaptive control of surface roughness in end milling operations was proposed in this study. A neural network was applied as a decision-making algorithm to immediately predict the surface roughness. Following by the prediction, the predicted Ra was then compared to customers specification. If the quality is not within the specification, the adaptive control system will be launched to adjust the feed rate and spindle speed of the CNC machine.

Develop an adapted coordination strategy for negotiation in a buyer-driven e-marketplace

Automated negotiation by autonomous agents has become increasingly popular in the e-marketplace. This paper develops a new coordination strategy that integrates two common strategies: the desperate and patient strategies for the negotiation between one buyer and many suppliers. With our examples, we show that our proposed strategy can reduce negotiation time and find the best utility. We believe that our strategy can provide a good operation mechanism for the negotiation in the e-marketplace.

A decision support system of statistical process control for printed circuit boards manufacturing

This study develops a decision support system for printed circuit board (PCB) inner layer fabrication, which includes defect inspection system and statistical process control (SPC) system. The defect inspection system is capable of automatically inspecting ten types of defects in the etching process in order to maintain the quality of product. The SPC system is to detect process problems, when process is out of control. In this study, five common process problems can be recognized by the SPC system. With the help of these two systems, people can make better decisions during the manufacturing processing.