GONSALVES Tad, ITOH Kiyoshi, KAWABATA Ryo
Technical report of IEICE. KBSE, 103(604) 1-6, Dec, 2004
In this paper we propose a composite-server model and make use of the knowledge of the intrinsic composition of its service providing units (personnel or equipment) to derive Qualitative knowledge-based rules for its performance evaluation. The composite server model that takes into account the composite nature of service has wider scope in its applications and can be used to represent a variety of system classes. We use this novel concept in the performance design and improvement of collaborative engineering systems. System modeling is done by Multi-Context Map (MCM) technique. MCM is a descriptive model that expresses the collaborative activity performed through the exchange of token, material and information; bottlenecks primarily arise due to the non-uniformity in the flow of token, material and information. Another source of bottlenecks in collaborative engineering systems is the lack or surplus of service-providing units, known as "Perspectives" in the MCM terminology. Bottlenecks due to inappropriate Perspective allocation are resolved by the Qualitative Reasoning approach. We have found this method successful in the performance design, evaluation and improvement of a practical collaborative engineering system presented at the end of this paper.