Yes / The cost of medical care is snowballing at an alarming and unmaintainable rate universally. Consequently, the need for a trusted quality management (QM) system at healthcare organizations is a must. Such system will aid the healthcare governance to increase the effectiveness and decrease the cost. It will help in minimizing the risk and enhancing patient safety. Several challenges facing healthcare QM in Oman are creating computerizing monitoring tool and confirming commitment of decision makers at all levels. The Report of Quality and Patient Safety (RQPS) in Oman 2016 highlighted the low level of patient safety and quality culture among staff. It recommended to inaugurate a well-defined organizational chart based on each healthcare organization’s vision and mission. Therefore, it is important to design a national accreditation system that is accredited by an international accreditation body. Such step will help in prioritizing the needs and minimizing the cost of maintaining and upgrading systems. To overcome these challenges, this article is presenting a novel methodology of hybrid knowledge-based (KB) system to assess QM in healthcare environment (QMHE) using gauging absence of prerequisites tool for benchmarking and analytical hierarchy process for prioritizing. The KB-QMHE model can be used as a standard to assess QM at any healthcare organization around the globe. The results showed that 852 questions were answered by the quality managers in a tertiary hospital in Oman; the percentage of bad points in this hospital was 32%. The KB-QMHE model has clearly shown that the priority 1, in level 0, is to focus on the patient-centered dimension in the healthcare quality dimensions submodule. Output, also, suggested a prioritized action plan covering healthcare governance module, healthcare leadership module and healthcare organization’s resources module in level 1–3.

Yes / This paper presents the development of a Knowledge-Based System (KBS) to support the implementation of Lean Six Sigma (L6σ) principles applied to enhance Quality Management (QM) performance within a Healthcare Environment. The process of KBS building has been started by acquiring knowledge from experts in field of L6σ and QM in healthcare. The acquired knowledge has been represented in a rule-based approach for capturing L6σ practices. These rules are produced in IF….THEN way where IF is the premise and THEN is the action. The produced rules have been integrated with Gauging Absence of Pre-requisites (GAP) technique to facilitate benchmarking of best practice in a healthcare environment. A comprehensive review of the structure of the system is given, detailing a typical output of the KBS. Implementation of L6σ principles to enhance QM performance in a Healthcare Environment requires a pre-assessment of the organisation’s competences. The KBS provides an enhanced strategic and operational decision making hierarchy for achieving a performance benchmark. This research presents a novel application of a hybrid KBS with GAP methodology to support the implementation of L6σ principles to enhance QM performance in a healthcare environment.

Organisational and individual Health and Safety (H&S) competence is an essential element to the successful completion of a construction project in a safe way and without hazards to the health of all workforce. Under the Construction (Design and Management) (CDM) Regulations 2007, the client should take reasonable steps to ensure that the appointed duty-holders and engaged people are H&S competent to design, build or co-ordinate the project. Although the CDM Regulations 2007 and its Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) have established ‘Core Criteria’ to guide the client to assess duty-holders’ H&S competence in the outset of a project, it is still difficult for most inexperienced clients to discharge the duty of making the key decisions in H&S competence assessment. In order to help the client implement H&S competence assessment, it is important to develop a tool that can effectively and efficiently support the client to make reasonable decisions in the selection of H&S competent duty-holders. According to the findings of the case study of existing formal H&S competence assessment schemes undertaken as part of this work, H&S competence assessment was characterised as a subjective, qualitative and non-linear regulation-compliance checking process. In addition, the case study helped identify the latent shortcomings in the ‘Core Critiera’ and the operational drawbacks in current practice of implementing H&S competence assessment. Based on a review of Information Technology (I.T.) and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) applications in construction, Knowledge-Based System (KBS) is identified as being a suitable tool to support decision-making in H&S competence assessment, mainly due to its appropriateness to solve regulation-compliance checking problems and support subjective and qualitative decision-making process. Following a decision-making framework for H&S competence assessment, a KBS decision-support model was developed, applying three mechanisms to support the reasonable decision-making for H&S competence assessment. In order to develop an appropriate and practical KBS for H&S competence assessment, a textual knowledge base was developed, specifying the minimum satisfaction standards and a rating indicator system for ‘Core Criteria’. As a result, an online KBS was developed using Java Server Pages (JSP) technology and MySQL. The online KBS applied the textual knowledge base to support the screen, rating, ranking and reporting decision-supporting mechanisms. Simultaneously, the case inquiry and expert inquiry facilities were also included in the KBS for effective decision-making. Finally, construction experts and practitioners in H&S management evaluated the validity and usability of the KBS through a questionnaire survey. The prototype KBS was borne out to be an effective and efficient decision-support tool for H&S competence assessment and have the potential to be applied in practice.

Business Process (BP) design reflects managerial needs and may directly influence business performance. A good design could substantially increase managerial performance, while a bad one would be inefficient, lack of flexibility, mess cost effective and eventually miss the business strategy. The widespread of information technology has raised the need to redesign or modify business processes in order to fit the trend of automation and computerization. As a result, business process reengineering (BPR) has gained much attention in 1990s. In recent years, a new paradigm, called Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), becomes a new management innovation. Service process design becomes a new science that can be applied to support service innovation and management. Previous research on BPR includes two major directions: one focuses on managerial aspects of business processes, including the planning, implementation, and critical factors of BPR; the other focuses on the design aspects pf business processes with a target of making processes more efficient. For research on process design, most deal with the syntactic structure of the process. They analyze the syntax structure of a process. This can help find design errors such as deadlocks, livelocks, and even infinite loops in a process. Not many studies have investigated whether a process design meets its managerial goals. This research presents a knowledge-based approach to dealing with the managerial issue of whether a process design matches specific managerial goals. This thesis contains a new business process modeling method that allows a business process to be diagnosed by knowledge-based rules. We have defined three managerial goals in process design: effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility. Each activity in a business process has its goal. Through the analysis of activities and their associated goals, we can determine whether a business process is properly designed. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed approach, we have implemented a JAVA-based prototype expert system and used it to check two sample business processes. The contributions of the study are two-fold. Academically, it proposed a new approach for business process diagnosis, which can help determine whether a process meets its managerial goal. In practice, businesses can use the concepts developed in the thesis to make their business processes more effective by matching activities with intended managerial goals.

The main aim of the research work presented in this thesis, is the development of a novel framework with the capability of assessing the impact of implementing lean manufacturing within small-to-medium sized manufacturing firms (SMEs). By assessing the impact of lean implementation, SMEs can make informed decisions on the viability of lean adoption at the conceptual implementation stage. Companies are also able determine their status in terms of lean manufacturing affordability. Thus, in order to achieve the above-stated aim, the following were the main set research objectives; (1) identifying the key drivers for implementing lean manufacturing within SMEs, (2) investigating the operational activities of SMEs in order to understand their manufacturing issues, (3) exploring the current level of lean manufacturing usage within SMEs so as to categorise users based on their levels of involvement, (4) identifying factors that determine the assessment of lean manufacturing, (5) developing an impact assessment framework for justifying lean manufacturing within SMEs, (6) developing a knowledge based advisory system and (7) validating the impact assessment framework and the developed knowledge based advisory system through real-life case studies, workshops, and expert opinions. A combination of research methodology approaches have been employed in this research study. This comprises literature review, observation of companies' practices and personal interview. The data collection process involved ten SMEs that provided consistent information throughout the research project life. Additionally, visitations to three large size manufacturing firms were also conducted. Hence, the framework and system development process passed through several stages. Firstly, the data were collected from companies who had successfully implemented lean manufacturing within their premise. The second development stage included the analysis and validation of the dataset through company practitioners. An impact assessment framework was thus developed with the aid of regression analysis as a predictive model. However, it was realised that there were few correlations between the dataset generated and analysis. The reasons for this were unclear. ,a knowledge based advisory system was adopted to conceptualise, enhance the robustness of the impact assessment framework and address the problem of the imprecise data in the impact assessment process. Three major factors of impact assessment were considered in the framework and the system development process, namely relative cost of lean implementation, a company lean readiness status and the level of value-added to be achieved (impact/benefits). Three knowledge based advisory sub-systems that consisted of the abovementioned factors were built. Results obtained from them were then fed into the final system. The three sub-systems were validated with the original set of data from companies. This enabled the assignment of a number of input variables whose membership functions aided the definition of the fuzzy expert system language (linguistic variables) used. The final system yielded heuristic rules that enable the postulation of scenarios of lean implementation. Results were sought and tested on a number of firms based within the UK, for the purposes validation. These also included expert opinions both in academic and industrial settings. A major contribution of the developed system is its ability to aid decision-making processes for lean implementation at the early implementation stage. The visualisation facility of the developed system is also useful in enabling potential lean users to make forecasts on the relative cost of lean projects upfront, anticipate lean benefits, and realise one' degree of lean readiness.

Orientadores: Jurandir Fernando Ribeiro Fernandes e Pedro Franklin Barbosa / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T03:03:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Costa_MiguelAntonioBuenoda_D.pdf: 867940 bytes, checksum: 9eb7e20ba75a4c1eb92eca6c7d29ff95 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Resumo: Esse trabalho apresenta uma abordagem sobre técnicas e ferramentas computacionais, utilizadas no desenvolvimento de modelos de simulação e, também, uma metodologia de suporte ao desenvolvimento de projetos. Um modelo de simulação de sistemas de produção de bovinos de corte foi desenvolvido utilizando conceitos de simulação de sistemas e de sistemas baseados em conhecimento com o suporte da metodologia SimuCAD: simulação e computação gráfica aplicadas ao estudo de sistemas produtivos, adaptada para atuar em sistemas de produção agropecuária. Este modelo representa um sistema de produção extensiva de bovinos de corte, genérico o suficiente para ser aplicado em qualquer rebanho. O modelo de simulação emula as políticas de manejo do pecuarista. O sistema computacional desenvolvido é amigável o suficiente para ser utilizado por pessoas leigas em informática. Os resultados extraídos desse simulador se aproximam muito dos dados associados ao sistema real de produção. O modelo foi testado e validado utilizando dados reais de uma fazenda produtora de gado de corte / Abstract: This work presents a developing approach of simulation models, including the necessary computing tools and techniques, and, also, a supporting methodology for project design and implementation. A beef cattle simulation model was developed by using the SimuCAD methodology (graphic computing and simulation applied to the study of productive systems). This methodology, based on system simulation concepts and knowledge-based systems, was adapted to perform in the cattle breeding business. The developed model represents an extensive beef cattle production system that is generic enough to be applied in any kind of cattle breeding. It simulates the managing politics of the cattle breeders and has the advantage of being friendly enough to be used by anyone, even by non-simulatingskilled persons. The model was tested and validated by using the actual data of a beef cattle production farm / Doutorado / Automação / Doutor em Engenharia Elétrica

ERP software and applications have become basic requirement of almost every organization in order to compete with each other and in time constraint. In order to develop an efficient application, project planning and analysis play very important role in better understanding of the problem domain and to provide a risk free solution. There are many different approaches which software developers used to develop the systems. These traditional approaches have some drawbacks and constraints. Either these are ad-hoc basis or have some fixed patterns and rules. We discussed all these techniques and suggest that planning and analysis of ERP application during its development can be done by applying more appropriate knowledge engineering commonKADS model. CommonKADS is a structured approach, It comprises of different model suites. Thesis presents that by using commonKADS model for project planning and analysis, real problem domain and efficient solution can be identified. Also domain process is identified. Tasks related to each process in the domain are identified. Knowledge assets related to each task are identified. These features help in defining real knowledge specification. In this way, ERP applications can be made knowledge based. ERP systems were introduced to solve different organizational problems and provide integrated structure. Although ERP packages offer advantages to enterprises, they have not achieved many of their anticipated benefits. Autonomous and heterogeneous applications co-exist in companies with ERP systems and integration problem having not been addressed. This thesis seeks to make some suggestions to this area by studying and analyzing ERP problems, through mapping commonKADS methodology in a case study. Thesis in start, presents an overview about ERP applications, Knowledge Engineering and commonKADS methodology. In the end, thesis presents our contribution a case study ―online courses Registration Portal for BTH which shows that planning and analysis of ERP applications by using commonKADS methodology helps in reaching knowledge based and more accurate solutions. / Syed Abdul Basit basitbth@gmail.com, Omar Malik omar_m20@hotmail.com.

Le besoin de compétitivité des entreprises, dans un contexte économique mondialisé, repose sur l'amélioration de la qualité des produits et la réduction des coûts et du temps de mise sur le marché. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, la simulation numérique est couramment utilisée pour la conception de produits complexes et mobilise des expertises diverses. Les Plans d'Expériences Numériques (PEN) sont de plus en plus utilisés pour simuler les variabilités des propriétés et de l’environnement du produit. Un processus de PEN apporte des méthodes de planification et d'analyse d'un ensemble de simulations, pour mieux maîtriser les performances du produit. La problématique traitée repose sur deux points. D'une part, la définition d'un processus de PEN repose sur de nombreux choix et l'utilisation de méthodes complexes, nécessitant une expertise avancée. Cette définition est d'autant plus complexe que le modèle de simulation est complexe et coûteux à exécuter. D'autre part, l'utilisation de PEN conduit à une production de grands volumes de données en multipliant les simulations. Ces travaux portent sur l'obtention rapide de la configuration optimale du processus de PEN pour raccourcir la préparation et l’exécution d’un PEN. Ces travaux se sont orientés vers la réutilisation des connaissances en entreprise pour un système à base de connaissances, composé d'une ontologie spécifique, pour capitaliser et partager les connaissances, et d'un moteur d'inférences, basé sur les réseaux bayésiens, pour proposer aux concepteurs des configurations efficaces et innovantes. Cette proposition est illustrée par une application sur un produit industriel issue du secteur automobile. / In order to improve industrial competitiveness, product design relies more and more on numerical tools, such as numerical simulation, to develop better and cheaper products faster. Numerical Design of Experiments (NDOE) are more and more used to include variabilities during simulation processes, to design more robust, reliable and optimized product earlier in the product development process. Nevertheless, a NDOE process may be too expensive to be applied to a complex product, because of the high computational cost of the model and the high number of required experiments. Several methods exist to decrease this computational cost, but they required expert knowledge to be efficiently applied. In addition to that, NDoE process produces a large amount of data which must be managed. The aim of this research is to propose a solution to define, as fast as possible, an efficient NDoE process, which produce as much useful information as possible with a minimal number of simulations, for complex products. The objective is to shorten both process definition and execution steps. A knowledge-based system is proposed, based on a specific ontology and a bayesian network, to capitalise, share and reuse knowledge and data to predict the best NDoE process definition regarding to a new product. This system is validated on a product from automotive industry.

Les objectifs de la thèse sont l'a nalyse approfondie d'un système de supervision automatique de la ventilation artificielle des patients hospitalisés en soins intensifs et l'élaboration de solutions pour améliorer et étendre son fonctionnement. Ce système adapte l'assistance en pression de la ventilation spontanée avec aide inspiratoire (AI) par un rétrocontrôle basé sur la fréquence respiratoire du patient et, comme variables de "sécurité", le volume courant et le CO2 de fin d'expiration (etCO2). Il établit ainsi une classification ventilatoire et règle un niveau de pression d'AI.Sur la base d'études publiées rapportant des limitations, d'analyses d'une base de données rétrospectives acquises sur patient, d'études sur banc-test et d'études observationnelles prospectives réalisées chez les patients, nous avons étudié précisément le fonctionnement du système. Pour la plupart des limitations, une solution a été proposée et évaluée sur banc. A partir d'une étude clinique, nous avons proposé une amélioration de la procédure de traitement du signal etCO2 par le système. En nous basant sur les observations de la base de données, nous avons décrit une procédure automatisée de sevrage de la PEP dont un niveau supérieur à 5 mbar entrave le sevrage par le système. Sur le même principe, nous avons souhaité, en amont de l'AI, tenter d'automatiser un changement de mode depuis la ventilation assistée contrôlée. Au travers d'une étude clinique, nous avons déterminé des critères ventilatoires qui pourraient permettre d'automatiser cette procédure. L'ensemble a permis la définition d'une méthodologie d'évaluation et d'amélioration d'un système automatisé de ventilation artificielle / The objectives of the thesis are the detailed analysis of an automated system of management of artificial ventilation for patients in intensive care unit and the elaboration of solutions to improve and upgrade its functioning. This system automatically adapts the level of pressure support ventilation (PSV) through a feedback based on the respiratory rate of the patient and, as “safety” variables, the tidal volume and the end tidal of expired CO2 (etCO2). The system, called “SmartCare”, establishes a ventilatory classification and sets a level of inspiratory pressure.We precisely studied the system functioning on the basis of published studies reporting limitations, on a database analysis compound with retrospective data acquired on patients, of bench-test studies and observational prospective studies performed in patients. For most of the limitations, a solution was proposed and evaluated on bench. Using the results of a clinical study, we proposed an improvement of etCO2 signal processing. From observations of the database, we described a procedure of automated weaning of positive end expiratory pressure level which hinders pressure support weaning if above 5 mbar. On the same principle, upstream to PSV, we wished to automate a change of ventilation mode from assist control ventilation. Through a clinical study, we determined ventilatory criteria which could allow automation of this procedure. The whole project allowed to define a methodology of evaluation and improvement of an automated mechanical ventilation system

L’évaluation de la performance des ouvrages hydrauliques en remblai est un enjeu majeur pour les gestionnaires en charge de leur sécurité. Qu'il s'agisse de digues ou de barrages, la présence de végétation arborescente représente un facteur de fragilité important. Deux types de mécanismes de détérioration peuvent ainsi être initiés ou aggravés : l’érosion interne et l’érosion externe. Or, ce facteur n’a été pris en compte que partiellement dans les modèles d’évaluation existants. De plus, les petits barrages en remblai peuvent avoir des dispositifs d’étanchéité différents et ne sont pas toujours équipés de drains et d’instruments d’auscultation: il est alors nécessaire d’adapter les modèles à chaque cas. L’objectif de la thèse est de répondre à ces verrous scientifiques. Les résultats de nos recherches concernent l’établissement de modèles d’évaluation de la performance basés sur des approches à base de connaissances.La démarche a été appliquée sur des ouvrages réels : 3 tronçons de digues de protection contre les inondations ainsi que 7 barrages en remblai ce qui nous a permis de montrer sa pertinence et donc son potentiel d’utilisation opérationnelle. / The performance assessment of embankment hydraulic works is a major challenge for managers in charge of their security. For both dikes and dams, the presence of trees represents an important fragility factor. Two types of deterioration mechanism can thus be initiated or aggravated: internal erosion or scouring. However, this factor has been taken only partially into account in existing assessment models. In addition, small embankment dams can have different sealing devices and are not always equipped with drains and monitoring instruments: it is thus necessary to customize the models in each case. The aim of the thesis was to remove these scientific obstacles. The results of our research concern the design of performance assessment models relying on knowledge-based approaches.The approach was implemented for real works: three sections of river dikes and seven small embankment dams which allowed us to show its relevance and therefore its operational potential.