This thesis investigates the emergence and influence of expertise in group decision making while performing a judgmental task. Previous studies focused on intellective tasks or compared the group performance with the performance of the best individual in the group. In this study, performance feedbacks are provided to groups to help group members compare the individual performances and identify the expert. Laboratory experiments were conducted in which the task was to select a proverb that Canadians would like the most from the list of four proverbs from countries other than Canada. The four proverbs for each question were guaranteed to have equal selection probability based on the pretest survey. 18 four-person cooperative groups were asked to perform the task for eight iterations each. One member in each group was selected randomly to be the expert. Groups received performance feedbacks that reinforced the expert at the end of each iteration. The amount of information conveyed to each group regarding the expertise level of each group member was measured with a novel application of information analysis that captures the expert's gradual emergence. Experiment results supported the hypotheses of this study that (1) group members recognize the expert when working on a judgmental task with performance feedback and (2) while performing a judgmental task, the expert has more influence on the group decision making compared to others.

As the demand for energy worldwide increases, the oil and gas industry will need to increase recovery from unconventional gas reservoirs (UGR). UGRs include Tight Gas Sand (TGS), coalbed methane and gas shales. To economically produce UGRs, one must have adequate product price and one must use the most current technology. TGS reservoirs require stimulation as a part of the completion, so improvement of completion practices is very important. We did a thorough literature review to extract knowledge and experience about completion and stimulation technologies used in TGS reservoirs. We developed the principal design and two modules of a computer program called Tight Gas Sand Advisor (TGS Advisor), which can be used to assist engineers in making decisions while completing and stimulating TGS reservoirs. The modules include Perforation Selection and Proppant Selection. Based on input well/reservoir parameters these subroutines provide unambiguous recommendations concerning which perforation strategy(s) and what proppant(s) are applicable for a given well. The most crucial parameters from completion best-practices analyses and consultations with experts are built into TGS Advisor’s logic, which mimics human expert’s decision-making process. TGS Advisor’s recommended procedures for successful completions will facilitate TGS development and improve economical performance of TGS reservoirs.

After stepping into 21st century of knowledge economy era, the enterprises¡¦ competition advantage depends on knowledge-management mechanism to promote the decision-making quality, supply better service quality, create core technology, cultivate team cooperation, and establish good relationship with customers. In Taiwan, the competition among medical industries is hot increasing since the practicing of health insurance. The request of medical quality is higher and higher. The medical industry must enforce the medical administration system to elaborate her efficacy. But the SARS infection incident during 2003 is ascertained that the infection almost was inside the hospital. The medical control system and policies were unsuitable and the medical workers operated without protection facilities. Therefore, the workers were infected SARS and six persons died for medical job. This disaster is due to the incompleteness of medical administration. To promote medical quality and performance, combining knowledge-management, clinic administration and quality control is necessary. The knowledge-management includes the acquiring, spreading, cumulating and sharing of knowledge. This study adopts questionnaire law and expert interview law quantity measuring tool.The statistic analysis is based on research framework and model. After the retrieval of questionnaire, the data are coded, checked, keyed. According to the change of quantity-measuring dimensions, the linear analysis- Pearsons relationship is chosen as proper statistic analytical tool. The regression analysis was conducted by SPSS 10.0 software. The result is used to understand the knowledge management of medical industry and discuss the factors, including individual cognition, organization culture, operating aspect and strategy consideration, affecting the performance of knowledge management. It is found that, the establishment of encouragement system, performance comments, on-the-job training, experience inheritance education, and psychology construct coach are all necessary to carry out the knowledge management of medical administration in medical industry. It is very important that the decision makers and directors should emphasize actually knowledge management and execute completely to enhance competition advantage and insure the medical service quality.

Abstract Taiwan, which is located in the subtropics, is in need of air-conditioning system to provide its people with a more comfortableenvironment. Since apparatus is used frequently, equipments may break down easily. Often, we¡¦ll need a great amount of budget for mending these damaged equipments. Therefore, we have come up with an idea in order to overcome the difficulties. AI (artificial intelligence) related technology has been under research for several years. Due to the fact that people demand computers to become more intelligent, there are many new innovations to be developed within the field of AI. Expert system is one of the newest technologies that increase the benefits brought to us through AI. Different from the conventional program, the expert system has plenty of advantages which include graphical interface, inferring mechanism, and knowledge-base, which can store a lot of professional knowledge. Moreover, the program is almost a real expert for it could teach people by its dialogue function. Based on this advantage, the unit can save an amount of money from using the expert system. Prolog is a program language used to write expert systems. It was invented by Colmerauer and Roussel in 1972. Because of its powerful function, Japan uses it as a tool to create the Fifth Computer Generation System (FGCS). According to the plan, the system must contain many user-friendly functions, which enables it to receive information by listening to people¡¦s voice, and it can learn everything ¡V almost as much as human beings. As for the programming of the VII language, Prolog uses a special syntax. When the predicate matches the fact, the function would be executed. This special program syntax is good for describing things. From now on, Prolog will be much more welcomed because it works in a more acceptable way for people. Finally, we would like to promote the techniques to the field of air-conditioning in order to offer people a new solution to deal with the flaws.

The oil barge operation in Kaohsiung harbor is one of typical systems of resources allocation problems in a complex and dynamic environment. Such system is far more difficult to deal with than a static and deterministic system and often depends on experienced human experts for the oil barge assignment. One of the major dilemmas faced by the system is that decision makers do not know the managerial efficiency under the current dispatching mechanism. Besides, if the dispatching rules have been modified due to the resource variation in the future, how would the changes affect the system? The current research is trying to develop an evaluation system for oil barge assignment. The objective of the system is to evaluate the overall performances of the oil barge operation in Kaohsiung harbor. Both expert system and system simulation techniques would be applied for such analysis. To acquire the current heuristic of oil barge assignment and then transfer it to a rule-based knowledge in an expert system, the interview with the engineer, who is responsible for making such decision, is the crucial step. With the knowledge base and the reasoning mechanism available, it is possible to imitate the current oil barge assignment. To further evaluate the performance of such assignment rule, the current research has developed the system simulation model of oil barge operation. This model is able to quantify the service quality under various assignment scenarios. The results of simulation can further be presented to the decision makers with easy-understanding animations. The case study would focus on Kaohsiung harbor¡¦s oil barge operation. The integrity and suitability of the expert system and simulation model have been validated through extensive statistical analysis. At last, various scenario analysis based on such integrated models have been conducted to improve the current oil barge operation and to set the appropriate response plans confronted by the future development of Kaohsiung harbor as the Asia-Pacific transshipment center.

With load growth of distribution systems, it becomes very complicated for dispatchers to obtain restoration plan for unfaulted but out-of-service areas. In this thesis, a rule-based expert system with a colored Petri net (CPN) inference model is developed. The CPN models of distribution components such as four-way line switches are proposed to derive the proper switching operation plan for service restoration by applying reasoning in the CPN. After main transformer contingency has been identified and isolated, it is highly possible that the out of service customers can not be restored completely because of the shortage of capacity reserve. The feeders which serve more key customers with higher service priority will have better chance to be selected for restoration. With the system reconfiguration to cover the load change of service zones over a longer period, during the process of switching operation, the maximum load demand of out-of-service area over the restoration time is considered in the CPN. To prevent the over-unbalance tripping of distribution feeders during switching operation process, the maximum tolerable current unbalance between any two phases is also considered in the CPN model. To assure the restoration plan complying with the operation regulation, heuristic rules based on the standard operation procedures of Taipower distribution system are included in the best first search of the CPN. A Taipower distribution system with 67 feeders is selected for computer simulation in this thesis to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. It is found that the service restoration of distribution systems can be obtained very efficiently by applying the proposed CPN model.

As the demand for energy worldwide increases, the oil and gas industry will need to increase recovery from unconventional gas reservoirs (UGR). UGRs include Tight Gas Sand (TGS), coalbed methane and gas shales. To economically produce UGRs, one must have adequate product price and one must use the most current technology. TGS reservoirs require stimulation as a part of the completion, so improvement of completion practices is very important. We did a thorough literature review to extract knowledge and experience about completion and stimulation technologies used in TGS reservoirs. We developed the principal design and two modules of a computer program called Tight Gas Sand Advisor (TGS Advisor), which can be used to assist engineers in making decisions while completing and stimulating TGS reservoirs. The modules include Perforation Selection and Proppant Selection. Based on input well/reservoir parameters these subroutines provide unambiguous recommendations concerning which perforation strategy(s) and what proppant(s) are applicable for a given well. The most crucial parameters from completion best-practices analyses and consultations with experts are built into TGS Advisor's logic, which mimics human expert's decision-making process. TGS Advisor's recommended procedures for successful completions will facilitate TGS development and improve economical performance of TGS reservoirs.

Replacing steel and wood with plastic is the developing trend in the modern industry. In many shaping processing methods¡M the injection molding technology is widely used in plastic industry for its good adaptability¡M high producing efficiency and easy-achieve to automation. Injection molding is a very complicated physical process¡M the molding parameters (including temperature¡M pressure¡M time¡M speed and position etc) and environment condition will directly affect the flowing condition of melting plastic and final quality of products¡M so to obtain the best molding parameters is the key to improve the quality of the plastic products. The traditional method of adjusting parameters is try and error¡M which wastes time and materials. And it¡¦s also hard to accumulate and transmit experience¡M so we urgently need to find a new method. By going through a long time of experiment and exploring¡M we found that the DOE (Design of Experiment)¡M which is one of the most important tools of 6 sigma¡M can be applied to improving the molding processing¡M and it will bring us the innovation of injection molding technology. DOE is one of the mathematic methods¡Mwhich bases on Probability theory¡M Statistics and Linear algebra¡M through rationally arrange experiment and correctly analyze the results of experiment¡M to obtain the best parameters. In the processing of exploring¡M we have obtained first-step success in shortening cycles¡M reducing weight of product and improving qualities. For the sake of extending and developing the methods of DOE applied to molding technology in the company and transmitting experience of experts¡M we are going to conclude many DOE cases as a rule¡M establish a database¡M develop an injection molding expert system¡M which will be the effective way to bring cost down¡M improve efficiency and establish a core-competition capability of injection molding technology.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1981. / "August 1981." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2004. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 77 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.