Stochastic and Dynamic Shipper Carrier Network Design Problem

The focus of this work is to determine the optimal storage capacity to be installed on transhipment nodes by shippers in a dynamic shipper carrier network under stochastic demand. A two stage linear program with recourse formulation is developed where in the first stage, the shipper decides the optimal capacity to be installed on transhipment nodes. In the second stage, the shipper chooses a routing strategy based on the realized demand. The performance of the following solution methods: Stochastic L Shaped Method, Regularized Decomposition and L Shaped Method with preliminary cuts were compared for various network sizes and numerous demand scenarios. A novel capacity shifting heuristic was introduced to generate a feasible implementable solution which significantly improves the performance of Regularized Decomposition and provides the best performance in the cases tested. Various ways of generating analytical bounds on the objective function value was discussed. The new capacity shifting heuristic was found to be efficient in generating tight upper bounds. Even though the formulation considered in this paper is for a single commodity, the model can be easily extended to account for multiple commodities.     

Toward collaboration sensing

We describe preliminary applications of network analysis techniques to eye-tracking data collected during a collaborative learning activity. This paper makes three contributions: first, we visualize collaborative eye-tracking data as networks, where the nodes of the graph represent fixations and edges represent saccades. We found that those representations can serve as starting points for formulating research questions and hypotheses about collaborative processes. Second, network metrics can be computed to interpret the properties of the graph and find proxies for the quality of students’ collaboration. We found that different characteristics of our graphs correlated with different aspects of students’ collaboration (for instance, the extent to which students reached consensus was associated with the average size of the strongly connected components of the graphs). Third, we used those characteristics to predict the quality of students’ collaboration by feeding those features into a machine-learning algorithm. We found that among the eight dimensions of collaboration that we considered, we were able to roughly predict (using a median-split) students’ quality of collaboration with an accuracy between ~85 and 100 %. We conclude by discussing implications for developing “collaboration-sensing” tools, and comment on implementing this approach for formal learning environments.     

Online collaboration products

The European Patent Office cooperates closely with the national patent offices from the member states of the European Patent Organization as well as many nonmember states. The EPO's Information Systems-Research and Prototyping directorate recently surveyed the functionality of available collaboration tools. The study looked at three scenarios related to EPO functions. The first concerns patent examiners. The second scenario relates to the EPO task of raising awareness about patent information, concerning both the patent-granting procedure and the patent documents themselves. Another aspect of raising awareness involves promoting the EPO's patent information services and stimulating the use of patent information. This leads to the third scenario: online support for esp@cenet users.     

A collaboration context ontology to enhance human-related collaboration into Industry 4.0

Cognition, Technology & Work - The advent of Industry 4.0 where humans and intelligent machines coexist, allows machines to assist humans on production lines. During such processes, humans work...     

A framework for collaboration moderator services to support knowledge based collaboration

Knowledge sharing is a major challenge for collaborative networks and is essential to improve the productivity and quality of decisions taken by both collaborative networks and their member organisations. A critical aspect of effective knowledge sharing within virtual organizations (VOs) is the identification of the most appropriate knowledge for reuse or exploitation in a particular context, as this requires efficient tools and mechanisms for its identification, sharing or transfer. Additionally, partners need to be aware of when knowledge needs to be shared, the implications of doing so and when their decisions are likely to affect other partners within the collaboration. Therefore, tools and methods are needed for identification, acquisition, maintenance and evolution of knowledge and to support effective knowledge sharing which includes awareness of possible consequences of actions and increased awareness of other partner’s needs during the collaboration. The Collaboration Moderator Services (CMS) are designed to address these issues relating to knowledge based collaboration by providing a set of functionalities to raise users’ awareness of opportunities, problem areas and lessons learnt from and during collaborations. This paper presents the system architecture and specifications of the CMS within the context of the SYNERGY system, whose purpose is to offer interoperable service utilities to help enterprises plan, setup and run complex knowledge collaborations. The CMS are designed to support both individual organizations and collaborations as a whole throughout the VO lifecycle and the different functionalities provided by CMS to achieve this are discussed in this paper.     

Internet-based collaboration in 2010

Imagine a common scene: a small group of people from different organizations meets and decides to engage in a cooperative project. These might be people working on a business deal, people sharing technical information, or a social group planning a future function. They decide to use the Internet to facilitate their interaction. What technology are they likely to use? E-mail is certainly available, but there is currently little else. The only other widely used collaboration technologies are AIM (AOL's Instant Messenger service) and ICQ, which are quite useful but primarily for short interactions. They provide no tools for recording the interaction or connecting the communication with the users' other files. Fortunately, coming developments will trigger dramatic changes in collaboration technology and systems. As 1999 ends, the author sees five technical developments that are laying the foundation for a radically different future for Internet based collaboration: security; bandwidth; voice and IP convergence; appliances and handheld devices; and wireless connections. Group interactions will take many forms. Within the next decade, the author expects to see widespread sharing of documents, sharing of real-time drawings on whiteboards, voice conferencing, and perhaps videoconferencing     

Issues in collaboration services

This paper introduces the special issue on collaboration services and protocols for distributed collaboration in networked enterprises and e-science.     

Exploring multilayered collaboration designs

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning -     

Multi-robot collaboration for robust exploration

This paper presents a new sensing modality for multirobot exploration. The approach is based on using a pair of robots that observe each other, and act in concert to reduce odometry errors. We assume the robots can both directly sense nearby obstacles and see each other. The proposed approach improves the quality of the map by reducing the inaccuracies that occur over time from dead reckoning errors. Furthermore, by exploiting the ability of the robots to see each other, we can detect opaque obstacles in the environment independently of their surface reflectance properties. Two different algorithms, based on the size of the environment, are introduced, with a complexity analysis, and experimental results in simulation and with real robots. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Pair dynamics in team collaboration

From a recent field survey with a group of professional pair programmers, it was revealed that the programmers perceive a partner’s personality, cognitive style and communication skills as the top three factors that lead to prudent pair programming. Based on this finding, the factors personality and communication skills, along with gender were selected for an experiment to analyze if a partner’s human, intrinsic values influence the pair programming experience, specifically in the levels of satisfaction, compatibility, communication, and confidence. A total of 128 students majoring in Management Information Systems, Information Systems, and Information Technology participated in the experiment. Of the 68 undergraduates, 40 were first-year students and 28 were juniors; the remaining 60 were Master’s degree graduate students. The students were formed into a total of 64 pairs based on their personality, level of communication skills, and gender. A total of three visits were made. During the first two visits, a set of four programming problems was used in four programming sessions lasting 45 min each; two were individual programming sessions and two were pair programming sessions. At the end of each visit, a questionnaire was administered and collected. The questionnaire results revealed that the various Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality combinations did not significantly influence the levels of communication, satisfaction, confidence, and compatibility. The pairs that exhibited a high level of communication between partners did not necessarily experience a high level of satisfaction or exhibit compatibility between partners, nor did they have a high level of confidence regarding the finished product. The communication skill level seemed to have an impact on communication only. Similar to many previous gender-focused literatures, the same gender pairs did exhibit significantly higher levels of communication, satisfaction and compatibility than the mixed gender pairs. Within the same gender pairs, the female–female pairs showed a much higher level than the male–male pairs in those categories. Contrariwise, the same gender pairs did not show a significantly higher confidence level than the mixed gender pairs about their finished product.     

Multi-agent collaboration in time-constrained domains

Timeliness is usually an indispensable attribute of planning and problem solving for resource allocation in command, control and communication systems. The success of such a system is judged on its ability to respond to scheduled and unscheduled tasks within a permissible time period. The response is based on a plan that covers the following activities: resource allocation, plan execution and monitoring and dynamic plan mending, if necessary. Decision making for resource selection can become very time consuming when there are many resources and the number of constraints is large. In a changing environment of multiple agents, restrictive organizational structures and strict communication protocols may cause intolerable further delays.Traditional approaches to planning in deterministic environments require a predictable amount of time to produce and execute plans. However, given more time, such systems usually cannot improve on the plans. In this paper we describe a multi-agent resource scheduler which uses a prioritized rule base to model decision making under the constraints of time. We also discuss dynamic scoping as a negotiation technique for inter-agent cooperation and constrained lattice-like communications as an optimized message routing strategy. Finally, we present some empirical results from a sequence of experiments.     

Remote high-performance visualization and collaboration

Using commercial, off-the-shelf equipment minimizes costs yet supports real-time, full-frame-rate transfers of compressed, high-resolution images to remotely distributed large-format displays. Sandia National Laboratories' engineers and analysts regularly use design centers to design, prototype and test components in a virtual space, and to explore and examine the results of large-scale simulations. Using commercially available video, compression and network equipment and the display quadrant technique, distributed workgroups can now collaborate on tera-scale problem sets. They can take full advantage of high-resolution displays with real-time interactivity. In addition, the system cost and network usage scales linearly for larger resolution displays and/or the addition of new remote sites     

Enhancing peer-to-peer collaboration using trust

Distributed systems generally require their component parts to interact cooperatively, in order for the system as a whole to function effectively. For any given activity, there are typically several alternative components that have the required capabilities. In decentralised systems, where there is no overarching control, individual components are responsible for selecting other components with which to cooperate. However, the candidate components may be unreliable or dishonest, and are typically locally controlled. Such decentralised systems can be viewed as multi-agent systems, comprising autonomous agents that must cooperate for the system to be effective. Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are a subclass of decentralised distributed systems, in which not only is there no overarching control, but neither is there any hierarchy of control, power, or responsibly among the system components. Selecting appropriate peers to cooperate with is a challenging problem, since the candidate peers are autonomous and may be unreliable or dishonest. Peers need a mechanism for task delegation that takes the uncertainly of interactions into account. In this paper we present a mechanism, called Mdt-r, that enables peers to delegate activities appropriately, using trust and the recommendations of other peers to meet individual preferences, such as minimising risk and maximising quality.     

Interfirm collaboration through interfirm networks

Abstract. Abstract. Since the late 1980s, interfirm (computer) networks have been diffusing very rapidly. They have not only been adopted by firms across the whole spectrum of sectors; the applications based on such networks have also been extended from routine transactions to strategically more important processes. Using recent evidence gathered from six in-depth cases studies in the UK and a telephone-based survey, this paper will illustrate how the development of interfirm networks has facilitated the emergence of new interfirm collaboration in strategic areas. The empirical evidence has been drawn from the retailing, motor manufacturing and electronics industries. To conclude, the paper will highlight several key issues that have emerged from the study, identify three layers of barriers to the development of interfirm networks, and outline a future research agenda.     

Modelling collaboration using complex networks

Collaboration means working together to achieve a common goal or to solve a problem, and in modern businesses, it is an important factor for information sharing and quality. This is due to the ability of collaborations to shape the structure and behaviour of organisations through the pooling of expertise and standardising of work patterns.Grounded on complex network theory and collaborative design research, a mathematical model of information flow for analysing collaboration in organisations is proposed in this article. The model defines concepts for characterising organisational structures for collaboration and proposes indicators for assessing organisational behaviour in terms of collaboration within organisations. The article concludes by discussing the applications and limitations of the proposed model.     

Consistent practices in artifact-mediated collaboration

The design of collaborative representations faces a challenge in integrating theoretical communication models with the context-sensitive and creative practices of human interaction. This paper presents results from a study that identified multiple, invariant communicative practices in how dyads appropriated flexible, paper-based media in discussions of wicked problems. These invariants, identified across media, participants and topics are a promising first step towards creating an abstract model for design that connects representational affordances and communicative functions. The authors identify areas where this model may challenge conventional design wisdom and discuss directions for further research.     

Java's role in distributed collaboration

In this paper, we sketch some techniques for using Java to improve the state-of-the-art in scalable collaboration management for scientific and engineering applications. We argue that flexibility, cost containment and support for large-scale collaboration must join raw performance as metrics for successful, scalable HPC software. Finally, we summarize our experience with large-scale Web-based collaboration, and describe some plans for future work. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.