Expert Systems

The expert systems are just computer software. “They are programs that achieve expert level competence in solving problems in particular task area by use of knowledge base about that particular task area”⁽¹⁾. By other words, the expert system is a type of computer system that can perform a task of emulates the decision making that otherwise can be done by a human expert. However, the expert system will do such a task with more efficient abilities and sufficient capability. This type of systems was designed to deal with very complicated problems using the rules of IF-Then instead of following the computer conventional ways.

Expert systems are known as artificial intelligent (AI) programs. These programs are widely spread in different sectors and fields such medical, business, and agriculture. In agriculture, for example, we can recognize CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production System). It is the most expert system been used in this field. It was developed in 1985 at NASA and known today as fast, efficient and free expert system. This expert system in agriculture has had provided a recognizable many advantages to the agricultural field:

- has the ability to imitate human thought and reasoning

- Help to increase the production of corps.

- has the ability to handle uncertain information.

- help farmers to take single point decision

Neural Networks

Progressively, Neural networks becoming more and more prevalent in business world. Nowadays, many businesses are spending more on researches that focusing on neural network and data mining to find appropriate solutions that make the numerous business data readily. It is became obvious that such technologies and methodologies will help any company ( dealing with a wide range of business data) forecasting, modeling, clustering, and classification its data. As a result, decision making will be able to generate affective, useful and successful business plans. However, such results might need an expert to read them right. Thus what are neural networks?

Neural networks are a functional approximation tools that study the relationship between independent and dependent variables, “much like regression or other more traditional applications”⁽²⁾. The only difference between the neural networks and statistical approaches “is that neural networks make no assumptions about the statistical distribution or properties of the data”⁽²⁾. Additionally, the neural networks are classifies to several types based on its purpose, architecture, and its learning algorithm. There are many of those types such as:

1- Multilayered feed forward neural networks

2- Hopfield neural networks

3- Self-organizing neural networks

Some studies asserted that these are the three main models of artificial neural networks (ANN).

The business applications that use these type of ANNs are very helpful in many ways. They help identifying the customers who are, definitely, expected to buy and use the product provided. Such applications also had ability to predict customers’ behavior. Computer operates usually follow a sequential linear processing techniques and “apply some formulas, decision rules, and algorithms”⁽³⁾ to provide results that decision makers can use. Differently, the ANNs improve their own instructions and generate better results. There for, this type of applications can help to determine when a customer is about to switch to use a competitor’s product or service.

The ANNs have had illustrated a great success in terms of sales forecasting. This fact has been confirmed due to ANNs’ abilities to consider multiple variables at a time.

Trading and financial forecasting also was benefited from ANNs applications. They been used in solving problems related to “derivative securities pricing and hedging, futures price forecasting, exchange rate forecasting and stock performance and selection prediction”⁽²⁾.

Likewise, the insurance industry can benefit from such ANNs applications as well. Since Neural networks applications can multiply different variables at a time, the policy holders can be divided int many segments based on their behaviors for example. The ANNs provided results that help to determine effective premium pricing plans.

The field is increasingly grown, and the business applications that use the technologies of ANNs are expanding as well. It is hard to list or enumerate all of them; but we can recognize the following as most popolar such as: ΠAirline security control.

 Investment management and risk control.

Ž Prediction of thrift failures.

 Prediction of stock price index(3).

Sources: 

1- http://www.slideshare.net/VinayakSharma1/6expert-systems 

2- http://www.cob.calpoly.edu/~eli/pdf/neural.pdf

Assignment #3

Competitive Advantage

In order for any business to sustain, it has to learn how to deal with the tornado of competitiveness. The organization’s management might succeed in defining the foundation of competitive advantage which are the resources, capabilities, and core competencies. But, the ability of managing any competitive related issue requires the organization to acquire sufficient effective knowledge. More importantly, knowing how to use the acquired knowledge can be the most challenging issue.

The ability to manage or define the business resources cannot be enough by itself. In fact, resources (tangible and intangible) by itself cannot yield a competitive advantage. Why? That is because the resources are bundled to create organizational capabilities. In turn, capabilities are the source of a firm’s core competencies, which are the basis of competitive advantages. Consequently, the need to know what kind of knowledge is required and needed and how to manage this knowledge is a quite critical issue. Any organization can hire someone who has acquired enough knowledge to design an effective management system to manage the organization; but the need to know how his or her knowledge can be shared required more or different type of knowledge. Thus, the term of “social ecology” was determined to help any company to maintain an effective knowledge framework.

It is obvious that knowledge is based on the quantity and quality of information collected, processed, and generated. Studies had asserted that knowledge management rely on the social ecology of the company more what it does on the information. This fact was justified by referring the term of social ecology to the social system that clarifies how the employees operate the information or their knowledge. Gupta and Govindarajan in their article “Lessons From Nucor Steel” stated that “the determinants of social ecology are culture, structure, information systems, reward systems, processes, people and leadership”.

We all agree that the information systems playing the dominant role to communicate all those determinants. This obvious because, nowadays, the technology is responsible to process people’s activities, record their performance, matching their performance with the rewarding system, and report the results to the leaders of the organization.

Nucor, succeeded in analyzing its social ecology and became the most innovative and fastest growing steel company in during the years of 90s, 80, and 70s. GE also has been known as the first or second in market value added. As Nucor focused on the human capital and its relationship with the knowledge and how that knowledge can be increased, transformed and shared, GE had maintain the same level of successful. While Nucor concentrated its efforts on superior human capital, GE also established its works equation to be:

We look at what the world needs

*

A belief in a better way

+

A relentless drive to invent and build things that matter

=

A world that works better

Will be continued ... 

Blog Assignment #2

Kia Vs. Daewoo

The business competition became more aggressive than ever. When the tangible and intangible elements that needed for any type of business become available, the ability to, successfully, combine those resources becomes more important to achieve the object of that business. This ability can be known as the ability to manage those resources, which is, nowadays, known as knowledge management. It is the knowledge that we need deal with the business environment such as competitors and business needs which can have a direct effect on the business survive. Most importantly, the knowledge management will have a significant impact on what need to be known, why does a business need that knowledge, and when that knowledge need to be used. This knowledge can be the magic generator that will help the business management to generate the appropriate ideas and make the right decisions. Consequently, lacking of such knowledge or lacking in some parts of that knowledge can lead to massive results such as bankruptcy. Daewoo Group is a great example for that lacking of knowledge.

                  Daewoo, which was founded in 1967, was one of the major South Korean manufacturing Groups or conglomerates; but it is not exist anymore. In fact, Daewoo, which had combined about 20 division, was the second largest Group in South Korea before it was break down by the Korean Government in 1999.

On the contrary, Kia Motors, which joined the automobile industry in 1986, became the second largest South Korean automaker presently.

In fact, Kia motors considered the oldest automaker company, but, in 1981, it was enforced by the Government to stop making cars and specialized on light trucks only.

Daewoo Group took the advantages of cheap Government loans in 70s and benefited from inexpensive labor cost as well. It was forced by the government to join many other activities such as shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and military Industrialization. By the late 80s, Korean government became more liberal. Although it’s notable reputation in making shipbuilding and oil rigs, Daewoo took the advantage of the government actions and started making some joint ventures with the U.S and some other western corporations.

Daewoo Group expanded significantly in the US and Europe but it was negatively affected by the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. Due to its lacking in financial management knowledge, Daewoo couldn’t survive and forced to bankruptcy.

On the other hand, Kia was founded first in 1944 as a small manufacturer for bicycles, and then it grew until built the first car in 1974, seven years after Daewoo. After the Asian financial crises in 1997, Kia declared bankruptcy; but it was acquired later by Hyundai.

Similarly, by the late 80s when Korean polices became more liberal, Kia resumed its activity in making cars and made its first partnership with Ford in 1986. Despite its unique design, Kia involved in making some types of Mazda. Additionally, Kia stormed the US, European, and Australian markets and exported different models to each country.

Furthermore, Kia rapidly expanded after its first manufactory in the Oregon US. during 1992. Nowadays, Kia own another manufactory in Georgia which was established in 2006.

 

Assignment #1: Reasons Behind Successful Companies

Kroger: The king of consistency

Before he writes his book, “Good to Great” (GTG), Jim Collins discussed the question: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. By other words, Collins deeply searched to determine what are the reasons that make some companies succeed and others not. He used a team of 21 researchers to sift through 1,435 companies and identify a list of (11) best firms that “made the leap” to business greatness. Collins compared those 11 firms with a set of other firms he felt that had failed to make the leap from good to great. At the end of his research, Collins derived five GTG principles that he believed they help those companies to achieve the top level of greatness; these principles are:   

¦ Level Five Leadership.               ¦  First Who, Then What.

¦  Confront the Brutal Facts.        ¦  Hedgehog Concept.

¦  Build Your Company’s Vision.

These five principles might look little bit foggy because they are focusing on the depth of successful leadership characteristics and business strategies. However, there are some other clear reasons that can be easy to recognize in order to determine / define what stands behind a company’s successful like Kroger, which was on of Collins list.

In the class of Knowledge management, we learned that there are some obvious and clear reasons can help such company to achieve its goal of successful. These reasons can be summarized as Profitability, Customers’ and Employees’ satisfaction, and the flexibility of infrastructures in terms of Business processes and communication.

Kroger Co, the retail store, which was founded 131 years ago, attained this level of successfulness by being committed to a simple motto: “Be particular. Never sell anything you would not want yourself.”

From my point of view, it is obvious that this simple motto has included all four elements that any business needs to succeed.

Kroger started in Cincinnati Ohio as a small grocery store and continued expanding to be more than 2,400 stores in 31 states today. It became one of the world’s largest retailers with a $ 96 billion annual sale. Mr. Kroger put lots of efforts to ensure that he serve his customers with the quality and reasonable prices. One most important step he focused on is to have his own bakery. At that time and early 1900s, most of the grocery stores were relaying on other suppliers to provide breads and similar products to their customers; but Mr. Kroger decided to have his own bakery and meat and seafood shops inside Kroger stores. Nowadays, each Kroger store bakes their own breads, cakes and process the meats by their own specialists.

Kroger, as one of the companies that made the leap, still focusing on (and recognizing) the importance of customers and employees satisfaction. Early 2013 the Kroger’s chairman and CEO “Dave Dillon” asserted that “the company’s focus on people, prices, products and shopping experience is why Kroger is inning”. Dillon also confirmed that their efforts to please and delight their shoppers inspire customer loyalty.

As a result of Kroger’s commitment to customers’ satisfaction, their sales numbers are still increasing despite the economy downturn.

Sources

Œ Niendorf, B., & Beck, K. (2008). 'Good to Great,' or just good? (Report). The Academy of Management Perspectives, (4). 13.

  http://www.thekrogerco.com/

Ž  RetailingToday.com:

http://retailingtoday.com/sites/retailingtoday.com/files/Kroger_2012.pdf

Commitment

I Never Give Up

Assign the commitment toward a principle: It has been revealed throughout the history that whoever stands for his principles will win two things at the end, himself and what he stood for.
Be advised that if you allow yourself to sacrifice your standards once, it’ll force you again and again. In his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Stephen Covey asserted that “the character ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character”.