Argumentation concepts have been applied to numerous knowledge engineering endeavours in recent years. For example, a variety of logics have been developed to represent argumentation in the context of a dialectical situation such as a dialogue. In contrast to the dialectical approach, argumentation has also been used to structure knowledge. This can be seen as a non-dialectical approach. The To...

CAMES (computer-aided mechanical expert system) is a tool for automatically designing material-handling equipment used in pulp and paper mills. Operational since 1988, it has designed over 700 machines in a total of 5 classes and, consequently, has influenced our principles for deploying all knowledge-based systems. Because it is being extended to other machines within our group of companies, i...

This paper presents the TASK framework which is intended to cover the life cycle of a Knowledge-Based System. TASK provides (i) a conceptual language which enable an informal specification at the knowledge level, (ii) a formal language TFL which permits an unambiguous specification and (iii) an operational shell TASK+ which allows an efficient execution even for bad structured problems. This pa...

In the current economy, individual firms cannot possess all the knowledge that is necessary to compete. Hence, networking relationships become an important way through which firms can develop their potential by accessing to resources of other players. However, the networking strategies that companies implement can vary depending on the nature of their competitive conditions and on their specifi...

Organizational knowledge resources typically exist in specialized pockets scattered across the firm. As distributed knowledge systems, firms’ capacity to manage their knowledge resources is linked with their ability to integrate these pockets of specialized knowledge. Firms are increasingly depending on teams to strategically consolidate their dispersed knowledge into productive outcomes. Teams...

Multi-context systems are a formalism for interlinking knowledge based system (contexts) which interact via (possibly nonmonotonic) bridge rules. Such interlinking provides ample opportunity for unexpected inconsistencies. These are undesired, and come in different categories: some are serious and must be inspected by a human operator, while some should simply be repaired automatically. However...

There has been a growing desire for methodological support for the development of knowledge based systems, and the KADS methodology is probably the most widely known methodology in Europe. However, KADS has been criticised for the overhead which it places on small and medium-sized KBS projects where the risks of KBS development becoming unmanageable are relatively low. This paper describes the ...

An adaptive knowledge system needs massive knowledge. But massive knowledge can handicap the speed of searching and reasoning. Good structure can considerably enhance the expressive power and efficiency of a knowledge system. Inspired by the structure of human memory and data warehouse, object-oriented warehouse architecture of knowledge based on the 3-World model was advanced after exploring t...