Knowledge-based activities in industry: A decision-support approach

Due to global market and the emerging economies, industry is living its most difficult days ever. To survive in this new economic picture, they must find an organisational solution enabling them to cope with global business opportunities without suffering from limited resources or exposing themselves to the risk of direct investment. The inclusion of additional life-time services is, nowadays, one of the most important added-values from the consumer point of view. The ability resides in the appropriate and efficient use of the company's assets to make the best decision at several levels. These tasks can become highly critical due to the complexity in distributing, incorporating and using the knowledge. This paper proposes that an intelligent decision-support approach to the knowledge-based activities in industry is the basis to improve competitiveness of companies in a global market. Intelligent decision support tools can hugely facilitate the decision-making process, especially, if they are equipped with prediction and adaptation capabilities. The combination of these characteristics allows predicting the consequence of selecting an alternative based on the experience gained from past similar situations. The decision-making aspects being explored in the scope of three European projects are briefly discussed.