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Textbook Computer Supported Collaborative Decision Making 1St Edition Florin Gheorghe Filip Ebook All Chapter PDF
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Automation, Collaboration, A C E S
& E-Services
Computer‐
Supported
Collaborative
Decision‐
Making
Automation, Collaboration, & E-Services
Volume 4
Series editor
Shimon Y. Nof, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
About this Series
The Automation, Collaboration, & E-Services series (ACES) publishes new devel-
opments and advances in the fields of Automation, collaboration and e-services;
rapidly and informally but with a high quality. It captures the scientific and engineer-
ing theories and techniques addressing challenges of the megatrends of automation,
and collaboration. These trends, defining the scope of the ACES Series, are
evident with wireless communication, Internetworking, multi-agent systems, sensor
networks, and social robotics – all enabled by collaborative e-Services. Within the
scope of the series are monographs, lecture notes, selected contributions from spe-
cialized conferences and workshops.
Cristian Ciurea
Computer-Supported
Collaborative
Decision-Making
123
Florin Gheorghe Filip Cristian Ciurea
Information Science and Technology Department of Economic Informatics
Section, INCE and BAR and Cybernetics
The Romanian Academy ASE Bucharest—The Bucharest University
Bucharest of Economic Studies
Romania Bucharest
Romania
Constantin-Bălă Zamfirescu
Faculty of Engineering, Department
of Computer Science and Automatic
Control
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Sibiu
Romania
Decisions, we all have to make them. They influence our world. We endeavor to
make good decisions, since we know they always bear consequences. Poor deci-
sions often lead to negative results; sometimes, even good decisions may not
guarantee positive results. So we try to learn how to improve our decisions to
increase gains and reduce risks.
Evidently, humans were trying the same for a very long time. For instance, from
the bible we can learn that:
• “Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise”—
Proverbs, 19:20 (*950 BC)
• Two heads are better than one, originating from “Therefore two are better than
one, for they may enjoy better profit of their labor”—Ecclesiastes, 4:9 (*940 BC)
There are a number of obvious advantages when multiple participants collabo-
rate in deliberating and reaching a decision. One may think: “Of course, they can all
be happy if things go well; they can blame each other if things go wrong”. But
while sharing responsibility can be an advantage, there are significant other merits.
Multiple humans can debate and integrate diverse experiences, opinions, and views,
and negotiate over risks, alternative plans, and even conflicting positions. Sensors
and robots can similarly integrate and fuse multiple types of readings, locations,
perspectives, and computational intelligence. They—groups of people, robots, and
sensors—can negotiate, back each other up, help each other to overcome delays or
shortage of knowledge, tools, and energy, and finally make timely and “best”
decisions. Such “best” decisions imply benevolent group participants, able to
consider all available information and logic, balance and settle their respective
needs, priorities, constraints, risks, and objectives. That seems truly smart.
Knowing all of that, throughout history people have indeed used the instruments
of meetings, committees, teams, government bodies, and other groupings to follow
the wisdom of multiple brains in their effort to make better decisions. What is new?
To answer this question, Academician F.G. Filip and his coauthors, Profs. C.-B.
Zamfirescu and C. Ciurea, combine their accomplished expertise in the theory and
v
vi Foreword
This is a book about how management and control decisions are made by persons
who collaborate and possibly use the support of an information system.
In the book, we adopt the following definitions:
The decision is the result of human conscious activities aiming at choosing a
course of action for attaining a certain objective (or a set of objectives). It normally
implies allocating the necessary resources and it is the result of processing infor-
mation and knowledge that is performed by a person (or a group of persons), who is
empowered to make the choice and is accountable for the quality of the solution
adopted to solve a particular problem or situation.
The act of collaboration implies that several entities who work together and
share responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate a program of activities
to achieve the common goal to jointly generate values.
A collaborative group is made up of several members, who are assigned or
decide by themselves to jointly attain a set of common goals by carrying out a set of
activities and using a number of procedures and techniques.
A decision support system (DSS) is an anthropocentric and evolving information
system, which is meant to implement the functions of a human support team that
would otherwise be necessary to help the decision-maker to overcome his/her limits
and constraints that he/she may encounter when trying to solve complex and
complicated decision problems that count.
In 2007, the second edition of the “Decision Support System” by F.G. Filip was
published in Romanian by the Technical Publishers, Bucharest. It contained a
presentation of a DSS concepts illustrated by Dispatcher®, a practical system meant
to support the production planning and control decision-making in the milieu of
continuous process industries. In the final section of the book, the author made a
vii
viii Preface
promise to come back together with several of his colleagues with new books about
particular classes of DSS, including group decision support systems (GDS).
C.B. Zamfirescu received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the Technical University
“Politehnica” of Bucharest with a thesis entitled “Anthropocentric Group Decision
Support Systems”. The document contained several original results, such as
agent-based social simulation for group decisions, swarming models of computa-
tion to automate the facilitation of group decisions, goal-oriented dialog system
with inconsistent knowledge bases and so on. A part of these results, together with
newer ones, is contained in the book we are proposing to our readers.
In 2011, Cristian Ciurea received his Ph.D. from the Academy of Economic
Studies of Bucharest with a thesis entitled “Collaborative Systems Metrics”. Several
ideas, such as applications in economy of collaborative systems, quality charac-
teristics of collaborative systems, collaborative virtual organizations, collaborative
production processes, were contained in the thesis and a part of them is included in
the present book.
The last decades saw an impetuous advance in the information and communi-
cation technologies and in associated concepts. The new versions of the Internet
protocol, social networks, mobile and cloud computing, and business intelligence
and analytics have had a serious impact, not only on the information system design,
but also on the way the business has been conducted and decisions have been made.
Collaborative activities carried out by various entities, such as enterprises, people,
machines, computers and so on, are ever more numerous and visible. Two very
recent books (Nof et al. 2015; Nunamaker et al. 2015) present the new achieve-
ments in collaborative systems under the influence of and enabled by the new
information and communication technologies (I&CT) and are a good example to
follow. The new series Automation, Collaboration & E-Services (ACES) of
Springer, which is meant “to capture” the scientific and engineering theories and
technologies addressing challenges of the megatrends of automation and collabo-
ration, was viewed by the authors as a valuable means to make available an
up-to-date view of computer-supported collaborative decision-making to various
readers. The invitation sent by Prof. S.Y. Nof, the ACES series editor, came in time
and stimulated the authors to propose the current book.
Material Organization
systems and serious digital games and their possible usage to ensure the authorized
access and facilitate users’ training are presented in the final sections of the chapter.
Chapter 5, entitled “Application Cases”, contains three sections addressing:
(a) the usage of biology inspired models to simulate the facilitator activity, (b) an
application of big data in labor market analysis, and (c) an integrated and evolving
information platform used in various collaborative decision-making cases.
Each chapter contains at the end a section with Notes and comments that
highlights the main ideas presented and guides the reader through the most
important references, if she/he wants to go deeper in the field. In each chapter, the
authors have presented a selection of relevant standards.
The book is organized in accordance with a quasi-sequential-parallel scheme
which reflects the recommended order of chapter studying (see figure below).
Throughout the material, there are several “pointers” to sections where the
concepts and ideas just introduced are addressed in more details. Consequently, the
reader can design his/her study order in accordance with his interests and curiosity.
Acknowledgments
The material included in this book is a result of the studies and researches carried out
by the authors at several institutions: the National Institute for Informatics (ICI), the
Centre for IT and Decision-Making of the National Institute for Economic Research
(INCE) of the Romanian Academy, Ecolle Centrale de Lille, the “Lucian Blaga”
University of Sibiu, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the German Research
Center for Artificial Intelligence, and the Academy of Economic Studies (ASE) of
Bucharest. The authors are grateful to their colleagues who provided them useful
opinions and ideas on the book topics: Profs. S.Y. Nof, P. Borne, I. Dumitrache,
D. Popescu, I. Dzitac, B. Bărbat, I. Ivan, H. Van Brussel, Dr. P. Valckenaers,
Profs. C. Boja, P. Pocatilu, Luminiţa Duta, M. Cioca, Dr. A.M. Suduc, and
Dr. M. Bizoi.
The feedbacks of the students who attended the master courses on the “Decision
Support Systems”, at the Technical University “Politehnica” of Bucharest, “Multi
Agent Systems”, “Human Computer Interaction”, and “Industrial Informatics”
at the “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, and “Mobile Applications Security” at
Bucharest University of Economic Studies are also appreciated.
Preface xi
Several scholars contributed with useful advices and/or sent valuable documenta-
tion. An inherently incomplete list includes: Profs. D.J. Power, L. Camarinha-Matos,
G. Tecuci, Yong Shi, Gang Kou, G. Metakides, Pascale Zaraté, K.E. Zavadskas,
Ulle Endriss, A. Kaklauskas, Dan Tufis, S.M. Gupta, H. Panetto, R.E. Precup,
Dan Ștefănoiu, N. Paraschiv, H. Dragomirescu, Dr. G. Neagu, Profs. G.H. Tzeng,
L. Monostori, Shaofeng Liu, Dr. Angela Ioniţǎ, Profs. L.A. Gomes, M. Mora, and
Dr. D.A. Donciulescu.
Prof. I. Buciu, Dr. C. Brândaş, Dr. D. Pânzaru, Dr. C. Cândea, and Dr. I.A. Ştefan
accepted to contribute with specialized sections to the book. They should receive the
authors’ sincere thanks.
Many ideas and research results contained in the book were presented in journal
and conference papers. The authors are grateful to Profs. P. Borne, Y. Shi, G. Kou,
I. Dzitac, M.J. Manolescu, A. Ortiz, M. Tang, M. Brdys, G. Lefranc, Carolina Lagos,
Ngoc Thanh Nguyen, C. Bădicǎ, and Felisa Cordova, who offered us the opportunity
to hold talks and lectures at various conferences and institutions. Additionally, some
of the latest achievements in social choice theory were presented during many
workshops supported by COST Action IC1205 on Computational Social Choice.
The discussions held at the ITQM (Information Technology and Quantitative
Management), IFAC CC (Coordinating Committee) 5, ICCCC (International
Conference on Computers, Communications and Control) and IE (Informatica
Economică) series of conferences have contributed to clarify many ideas in the book
domain.
Special thanks are due to Prof. S.Y. Nof, who encouraged our researches in the
fields of large-scale complex systems and collaborative systems and who invited us
to submit the manuscript to Springer writing the foreword of the book.
Thanks are due to Ph.D. Lorenţa Popescu and Ms. Cosmina Almăşan, who
patiently read the manuscript and had an essential contribution to improving the
English of the text.
Finally, the contribution of Mr. Holger Schaepe, Editorial Assistant,
Ramamoorthy Rajangam, Project coordinator and Henry Pravin Arokiaraj,
Production Editor, from Springer, DE, to prepare and produce this book, is
acknowledged and appreciated.
References
xiii
xiv Contents
The goal of this chapter is to provide a historical account of the evolutions in the
domain of the book and to set the stage for the concepts and solutions to be
presented in the following chapters, including the introduction of the terminology
adopted to be used throughout this text. Consequently, we aim at providing the
answers to a series of questions, such as: (a) “How the organizations have been
evolving over the last decades?”, (b) “Which have been the corresponding trends of
the management and control schemes?”, (c) “How management and control func-
tions are allocated to human and automation equipment?”, (d) “Which are the
desirable properties of the information processing tools meant to support the human
agent to carry out his/her tasks?” The remaining part of this chapter is organized as
follows. In the first section, we make a review of the ever increasing complexity of
the controlled objects over the last four decades and describe the characteristic
features of collaborative networks. Next section contains a historical account of the
technology and business-driven evolutions of management and control schemes
from hierarchical multilevel control to more cooperative solutions. The third section
addresses the role of human agent in management and control tasks. In the fourth
section, we present the requirements for the human-centered information tools
which are meant to support the activities of the person[s] in charge to make deci-
sions in management and control tasks. A brief review of multi-criteria decision
models is made in the fifth section and an interpretation of criteria from a
multi-participant decision-maker’s perspective is provided in the fifth, final section.
Knowledge workers and process operators make various management and control
decisions in their area of influence and responsibility. Decision-making activities
and styles should be adapted to the specific context of the organizations the decision
unit is placed in. In this section, we will present a survey of the business and
technology-driven evolutions of the controlled objects (organizations and techno-
logical processes) with particular emphasis on the manufacturing enterprise.
In the late 60s and early 70s, the study of steelworks, petrochemical plants, power
systems, transport networks and water systems received a special attention. The
interest was motivated by the hopes that building adequate management and control
systems for such enterprises will lead to operation improvements with important
economic effects and savings in material consumption. Enterprises were viewed and
modelled as large-scale complex systems. Their structure of interconnected sub-
systems was the main common characteristic feature of such systems (Mesarovic
et al. 1970; Findeisen 1982; Findeisen et al 1980; Jamshidi 1983). Several types of
interconnections could be identified, such as:
• Resource and objective sharing interconnections at the system level;
• Flexible interconnections through buffer units for material stocking which were
designed to attenuate the possible differences in the operation rates of processing
plants which fed and drained inventories;
• Direct interconnections which were established between plants, as in rolling
mills or electric power networks, where buffer units were not allowed for
technical reasons.
In the 90s, large-scale systems became more and more complicated and complex
under the influence of several factors, such as:
The trend to continuously integrate enterprises among themselves and with
their material supplies and product distributors. New paradigms, such as extended
or virtual enterprises started to be used. A particular form of integration which has
received a serious attention from academia people and business circles after the year
2000 is the double-loop (forward and reverse) remanufacturing complex which
implies a coordination among various enterprises serving different and comple-
mentary purposes such as: products manufacturing, selling and servicing, EOL
(End of Life) goods collecting, selection, disassembly and re-utilization (Ilgin and
Gupta 2012);
The variety of technologies which, belonging to different domains, such as
mechanics, electronics, and information technology and communications, were
used in the ever larger number of interacting subsystems;
The diversity of cultures of the people involved, in particular, experts and
designers who possessed different domain knowledge made them encounter com-
munication problems hard to solve. Besides, process operators and people in charge
with maintenance tasks who have to handle both routine and emergency situations,
1.1 The Evolving Controlled Object 3
sometimes possessed uneven levels of skills, training and even habits (Mårtenson
1990).
At the beginning of the new Millennium, the management and control problems
became even more complicated due to several factors, such as follows.
The new market requirements for increased product variety, complexity and
customizations. As Camarinha-Matos et al. (2009) noticed “even the notion of
product is changing, given place to notion of extended products, under which,
besides the physical product itself, associated services, and knowledge become very
important”. Extended product concept is characterized by intelligence, real-time
self-diagnosis and maintenance and traceability. Consequently new subjects of
preoccupation show up such as sustainability, social responsibility, and full life
cycle consideration. At the same time, more people are involved in decision–
making activities. A special remark about the rather indirect IT-mediated collabo-
ration between the producer-enterprise and the consumer in product design and
marketing deserves mentioning. As anticipated by Toffler (1980) in the description
he made of the “Second Wave Society”, characterized, among other things, by
symptoms such as mass consumption, the consumer’s role and influence power
have been increased and diversified. The prosumer, a term, resulting from the
combination of “producer” and “consumer”, coined by Toffler, influences more and
more the current developments through the modern technologies of Recommender
systems and Business Intelligence and Analytics (to be presented in Sect. 4.1). At
present, the concept of crowdsourceing is getting ever more traction in various
domains including collaborative decision-making (Chiu et al. 2014). It is viewed as
“the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an
employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the
form of an open call” (Howe 2006). The subject will be developed in Sect. 3.1.4.
The business and technology driven trends to ever more integrate people and
even machines at intra-and inter-level enterprises (Nof 2007; Nof et al. 2006;
Panetto et al. 2012). There are corresponding timely released standards, for
example, ISA 95 which is meant for the integration of enterprise and control sys-
tems (Scholten 2007; Brandl 2012; Unver 2013). ISA 95 is accompanied by other
standards such as: (a) IEC (International. Electronic Commission) 062264, which is
based on ISA 95 for business and manufacturing integration, (b) B2MML (Business
to Manufacturing Markup Language) of WBF (World Batch Forum). The advanced
smart factory concept to achieve integration through the usage of Internet of things
was launched and documented (Zuehlke 2008, 2010; Thoben et al. 2014;
Zamfirescu et al. 2013, 2014).
The increased importance of system of systems (SoS), which can be met in
military and civil applications, such as critical infrastructures of computer net-
works, transportation systems, power, gas and water networks and so on, represent
a particular class of very large, complicated and safety-critical systems. Sage and
Cuppan (2001) define SOS as non-monolithic entities characterized by features,
4 1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context
such as: (a) geographic distribution, (b) operational and managerial independence
of composing subsystems, (c) emergent behaviour and (d) evolutionary
development;
The sustainable, environmentally conscious development (Ilgin and Gupta
2012; Seok et al. 2012). Environmental standards and regulations have been
released. A relevant example is ISO 14040/2006: “Principles and framework for
Life Cycle Assessment-LCA” (Finkbeiner 2013).The standard addresses several
aspects such as: (a) definition of the goal and scope of the LCA, (b) the life cycle
inventory analysis phase, (c) the life cycle impact assessment phase, (d) the life
cycle interpretation phase, (e) reporting and critical review of the LCA, (f) limita-
tions of the LCA, (g) the relationship between the LCA phases, and so on.
Consequently, new subjects of preoccupation show up such sustainability, social
responsibility, full lifecycle consideration.
The major impact of new information and communication technologies—
I&CT (Nof et al. 2006, 2015; Bughin et al. 2010). In an attempt to define new
e-activities (e-manufacturing, e-work, e-service), Nof (2003) stated
as power fields, such as magnetic fields and gravitation influence bodies to organize and
stabilize, so does the sphere of computing and information technologies. It develops us and
influences us to organize our work systems in a different way and purposefully, to stabilize
work while effectively producing the desired outcomes.
1.1.3 Classification
The Hierarchical multilevel systems theory was developed in the 1970s to facilitate
solving large-scale complex computation and management and control problems by
using the available information and automation technologies of that time. It was
mainly based on the following principles (Cassandras 2001):
• A suboptimal solution could be viewed as a satisfactory one for a large-scale
complicated problem.
• The particular structure of the problems to be solved associated with the objects
to be studied or/and controlled could and should be exploited in order to
decompose the original complex and complicated problem or controlled object
into a set of more reasonable size sub-problems subsystems, respectively.
There are three main subclasses of multilevel structures, such as: (a) multi-strata,
(b) multi-layer and (c) multi-echelon which can be obtained by decomposing the
original problem or task according to the complexity of description, [automatic]
control task (or frequency of disturbances) and organization, respectively
(Mesarovic et al. 1970).
The most relevant hierarchy for this book is the multi-echelon one which will be
briefly described in the sequel (Fig. 1.1).
The concept of multi-echelon hierarchy is drawn from military, industrial, and
social multilevel organizations. It is adopted when a centralized
management/control scheme is neither technically possible nor economically fea-
sible. The basic idea is to replace the centralized unique decision/control unit by a
set of specialized decision/control units which are placed on various levels of a
hierarchy. Those units might have different information bases and even sets of
objectives. The allocation of problems or tasks to various decision/control units can
be viewed as a division of work which is both vertical and horizontal. Since the
units might have different goals, a coordination mechanism is compulsory to make
them working together harmoniously to accomplish a collective set of tasks
(Malone and Crownston 1994; Van de Ven et al. 1976). In a multi-echelon system,
at the ith organization level, the jth decision/control unit, D/CU ij , that possesses a
certain autonomy, solves the allocated sub-problem which is fully specified by the
vector of coordination parameters, b i 1 , that is received from the higher, (i-1)th,
echelon. While one part of the solution obtained in each decision/control unit is sent
downwards, as a subsequent coordination input, to a well-defined set of
decision/control units placed on the lower, (i + 1)th, level, another part is sent
upwards, as a reaction, to the corresponding unit placed on the higher echelon.
8 1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context
Fig. 1.1 A simple two-level multilevel system. D/CU Decision/control unit, SSy Controlled
subsystem, b Intervention variable, a Reaction variable, H Interconnection function, m Control
variable, u Input interconnection variable, z Output interconnection variable, y Output variable,
w Disturbance
The traditional multilevel schemes have been largely used in human history in
command and control systems. They can be viewed as pure hierarchies in which the
circulation of information is performed along a vertical axis only, up and down-
wards, as intervention and reaction/reporting messages, respectively.
Over the time, there have been noticed several drawbacks and limitations of pure
hierarchies, especially in large and highly networked systems, such as: inflexibility,
difficult maintenance, and limited robustness to unexpected major disturbances.
Consequently, new schemes have been proposed. They have been characterized by
(a) an increased exchange of information along both vertical and horizontal axes
and (c) cooperation capabilities of the decision/control units. The evolution towards
more cooperative management and control schemes was supported by advances in
information and communication technologies.
1.2 From Hierarchical Control to Cooperative Schemes 9
The principles are further refined and detailed by Nof et al. (2015, p. 33) and
Zhong et al. (2015).
Monostori et al. (2015) state there are various advantages of the cooperative
control approaches in the context of production and logistic applications, such as:
• openness (it is easier to build and change);
• reliability (e.g. fault tolerance);
• higher performance (due to distributed execution of tasks);
• scalability (incremental design is possible);
• flexibility (allowing heterogeneity and redesign);
• potentially reduced cost,
• spatial distribution of separated units.
At the same time, the above authors do not overlook the disadvantages of
cooperative control, such as:
• communication overhead (e.g. time and cost of information exchange);
• lack of guarantee for data security and/or confidentiality;
• decision “myopia” (caused by focusing on local optima);
• chaotic behaviour (e.g. “butterfly effects” and bottlenecks);
• complexity of analysis in comparison to centralized and even hierarchical
schemes.
In the context of leadership and management decisions, Harter (2009) describes
collaborative thinking:
The human organization is by its nature a collective enterprise requiring communication,
coordination, and frequent adaptation to changing conditions. On these grounds, collabo-
rative thinking has instrumental value […..] increasing the quality of our decisions and
cultivating that “extended mind” on which we all rely. Collaborative thinking has an
additional merit. It respects the dignity of each participant to whatever extent he or she can
flourish as a rational being. In other words, collaborative thinking has ethical value
Hitherto, there has been presented a review of the ever more automated man-
agement and control schemes without making specific reference to the role of the
human agent in such systems. The allocation of functions between human and
machine will be analyzed in the next section.
In the previous section, the evolution of control and management schemes was
reviewed. The problem to be examined next concerns the place and role of the
human agent in such control and management schemes.
1.3 The Role of the Human in the System 11
SF writers and film producers have been proposing fearful visions of cooperative
robots and computers dominating the world. Other optimistic visions used to be
proposed by the enthusiastic engineers and planners who dreamed, in late 1960s
and early 1970s, at unmanned factories. Until now those dreams have not come to
life not only because of ethical and social reasons, but also for technical causes
engineers have been aware of since a couple of decades ago.
More than four decades ago, Bibby et al. (1975) stated that
even highly automated systems […] need human beings for supervision, adjustment,
maintenance and improvement. Therefore, one can draw the paradoxical conclusion that
automated systems still are man-machine systems for which both technical and human
factors are important.
Similar views were later expressed by Rasmussen (1983) and Parasuraman and
Wickens (2008).
The following questions can be formulated:
• Q1: Is there still any place for the human agent in the highly automated systems
of the present day?
• Q2: Which functions are allocated to be executed by automatic control devices
and computers and which tasks remain to be carried out by humans?
• Q3: To which extent can the management and control tasks be automated?
To answer the first questions, let us first define automation. The schemes
described in the previous section can be implemented by human agents or by
computers or by combined human-machine units. When a computer or another
device executes certain functions that the human agent would normally perform, we
speak of automation (Parasuraman et al. 2000, 2008).
Parasuraman and Wickens (2008) noticed that modern automation has pervaded
not only in most safety-critical systems, such as aviation, power plants or intensive
care units, but also in transportation, home, various robotized environments,
entertainment and even intelligent cloths.
It was perhaps Bainbridge (1983) who explained best, in the context of process
control, the irony that the more advanced and automated the system is, the more
crucial may be the role of the human agent. He pointed out that irony of automation
is caused by two factors:
• the human nature of the system designers who want to eliminate the unreliable
and inefficient human operator, and
• the nature of the remaining tasks to be carried out by human operators.
Bainbridge identified two ironies of automation:
• The first irony of automation: the designer, a human being, may also be an
imperfect person and, consequently, a new major source of operating problems.
12 1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context
• The second irony of automation: the designer is not able to automate some tasks
and leaves them to be carried out by unreliable and inefficient operator who is to
be eliminated from the control scheme.
In a more general context, Drucker (1967, p. 174) viewed the computer as a
moron. He stated that
The computer makes no decisions; it only carries out orders. It’s a total moron, and therein
lies its strength. It forces us to think, to set the criteria. The stupider the tool, the brighter the
master has to be—and this is the dumbest tool we have ever had.
The technology evolved over the last decades and there is a significant potential
to automate a great number of activities and to replace the human operator or
decision maker in several activity domains. Dewhurst and Willmott (2014) noticed
that
After years of promise and hype, machine learning has at last hit the vertical part of the
exponential curve. Computers are replacing skilled practitioners in fields such as archi-
tecture, aviation, the law, medicine, and petroleum geology—and changing the nature of
work in a broad range of other jobs and professions. Deep Knowledge Ventures, a Hong
Kong venture-capital firm, has gone so far as to appoint a decision-making algorithm to its
board of directors.
The conclusion is obvious: the human cannot be totally eliminated and should be
present in the loop in those activities where creativity, knowledge usage and …
instinct of self-preservation are requested.
Let us now examine the second question, Q2, about allocation of functions to
human and machine. Rasmussen (1983) identified three classes of behaviours of
human agents and the associated information processing and management schemes.
The possible types of behaviour are: (a) skill-based, (b) rule-based, and
(c) knowledge–based. They are characterized by the different types of information
utilized (signals, signs, and symbols) and the actions performed (Sheridan 1992,
p. 18):
• The skill-based behaviour (SBB), which is met at the lowest level of control. It
represents “sensory-motor, performance during acts or activities which, fol-
lowing a statement of intention, take place without conscious control as smooth,
1.3 The Role of the Human in the System 13
Table 1.1 The original Fitts’ “Humans appear to surpass present-day machines with
(1951) MABA-MABA list respect to the following:
1. Ability to detect a small amount of visual or acoustic energy;
2. Ability to perceive patterns of light or sound;
3. Ability to improvise and use flexible procedures;
4. Ability to store very large amounts of information for long
periods and to recall relevant facts at the appropriate time;
5. Ability to reason inductively;
6. Ability to exercise judgment.
Present-day machines appear to surpass humans with
respect to the following:
1. Ability to respond quickly to control signals and to apply
great force smoothly and precisely;
2. Ability to perform repetitive, routine tasks;
3. Ability to store information briefly and then to erase it
completely;
4. Ability to reason deductively, including computational
ability;
5. Ability to handle highly complex operations, i.e. to do many
different things at once.”
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French Beans à la Française 321
(Entremets)
An excellent receipt for French 322
Beans à la Française
To boil Windsor Beans 322
Dressed Cucumbers 322
Mandrang, or Mandram (West 323
Indian receipt)
Another receipt for Mandram 323
Dressed Cucumbers (Author’s 323
receipt)
Stewed Cucumbers (English 323
mode)
Cucumbers à la Poulette 324
Cucumbers à la Créme 324
Fried Cucumbers, to serve in 324
common hashes and minces
Melon 325
To boil Cauliflowers 325
Cauliflowers (French receipt) 325
Cauliflowers with Parmesan 325
Cheese
Cauliflowers à la Française 326
Brocoli 326
To boil Artichokes 326
Artichokes en Salade (see
Chapter VI.)
Vegetable Marrow 327
Roast Tomatas (to serve with 327
roast Mutton)
Stewed Tomatas 327
Forced Tomatas (English 327
receipt)
Forced Tomatas (French 328
receipt)
Purée of Tomatas 328
To boil Green Indian Corn 329
Mushrooms au Beurre 329
Potted Mushrooms 330
Mushroom-Toast, or Croule 330
aux Champignons (excellent)
Truffles, and their uses 331
Truffles à la Serviette 331
Truffles à l’Italienne 331
To prepare Truffles for use 332
To boil Sprouts, Cabbages, 332
Savoys, Lettuces, or Endive
Stewed Cabbage 333
To boil Turnips 333
To mash Turnips 333
Turnips in white Sauce 334
(Entremets)
Turnips stewed in Butter (good) 334
Turnips in Gravy 335
To boil Carrots 335
Carrots (the Windsor receipt) 335
(Entremets)
Sweet Carrots (Entremets) 336
Mashed (or Buttered) Carrots 336
(a Dutch receipt)
Carrots au Beurre, or Buttered 336
Carrots (French receipt)
Carrots in their own Juice (a 337
simple but excellent receipt)
To boil Parsneps 337
Fried Parsneps 337
Jerusalem Artichokes 337
To fry Jerusalem Artichokes 338
(Entremets)
Jerusalem Artichokes à la 338
Reine
Mashed Jerusalem Artichokes 338
Haricots Blancs 338
To boil Beet-Root 339
To bake Beet-Root 339
Stewed Beet-Root 340
To stew Red Cabbage (Flemish 340
receipt)
Brussels Sprouts 340
Salsify 341
Fried Salsify (Entremets) 341
Boiled Celery 341
Stewed Celery 341
Stewed Onions 342
Stewed Chestnuts 342
CHAPTER XVIII.
PASTRY.
Page
Page
Soufflés 377
Louise Franks’ Citron Soufflé 378
A Fondu, or Cheese Souffle 379
Observations on Omlets, 380
Fritters, &c.
A common Omlet 380
An Omlette Soufflé (second 381
course, remove of roast)
Plain Common Fritters 381
Pancakes 382
Fritters of Cake and Pudding 382
Mincemeat Fritters 383
Venetian Fritters (very good) 383
Rhubarb Fritters 383
Apple, Peach, Apricot, or 384
Orange Fritters
Brioche Fritters 384
Potato Fritters (Entremets) 384
Lemon Fritters (Entremets) 384
Cannelons (Entremets) 385
Cannelons of Brioche paste 385
(Entremets)
Croquettes of Rice (Entremets) 385
Finer Croquettes of Rice 386
(Entremets)
Savoury Croquettes of Rice 386
(Entrée)
Rissoles (Entrée) 387
Very savoury Rissoles (Entrée) 387
Small fried Bread Patties, or 387
Croustades of various kinds
Dresden Patties, or Croustades 387
(very delicate)
To prepare Beef Marrow for 388
frying Croustades, Savoury
Toasts, &c.
Small Croustades, or Bread 388
Patties, dressed in Marrow
(Author’s receipt)
Small Croustades, à la Bonne 389
Maman (the Grandmamma’s
Patties)
Curried Toasts with Anchovies 389
To fillet Anchovies 389
Savoury Toasts 390
To choose Macaroni, and other 390
Italian Pastes
To boil Macaroni 391
Ribbon Macaroni 391
Dressed Macaroni 392
Macaroni à la Reine 393
Semoulina and Polenta à 393
l’Italienne (Good) (To serve
instead of Macaroni)
CHAPTER XX.
BOILED PUDDINGS.
Page
BAKED PUDDINGS.
Page
Page
Page