Atlas: A knowledge-based collaborative framework for handling logistics procedures

Abstract

Owing to their ability to easily organize and update heterogeneous knowledge, Decision-Support Systems form a promising approach for the optimization of logistics businesses. The management and visualization of the knowledge base of these systems are in this regard crucial to ensure a proper functioning and to keep an intuitive view of their expected behavior. This paper introduces Atlas, a customizable automated tool for assisting / improving the supply chain with respect to miscellaneous aspects such as secure collaboration, traceability, or multimodality. The operational knowledge of Atlas is accessed through 2 different views. In an analytical view, the knowledge is modeled on elementary if-then rules, which are processed by a resolution engine written in the Soar architecture. A synthetic view offers a pictorial representation of all the knowledge, and in particular, shows the inter-dependence of the rules and their procedural references. In addition to allowing an efficient processing, the system checks the coherence of the knowledge and produces a justification of the decision with respect to relevant operational procedures. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.