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Automation, Collaboration, A C E S
& E-Services

Florin Gheorghe Filip

Constantin-Bălă Zamfirescu
Cristian Ciurea

Computer‐
Supported
Collaborative
Decision‐
Making
Automation, Collaboration, & E-Services

Volume 4

Series editor
Shimon Y. Nof, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA
e-mail: nof@purdue.edu
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.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8393

Florin Gheorghe Filip Constantin-Bălă Zamfirescu
•

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

ISSN 2193-472X ISSN 2193-4738 (electronic)

Automation, Collaboration, & E-Services
ISBN 978-3-319-47219-5 ISBN 978-3-319-47221-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47221-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016953309

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from
the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or
for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword

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

practice of decision systems in a creative way. They begin by explaining the

relation and mutual roles of collaboration and decision-making. With the advent of
computers, communication, and cyber, they describe how and why DSS, decision
support systems, could evolve and progress. With the advent of computer-supported
collaboration and cyber-collaborative systems, they evaluate various collaborative
methods and the role of collaboration engineering.
What is new and inspiring, as presented in this book for students, developers,
practitioners and researchers, is that multiple decision-makers can now collaborate
with each other and beyond. They (we) can reach significantly wiser decisions in
even more complex situations, by collaborating more effectively and with higher
levels of collaborative intelligence. These new capabilities are visionary, yet already
embedded and enabled by essential cyber technologies: From data, mobile, web and
social networking technologies, to advanced cyber-collaborative support systems
and useful applications.
The authors are contributing to the ACES book series, and through it to
enriching the science and knowledge of computer- and cyber-supported collabo-
ration for better decisions: For better society, better well-being, and better
understanding.

September 2016 Shimon Y. Nof

Professor and PRISM Center Director
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN USA
Preface

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.

The Context of Writing the Book

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.

The Book Goal

The book is intended to present a balanced view of the computer-supported col-

laborative decision-making domain to include both well-established concepts and a
selection of new results in the domains of methods and key technologies. It is meant
to answer several questions, such as: (a) “How are evolving the business models
towards the ever more collaborative schemes?”; (b) “What is the role of the
decision-maker in the new business and technological context?” (c) “What are the
basic characteristic attributes and trends in the domain of decision-supporting
information systems?”; (d) “Which are the basic methods to aggregate the
Preface ix

individual preferences of the people who collaborate in decision-making activi-

ties?”; (e) “How far can automation go?”; (f) “What is the impact of modern
information and communication technologies on the design and usage of
decision-supporting information systems meant for groups of people?”.
The book is intended to be a reference text for researchers, analysts and system
developers in the field of information systems, which are meant to be used in
supporting management and control decision-making. The managers interested in
getting competitive advance on the market using modern methods and technologies
can also benefit from studying the material. The book is also recommended as a
textbook for graduated students in automatic control, computer science, informat-
ics, industrial engineering, management, and business administration.

Material Organization

The book is composed of five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, entitled “Collaboration and Decision-making in Context”, is meant to
set the stage for the following chapters by describing the business context and
introducing the terminology to be used throughout the text. We review the main
concepts concerning management and control schemes, the mission and allocated
functions of the human agent in the loop, and basic aspects of multi-attribute/
multi-participant decision-making.
Chapter 2, entitled “Decision Support Systems”, reviews basic concepts of the
decision support systems domain. Several topics are addressed in sequence, such as
decisions and decision-makers, mainly particular subclasses of the general DSS
class, DSS construction, so that the reader could get a view of DSS “physiology”
(functions and usage), “anatomy” (composition), and “ontogeny” (design and
construction). A particular attention is paid to group/multi-participant DSS and
intelligent DSS.
Chapter 3, entitled “Collaborative Activities and Methods”, is meant to review
the most important methods used in collaborative human activities with a particular
emphasis on group decision-making. To set the stage for method presentations, the
chapter starts by explaining several concepts, such as e-collaboration, collaborative
groups, crowd participation, and reviews the development history of
computer-supported collaboration. The chapter continues by reviewing the most
frequently used voting rules defined in social choice theory and their extensions
employed in knowledge-driven DSS. The engineering issues of deploying
computer-supported collaborative activities in real working environments are pre-
sented in the final section of the chapter.
Chapter 4, entitled “Essential Enabling Technologies”, contains a review of the major
key technologies which have significantly influenced the design and usage of infor-
mation systems. Business intelligence and analytics, Web technology, social networks,
mobile and cloud computing are described in “parallel” sections with similar organi-
zation. Their impact on computer-aided decision-making is highlighted. Biometric
x Preface

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.

Bucharest, Romania Florin Gheorghe Filip

Sibiu, Romania Constantin-Bălă Zamfirescu
Bucharest, Romania Cristian Ciurea
July 2016

References

Nof SY, Ceroni J, Jeong W, Moghaddam M (2015) Revolutionizing Collaboration through

e-Work, e-Business, and e-Service, vol 2. Springer.
Nunamaker JF Jr, Briggs RO, Romano NCR Jr (2015) Collaboration Systems: Concept, Value,
and Use. Routledge.
Contents

1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 The Evolving Controlled Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 The Enterprise as a Large-Scale System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.2 Adopted Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1.3 Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 From Hierarchical Control to Cooperative Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1 Hierarchical Systems Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Towards Cooperative Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 The Role of the Human in the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.1 The Human in the Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.2 Allocation of Functions and Levels of Automation . . . . . . . 12
1.3.3 The Need for Effective Computer Supported
Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.4 Towards Anthropocentric Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.1 Several Questions and Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.2 Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.5 Decisions and Decision Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.5.1 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.5.2 Possible Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.5.3 Multicriteria Decision Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.6 Notes and Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2 Decision Support Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1 Decisions and Decision-Makers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.1.1 Herbert Simon’s Process Model of Decision-Making . . . . . 32
2.1.2 Limits and Constrains of Human Decision Makers . . . . . . . 34
2.1.3 Classes of Decision-Makers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2 DSS Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.1 Definition and Characteristic Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

xiii
xiv Contents

2.2.2 DSS Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 37

2.2.3 A Special Case: Real-Time DSS for Control
Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 40
2.3 DSS Subclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 42
2.3.1 Classification 1 (with Respect to Decision
Maker Type) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 43
2.3.2 Classification 2 (with Respect to Type of Support) . . . .... 44
2.3.3 Classification 3 (with Respect to the Technological
Orientation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.3.4 Special Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4 DSS Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.4.1 Influence Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.4.2 Design and Implementation Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.4.3 Selection of the I&CT Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4.4 Integration and Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.5 Notes and Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3 Collaborative Activities and Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 71
3.1 Computer Supported Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 71
3.1.1 Collaboration, e-Collaboration and Collaborative
Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.1.2 Brief History of e-Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.1.3 More About Group Support Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.1.4 Crowdsourcing—A Special Case of Collaboration . . . . . . . 79
3.2 Fundamentals of Social Choice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.1 Aggregating Individual Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.2.2 Voting Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.2.3 Axioms and Paradoxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.2.4 Implications for Group Support Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.3 Further Extensions from Social Choice Theory to Group
Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.3.1 Judgment Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.3.2 Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.3.3 Group Argumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.4 Collaboration Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.4.1 Basic Collaboration Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.4.2 Collaborative Decision-Making Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.4.3 Deployment of Collaboration Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.5 Notes and Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Contents xv

4 Essential Enabling Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

4.1 Modern Data Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.1.1 Data-Driven Decision Support Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.1.2 Big Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4.1.3 Business Intelligence and Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.1.4 Towards a Data Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.2 Web Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.2.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.2.2 Particular Subclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.2.3 Usages and Relevance to Collaborative
Decision-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.2.4 Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.3 Social Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.3.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.3.2 Particular Subclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
4.3.3 Usages and the Relevance to Collaborative
Decision-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
4.3.4 Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.4 Mobile Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.4.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.4.2 Classes and Subclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.4.3 Usage and Relevance to Collaborative
Decision-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 146
4.4.4 Mobile Cloud Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 149
4.5 Biometric Technologies for Virtual Electronic Meetings
(By I. Buciu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
4.5.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
4.5.2 Particular Subclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.5.3 Mobile and Web-Based Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
4.5.4 Possible Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
4.5.5 Attributes of Effective Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
4.5.6 Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
4.6 Game Technology as a Tool for Collaborative
Decision-Making (By Ioana Andreea Ștefan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
4.6.1 The Game Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
4.6.2 Software Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
4.7 Notes and Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
5 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 177
5.1 A Practical Swarming Model for Facilitating Collaborative
Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 177
5.1.1 The Concept of Stigmergic Coordination . . . . . . . . . . .... 178
5.1.2 The Computational Model and Its Implementation . . . .... 180
xvi Contents

5.1.3 Some Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 183

5.1.4 Discussion and Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 187
5.2 An Application of Data Mining to Decisions in Labour
Market (By Claudiu Brândaş and Ciprian Pânzaru) . . . . . . . .... 188
5.2.1 A Framework of a Labour Market Decision
Support System (LM-DSS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
5.2.2 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
5.2.3 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
5.3 iDecisionSupport Platform (By Ciprian Cândea) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
5.3.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.3.2 Current Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
5.3.3 The Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Chapter 1
Collaboration and Decision-Making
in Context

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.

1.1 The Evolving Controlled Object

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

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

F.G. Filip et al., Computer-Supported Collaborative Decision-Making,
Automation, Collaboration, & E-Services 4,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47221-8_1
2 1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context

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.

1.1.1 The Enterprise as a Large-Scale System

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.

A complementary view is expressed by Wierzbicki (2010), who identifies three

megatrends of the information revolution:
• the technological megatrend of digital integration, also called the megatrend of
convergence, which is characterized by the possibilities to transform, transmit
and process in a uniform digital form all signals, measurements, messages and
so on:
• the social megatrend of dematerialization of work, also called the megatrend of
change of profession, which may have the collateral impact of creating pre-
misses for equal chances for women:
• the intellectual megatrend of changing the perception of the world.
The new I&CT stimulate collaboration processes in education and learning
(Ciurea 2009). In the future, a data-driven society is forecast by Power (2015).
All above developments lead to following conclusions:
• There are ever more people involved in design, control and management
decision-making. This means there are necessary intensive collaborative design,
management and control activities and large-scale communication from any
place at any time.
• The corresponding decision and related problems become more complex,
multi-facet, and, in a great number of cases, must be solved in real time.
• There is a real need and a market for advanced tools to support communication
and collaboration.
1.1 The Evolving Controlled Object 5

1.1.2 Adopted Terminology

The concept of collaborative network (CN) was proposed by Camarinha-Matos and

Afsarmanesh (2005):
CN is a network consisting of a variety of entries (e.g. organizations, people and even
machines) that are largely autonomous, geographically distributed and heterogeneous in
terms of their operating environment, culture, social, capital and goals, but collaborate to
better achieve common or compatible goals and whose interactions are supported by
computer networks.

Camarinha-Matos et al. (2009) propose a terminology, which is adopted and

used throughout this book, to characterize various forms of interactions among
different entities:
• Networking, which reflects the setting of communication and information
exchange for mutual benefit of the entities involved;
• Coordinated networking, which implies, in addition to networking, harmonizing
the activities to achieve more efficient results.
• Cooperation, which, besides coordinated networking, implies resource sharing
to achieve compatible goals of the entities;
• Collaboration, which, besides cooperation, means the entities work together and
share responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate a program of
activities to achieve the common goal to jointly generate values.

1.1.3 Classification

In (Camarinha-Matos 2009; Camarinha-Matos et al. 2009), the general class of

collaborative networks (CN) is decomposed into particular subclasses in accor-
dance with several criteria as follows:
• organizational level: a CN can be either a collaborative networked organization
(CNO) or an ad hoc scheme;
• collaboration purpose: a CNO can be either a goal-oriented network or a
long-term strategic network
The same authors propose taxonomy of manifestation forms of collaborating
networked organizations. Several examples of goal-oriented network (GON) are
given below:
• virtual organization (VO) represents a temporary GON of legal persons that
share their resources to achieve a common goal and whose operation is sup-
ported by a computer network A dynamic VO is a short-term VO which is
dissolved after its goal is achieved;
6 1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context

• virtual enterprise (VE) is a particular case of VO made up of profit organizations

(called enterprises) that are allied to respond to business opportunities;
• extended enterprises (EE) is a special case of VE characterized by the existence
of a dominant enterprise;
• virtual team (VT) is a temporary GON composed of professionals to achieve a
common goal by using the computer network as an interaction means.
Several examples of long-term strategic network (LTSN) subclasses are:
• virtual organization breeding environment (VOBE) is an association of orga-
nizations and supporting institutions that agreed to cooperate on a long-term
basis, sharing a set of common operating rules and a certain part of their
technical resources, in order to be prepared for a quick setting of temporary
alliances to collaborate as VE/VO;
• industrial cluster (IC) is a particular subclass of VOBE characterized by a
common business sector and the same geographical area;
• business ecosystem, sometimes called digital ecosystem is a VOBE which aims
at preserving local specificities of a geographical region;
• collaborative virtual laboratory (CVL) is an alliance of autonomous research
organizations which can quickly become a VO/VT, when an opportunity-based
collaboration is perceived.
The conclusions to be grasped at the end of this section are:
• To efficiently manage and control the evolving organizations and their con-
stituents, it is highly recommended to exploit the characteristic features of the
controlled object;
• The information and communication technologies have been changing the
business models and the structure of the enterprises and institutions;
• Ever more interactions among enterprises, their constituents, men and machines
have become necessary, possibly due to technology support, and quite fre-
quently encountered.

1.2 From Hierarchical Control to Cooperative Schemes

In the previous section, the modern organization was presented as a complex

system. In such a system, the management and control problems are complex and,
sometimes, have to be solved under the pressure of time. As Cassandras (2001)
remarked “the computational power alone does not suffice to overcome all diffi-
culties encountered in analyzing, planning and decision making in the presence of
disturbances”. In this section, a review of management and control schemes is made
following the presentation lines of (Filip 2008; Filip and Leiviskä 2009; Monostori
et al. 2015).
1.2 From Hierarchical Control to Cooperative Schemes 7

1.2.1 Hierarchical Systems Approach

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

1.2.2 Towards Cooperative Schemes

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

One of the first attempts of allowing cooperation among the decision/control

units is due to Binder (1977), who introduced the concept of decentralized control
with cooperation. The proposed scheme assumed a limited communication among
the decision/control units placed at the same level within the hierarchy. A few years
later, Hatvany (1985) proposed the concept of heterarchical organization in which
the exchange of information is permitted among the units placed at various levels of
hierarchy. Holon, a term coined by Koestler (1970) to describe an organization
scheme able to explain the life and evolution of biological and social systems, has
been utilized in designing and implementing modern discrete part manufacturing
systems in the form of holarchies (Valkenaerts et al. 1997; Van Brussel et al. 1997;
Höpf and Schaeffer 1997; Hadeli et al. 2003; Wang and Choi 2014). In (Filip and
Leiviskä 2009), it is argued that pure hierarchies and heterarchical schemes can be
viewed as particular classes of the holarchy superclass (Fig. 1.2).
At present, a cooperative system is characterized by the following features
(Grundel et al. 2007): (a) there are more than one decision/control unit, (b) the
decision of the unit influences a common decision space, (c) the units share a list of
common objectives, and (d) the information is shared either in an active or in a
passive manner.
Nof (2007) proposed several design principles of the Collaborative Control
Theory in the context of e-activities. The original set of principles includes:
• CRP (the principle of Cooperation Requirement Planning);
• DPIEM (Distributed Planning of Integrated Execution Method);
• PCR (the Principle of Conflict Resolution in collaborative e-work;,
• PCFT (the Principle of Collaborative Fault Tolerance);
• JLR (the Join/Leave/Remain principle in collaborative organizations);
• LOCC (the principle of Lines of Collaboration and Command).

Fig. 1.2 Holarchies: an object-oriented description. Δ “…has as particular forms…”, ◊ “…is

made up of…”, n..* “n or more objects”
10 1 Collaboration and Decision-Making in Context

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.

1.3 The Role of the Human in the System

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

1.3.1 The Human in the Loop

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.

In spite of the remarkable advancements of automation, there are still domains

where the potential of automation are limited. Having carried out an extensive
survey of the US market, Chui (2016) find out that
The hardest activities to automate with currently available technologies are those that
involve managing and developing people (9 percent automation potential) or that apply
expertise to decision making, planning, or creative work (18 percent).

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.

1.3.2 Allocation of Functions and Levels of Automation

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

automated and highly integrated patterns of behaviour”. The sensed information

is perceived in the form of continuous quantitative indicators (called signals) of
time-space behaviour of the environment.
• The rule-based behaviour (RBB), which is based on the solution of the situa-
tions previously met and solved by the human agent him/herself or by the
experts who have trained him/her. The information perceived (called signs)
activate predetermined human actions in accordance with previous experience
or predefined conventions.
• The knowledge-based behaviour (KBB), which is to be met at the higher levels
of management and control levels when non-routine situations are faced and no
predefined rules are available. In this case the pieces of information that must be
perceived (called symbols) are used for reasoning in humans’ explicit
goal-oriented activities.
In the remaining part of this book, the interest of presentation will be focused on
KBB and, to a lesser level, on RBB.
From the description of the three behaviour classes, one can draw the conclusion
that functions that can be carried out by a human’s SBB can be automated to a quite
high extent. On the contrary, the tasks that require a KBB are more difficult and,
perhaps, less desirable to be automated. One of the earliest and well known scheme
for task allocation between human and machine is Fitts’ list also called MABA-
MABA (“Men are better at—Machine are better at”) list (Fitts 1951, p. 10; De
Winter and Dodou 2014). The list contains 11 statements to serve the designer in
deciding which functions should remain to be performed by humans (six state-
ments) and which ones are recommended to be automated (five statements) based

Table 1.1 The original Fitts’
(1951) MABA-MABA list
“Humans appear to surpass present-day machines with
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.”
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
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

Introductory remarks 344

To glaze or ice Pastry 345
Feuilletage, or fine French Puff 345
Paste
Very good light Paste 346
English Puff Paste 346
Cream Crust (very good) 347
(Author’s receipt)
Pâte Brisée (or French Crust 347
for hot or cold Meat Pies)
Flead Crust 347
Common Suet-Crust for Pies 348
Very superior Suet-Crust 348
Very rich short Crust for Tarts 349
Excellent short Crust for Sweet 349
Pastry
Bricche Paste 349
Modern Potato Pasty, an 350
excellent family dish
Casserole of Rice 351
A good common English Game 352
Pie
Modern Chicken Pie 353
A common Chicken Pie 353
Pigeon Pie 354
Beef-steak Pie 354
Common Mutton Pie 355
A good Mutton Pie 355
Raised Pies 356
A Vol-au-Vent (Entrée) 357
A Vol-au-Vent of Fruit 358
(Entremets)
A Vol-au-Vent à la Créme 358
(Entremets)
Oyster Patties (Entrée) 359
Common Lobster Patties 359
Superlative Lobster Patties 359
(Author’s receipt)
Good Chicken Patties (Entrée) 359
Patties à la Pontife, a fast-day 360
or maigre dish (Entrée)
Excellent Meat Rolls 360
Small Vols-au-Vents, or Patty- 361
cases
Another receipt for Tartlets 361
A Sefton, or Veal Custard 362
Apple Cake, or German Tart 362
Tourte Meringuée, or Tart with 363
royal icing
A good Apple Tart 363
Tart of very young green 364
Apples (good)
Barberry Tart 364
The Lady’s Tourte, and 364
Christmas Tourte à la
Châtelaine
Genoises à la Reine, or her 366
Majesty’s Pastry
Almond Paste 367
Tartlets of Almond Paste 367
Fairy Fancies (Fantaisies des 368
Fées)
Mincemeat (Author’s receipt) 368
Superlative Mincemeat 369
Mince Pies (Entremets) 369
Mince Pies Royal (Entremets) 370
The Monitor’s Tart, or Tourte à 370
la Judd
Pudding Pies (Entremets) 371
Pudding Pies (a commoner 371
kind)
Cocoa-Nut cheese-cakes 371
(Entremets) (Jamaica
receipt)
Common Lemon Tartlets 372
Madame Werner’s Rosenvik 372
cheese-cakes
Apfel Krapfen (German receipt) 373
Créme Pâtissière, or Pastry 373
Cream
Small Vols-au-Vent, à la 374
Parisienne (Entremets)
Pastry Sandwiches 374
Lemon Sandwiches 374
Fanchonnettes (Entremets) 374
Jelly-Tartlets, or Custards 375
Strawberry Tartlets (good) 375
Raspberry Puffs 375
Creamed Tartlets 375
Ramakins à l’Ude, or Sefton- 375
Fancies
 CHAPTER XIX.

SOUFFLÉS, OMLETS, ETC.

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

General Directions 395

To clean Currants for Puddings 397
or Cakes
To steam a Pudding in a 397
common stewpan or
saucepan
To mix Batter for Puddings 397
Suet Crust for Meat or Fruit 398
Pudding
Butter Crust for Puddings 398
Savoury Puddings 399
Beef-steak, or John Bull’s 399
Pudding
Small Beef-steak Pudding 400
Ruth Pinch’s Beef-steak 401
Pudding
Mutton Pudding 401
Partridge Pudding (very good) 401
A Peas Pudding (to serve with 401
Boiled Pork)
Wine-sauce for Sweet 402
Puddings
Common Wine-sauce 402
Punch-sauce for Sweet 402
Puddings
Clear arrow-root-sauce (with 403
receipt for Welcome Guest’s
Pudding)
A German Custard Pudding- 403
sauce
A delicious German Pudding- 403
sauce
Red Currant or Raspberry- 404
sauce (good)
Common Raspberry-sauce 404
Superior Fruit Sauces for 404
Sweet Puddings
Pine-apple Pudding-sauce 405
A very fine Pine-apple Sauce 405
or Syrup for Puddings, or
other Sweet Dishes
German Cherry-sauce 406
Common Batter Pudding 406
Another Batter Pudding 406
Black-cap Pudding 407
Batter Fruit Pudding 407
Kentish Suet Pudding 407
Another Suet Pudding 408
Apple, Currant, Cherry, or other 408
Fresh Fruit Pudding
A common Apple Pudding 409
Herodotus’ Pudding (A genuine 409
classical receipt)
The Publisher’s Pudding 410
Her Majesty’s Pudding 410
Common Custard Pudding 411
Prince Albert’s Pudding 411
German Pudding and Sauce 412
(very good)
The Welcome Guest’s own 412
Pudding (light and
wholesome. Author’s receipt)
Sir Edwin Landseer’s Pudding 412
A Cabinet Pudding 413
A very fine Cabinet Pudding 414
Snowdon Pudding (a genuine 414
receipt)
Very good Raisin Puddings 415
The Elegant Economist’s 415
Pudding
Pudding à la Scoones 416
Ingoldsby Christmas Puddings 416
Small and very light Plum 416
Pudding
Vegetable Plum Pudding 417
(cheap and good)
The Author’s Christmas 417
Pudding
A Kentish Well-Pudding 417
Rolled Pudding 418
A Bread Pudding 418
A Brown Bread Pudding 419
A good boiled Rice Pudding 419
Cheap Rice Pudding 420
Rice and Gooseberry Pudding 420
Fashionable Apple Dumplings 420
Orange Snow-balls 420
Apple Snow-balls 421
Light Currant Dumplings 421
Lemon Dumplings (light and 421
good)
Suffolk, or hard Dumplings 421
Norfolk Dumplings 421
Sweet boiled Patties (good) 422
Boiled Rice, to be served with 422
stewed Fruits, Preserves, or
Raspberry Vinegar
 CHAPTER XXI.

BAKED PUDDINGS.

Page

Introductory Remarks 423

A baked Plum Pudding en 424
Moule, or Moulded
The Printer’s Pudding 424
Almond Pudding 425
The Young Wife’s Pudding 425
(Author’s receipt)
The Good Daughter’s 426
Mincemeat Pudding
(Author’s receipt)
Mrs. Howitt’s Pudding (Author’s 426
receipt)
An excellent Lemon Pudding 426
Lemon Suet Pudding 427
Bakewell Pudding 427
Ratifia Pudding 427
The elegant Economist’s 428
Pudding
Rich Bread and Butter Pudding 428
A common Bread and Butter 429
Pudding
A good baked Bread Pudding 429
Another baked Bread Pudding 430
A good Semoulina or Soujee 430
Pudding
French Semoulina Pudding, or 430
Gâteau de Semoule
Saxe-Gotha Pudding, or Tourte 431
Baden Baden Puddings 431
Sutherland, or Castle Puddings 432
Madeleine Puddings (to be 432
served cold)
A good French Rice Pudding, 433
or Gâteau de Riz
A common Rice Pudding 433
Quite cheap Rice Pudding 434
Richer Rice Pudding 434
Rich Pudding Meringué 434
Good ground Rice Pudding 435
Common ground Rice Pudding 435
Green Gooseberry Pudding 435
Potato Pudding 436
A Richer Potato Pudding 436
A good Sponge-cake Pudding 436
Cake and Custard, and various 437
other inexpensive Puddings
Baked Apple Pudding, or 437
Custard
Dutch Custard, or Baked 438
Raspberry Pudding
Gabrielle’s Pudding, or sweet 438
Casserole of Rice
Vermicelli Pudding, with apples 439
or without, and Puddings of
Soujee and Semola
Rice à la Vathek, or Rice 440
 Pudding à la Vathek
(extremely good)
Good Yorkshire Pudding 440
Common Yorkshire Pudding 441
Normandy Pudding (good) 441
Common baked Raisin 441
Pudding
A richer baked Raisin Pudding 442
The Poor Author’s Pudding 442
Pudding à la Paysanne (cheap 442
and good)
The Curate’s Pudding 442
A light baked Batter Pudding 443
 CHAPTER XXII.

EGGS AND MILK.

Page

To preserve Eggs fresh for 444

many weeks
To cook Eggs in the shell 445
without boiling them (an
admirable receipt)
To boil Eggs in the shell 445
To dress the Eggs of the 446
Guinea Fowl and Bantam
To dress Turkeys’ Eggs 447
Forced Turkeys’ Eggs (or 447
Swans’), an excellent
entremets
To boil a Swan’s Egg hard 448
Swan’s Egg en Salade 448
To poach Eggs of different 449
kinds
Poached Eggs with Gravy 449
(Œufs Pochés au Jus.
Entremets.)
Œufs au Plat 450
Milk and Cream 450
Devonshire, or Clotted Cream 451
Du Lait a Madame 451
Curds and Whey 451
Devonshire Junket 452
 CHAPTER XXIII.

SWEET DISHES, OR ENTREMETS.

Page

To prepare Calf’s Feet Stock 453

To clarify Calf’s Feet Stock 454
To clarify Isinglass 454
Spinach Green, for colouring 455
Sweet Dishes,
Confectionary, or Soups
Prepared Apple or Quince 456
Juice
Cocoa-nut flavoured Milk (for 456
Sweet Dishes, &c.)
Remarks upon Compotes of 456
Fruit, or Fruit stewed in
Syrup
Compote of Rhubarb 457
—— of Green Currants 457
—— of Green Gooseberries 457
—— of Green Apricots 457
—— of Red Currants 457
—— of Raspberries 458
—— of Kentish or Flemish 458
Cherries
—— of Morella Cherries 458
—— of the green Magnum 458
Bonum, or Mogul Plum
—— of Damsons 458
—— of ripe Magnum Bonums, 458
or Mogul Plums
—— of the Shepherd’s and 458
other Bullaces
—— of Siberian Crabs 458
—— of Peaches 459
Another receipt for stewed 459
Peaches
Compote of Barberries for 459
Dessert
Black Caps, par excellence (for 460
the Second Course, or for
Dessert)
Gâteau de Pommes 460
Gâteau of mixed Fruits (good) 461
Calf’s Feet Jelly (entremets) 461
Another receipt for Calf’s Feet 462
Jelly
Modern varieties of Calf’s Feet 463
Jelly
Apple Calf’s Feet Jelly 464
Orange Calf’s Feet Jelly 464
(Author’s receipt)
Orange Isinglass Jelly 465
Very fine Orange Jelly (Sussex 465
Place receipt)
Oranges filled with Jelly 466
Lemon Calf’s Feet Jelly 467
Constantia Jelly 467
Rhubarb Isinglass Jelly 468
(Author’s original receipt)