Support tools

Availability of decision support tools like control charts and color charts is also important. In situations that are out of control, these tools support people in making homogeneous decisions dealing with quality failure (e.g., color deviation). 

Understanding quality perception. The starting point of a CQP-based quality assurance system should be the clear understanding of which product attributes are considered important and contribute to the quality perceptions of target consumers. This will help focus the system to control and assure only those attributes that are critical for quality perception. Decision-supporting tools can be found in the areas of consumer research, sensory studies, and new product design. 

As an example, consider the automation efforts for chemical laboratories in the last decades. Chemical laboratories of today are equipped with instruments that, in principle, can run automatically for 24 hours a day. This results in a higher productivity, since more samples can be analysed with an equal technical effort. Decisions about the analysis itself, how many and which samples must be analysed with what method or technique, etc., are still the responsibility of the laboratory personnel. Since experience can be incorporated into expert systems, they can provide significant benefits as decision-supporting tools. Therefore, the main ideas of expert systems and their development are explained in this chapter. More detailed information can be found in the numerous textbooks on expert systems [7-10]. 

The next few steps are very similar to those required in any software project. One of the first stages is the clear definition of the knowledge domain. It must be clear which problems the expert system must solve. It is at this stage not the intention to define how this can be done. Clarity and specificity must be the major guides here. Fuzziness at this stage will, more than in classical software projects, have to be paid for later when different interpretations cause misunderstandings. Equally important is the clear definition of the end user(s). An expert system set up as decision support tool for professionals is totally different from an expert system that can be used as a training support for less professional people. 

Progress in these areas will require a number of new supporting tools that can effectively handle and solve a variety of mathematical models involving thousands and millions of variables. These supporting tools in turn will require that chemical engineers become acquainted with new advances in numerical analysis, mathematical programming, and local search techniques. 

To develop a decision support tool for identification and selection of relevant measures on European, national and regional levels. 

To evaluate different potential measures by applying the decision support tools in case studies. 

Genetic tests are being prospectively validated as decision-support tools for adjuvant chemotherapy in node-negative patients to identify characteristics of the primary tumor that may predict for the likelihood of metastases and death. 

The production planning and scheduling solution presented here showed that systematic decision support tools not only provide an increase of production or... 

Planning is done by humans who use computer support tools like simulation, optimization and production planning programs. They gather information from these systems, make trial decisions and monitor the consequences. 

The same variability applies to the number of separate layers of design you maintain. Clearly, more layers require more maintenance work as well as suitable support tools. 

Support tools at a semantic level well beyond diagrams and databases... 

It s worth remembering, especially if you are designing support tools, that a diagram is a convenient way of showing a set of statements. There is always an equivalent text representation ... 

The appearance of a type in more than one diagram means only that it has the attributes and operations gathered together from all its appearances. All OO analysis and design support tools allow you to separate big models into smaller diagrams. Some of them make it easy for the individual diagrams to be embedded within narrative text with others, you must cut and paste. 

The first defense against unwanted results is that your support tools should raise a flag when you import a package that contains name conflicts (although this is not needed if the first definition of the name comes from a common ancestor package). 

You can implement an action s specification by designing a refinement into a smaller set of actions—ultimately, in software, messages. Program code is the most detailed kind of action implementation. Implementations cannot be joined in the same way that specifications can be joined (see Figure 8.2). First, it isn t clear what anding two programs together would mean. The machine must follow one list of instructions or the other, which one should it execute Both In what order Therefore, your support tool should complain if you try to provide code for two operations with the same name in the same class or for two refinements of the same action into different sets of smaller steps. 

But decent support tools provide for a hypertext structure. Importing means that the points of reference in the original text can be referred to from the importer s text and, in the context of renaming (see Section 7.7.1), the resultant imported text can actually be customized based on the importer s text and names. 

The MOREHyS model has been applied as a supporting tool for the hydrogen infrastructure analysis within the integrated EU project Hyways to develop the European Hydrogen Energy Roadmap (see www.hyways.de). 

Stiller, C. (2008). H2INVEST - Hydrogen infrastructure venture support tool. www.h2invest.com. 

The CALCULATION function provides a variety of routine calculations performed in most ultracentrifugation laboratories. Included are dilution calculations for sucrose, a pelleting time calculation, and a calculation for determining rotor speed reductions for salt gradients. As with the INFORMATION function, the CALCULATION function is a support tool in the effort to efficiently design and carry out a separation. 

Kavlock R, Dix D (2010) Computational toxicology as implemented by the U.S. EPA providing high throughput decision support tools for screening and assessing chemical exposure, hazard and risk. J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev 13(2 ) 197-217... 

To constract a decision support tool, one needs to have a focus of evaluation ... 

As a supportive tool, it is suggested to design a specific questionnaire to investigate and get feedback on the possibility of applying the concept of ChL by companies of different industrial sectors, industry federations and chambers. This could be a very valuable source of information and a good planning tool. The general questionnaire should be structured as follows ... 

In parallel to this and as a supportive tool a booklet on ChL success stories should be developed. 

The following check list is a support tool for experts, NCPCs and other organisations involved in Cleaner Production activities to screen existing CP projects and define the potential for starting-up Chemical Leasing business models. Legal compliance is a must for all projects. 

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