查看文章

A knowledge‐based system supporting managerial problem diagnosis is described. The system provides the capability to monitor values of selected variables for problem situations. When problems are located, a list of problem symptoms is delivered to a problem processor for structuring and diagnosis. Problem structuring is based on a combination of concepts from expert systems and structural modeling. User assertions about cause‐effect relationships between pairs of variables are maintained in a semantic network. Problem diagnosis uses the relationships in the semantic network to construct causation trees, the branches of which represent potential explanations of the problem symptoms. Mathematical models are constructed based on causation‐tree branches, and values from the data base are used to test whether the model confirms the diagnosis. If so, the source of the problem has been located and it is …