Call for Papers：International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management

October 25 to 27,2006, Troyes, France http ://www.utt.fr/ieee-sssm06/Sponsored by Service Systems and Organization Committee, IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics SocietyIEEEThemeService is an emerging sector for economic growth in the 21st century. It covers our daily life and almost all industries, from medical care to the production of high-tech products. A nation's economic evolution highly relies on its service systems and service management. The production of a product in a manufacturing plant may be interrupted because of the shortage of required components caused by an unreliable logistics service. The living standard of people in a country may be degraded because of its ineffective medical care system. In the information era where the industrialized world is no longer characterized by scarcity of merchandises, service and quality of life have become the primary focus for social and economic development.Given the increasing importance, the complexity, and the interdisciplinary nature of service systems and service management, it is essential to bring researchers and professionals from all relevant disciplines (system theory and systems engineering, marketing and organizational behavior, logistics and operations management, quality assurance, information technology, etc) together to discuss issues and share their research and development results and experiences in the areas of service systems and service management, in order to develop innovative and advanced concepts, strategies, system design and operations management methods for the 21st century's service. Authors are invited to submit their     

Call for Papers

Conference Theme and Scope
The last decade has seen rapid growth of service-based economic activities in many advanced developed economies such as the USA, European and developed Asian countries as well as emerging economies such as China and India. The rapid growth of service activities poses many challenging issues in the design and operation requirements of service systems in order to compete for finite resources in the global marketplace. Research studies have to date revealed incompleteness and loosely coupled findings to answer 1） ＂what are the driving dynamics for enterprise＇s service systems？＂ and 2） ＂how should services be managed to optimally create timeliness value for its stakeholders？＂ These are multi- and inter-disciplinary unresolved issues confronting the academia and service oractitioners.     

A CASE FOR SERVICE SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

A case is made for further developing a branch of systems engineering that focuses on problemsand issues which arise in the service sector We promulgate this special focus not only because of thesize and importance of the service sector but also because of the unique opportunities that systemsengineering can exploit in the design and joint production and delivery of services. We begin byconsidering the economic, technological and demographic contexts within which the service sector hasflourished; we then address both services, especially emerging services, and systems engineering,followed by a discussion of how to advance the field of service systems engineering, and concludingwith several remarks. In particular, a number of service systems engineering methods are identified toenhance the design and production/delivery of services, especially taking advantage of the uniquefeatures that characterize services-namely, services, especially emerging services, are information-driven, customer-centric, e-orien     

6^th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management （ICSSSM＇09）

Service is an emerging sector for economic growth in the 21st century. It covers almost all industries and our daily life from medical care to the production of high-tech products. A nation＇s economic evolution highly relies on its service systems and service management.     

Call for Papers 6~(th) International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management(ICSSSM'09)

Xiamen,PR China June 13-15,2009 http://sm2.xmu.edu.cn/icsssm09/ Conference Theme and Scope Service is an emerging sector for economic growth in the 21st century.It covers almost all industries and our daily life from medical care to the production of high-tech products.A nation's economic evolution highly relies on its service systems and service management.The production of a product in a manufacturing plant may be interrupted because of an unreliable logistics service leading to the     

SERVICE LEVEL EVALUATION OF AN ASSEMBLY-TO-ORDER SYSTEM

An assembly-to-order system, which at the end the buffer distinguishes its assembly stages of the system from the downstream systems, is considered in this paper. The system produces semi-finished products for the downstream system and starts from a basic subassembly, and at each stage a component is assembled into the corresponding subassembly. The basic subassembly, components and buffer all follow a periodic-review, order up-to-level inventory policy. The buffer holds the semi-finished products to serve the specific demand from the downstream system. The service level of the system is determined by aggregate effects of the components held at stockpiles before the buffer and the basic subassembly. In order to measure the service level of the system, some notations and assumptions are made, on which the closed form expression of the service level of the system is achieved.     

On integration and adaptation in complex service systems

The services sector employs a large and growing proportion of workers in the industrialized nations, and it is increasingly dependent on information and communication technologies. While the interdependences, similarities and complementarities of manufacturing and services are significant, there are considerable differences between goods and services, including the shift in focus from mass production to mass customization （whereby a service is produced and delivered in response to a customer＇s stated or imputed needs）. In general, services can be considered to be knowledge-intensive agents or components which work together as providers and consumers to create or co-produce value. Like manufacturing systems, an efficient service system must be an integrated system of systems, leading to greater connectivity and interdependence. Integration must occur over the physical, temporal, organizational and functional dimensions, and must include methods concerned with the component, the management, and the system. Moreover, an effective service system must also be an adaptable system, leading to greater value and responsiveness. Adaptation must occur over the dimensions of monitoring, feedback, cybernetics and learning, and must include methods concerned with space, time, and system. In sum, service systems are indeed complex, especially due to the uncertainties associated with the human-centered aspects of such systems. Moreover, the system complexities can only be dealt with methods that enhance system integration and adaptation. The paper concludes with several insights, including a plea to shift the current misplaced focus on developing a science or discipline for services to further developing a systems engineering approach to services, an approach based on the integration and adaptation of a host of sciences or disciplines （e.g., physics, mathematics, statistics, psychology, sociology, etc.）. In fact, what is required is a services-related transdisciplinary - beyond a single disciplinary - ontology or taxon     

Integrated importance measure for multi-state coherent systems of k level

To verify the effectiveness of the integrated importance measure （IIM） for multi-state coherent systems of k level, the definition and physical meaning of IIM are demonstrated. Then, the improvement potential and Δ-importance measures are generalized to multi-state coherent systems based on the system performance level, and the relationships between IIM and traditional importance measures are discussed. The characteristics of IIM are demonstrated in both series and parallel systems. Also, an application to an oil transportation system is given. The comparison results show that： （i） IIM has some useful properties that are not possessed by traditional importance measures; （ii） IIM is effective in evaluating the component role in multi-state systems when the component reliability and the failure rate are simultaneously considered.     

A comparative study of the inventory system with service facility and postponed demands

In this article, we present a continuous review （s,S） inventory system with a service facility consisting of finite buffer （capacity N ） and a single server. The customers arrive according to a Poisson process. The individual customer＇s unit demand is satisfied after a random time of service, which is assumed to be exponential. When the inventory level drops to s＇an order for Q（= S-s） items is placed. The lead time of reorder is assumed to be exponential distribution. An arriving customer, who finds the buffer is full, enters into the pool of infinite size or leaves the system according to a Bernolli trial. At the time of service completion, if the buffer size drops to a preassigned level L （1 〈 L 〈 N） or below and the inventory level is above s, we select the customers from the pool according to two different policy ： in first policy, with probability p （0 〈 p 〈 1） we select the customer from the head of the pool and we place the customer at the end of the buffer; in the second policy, with p （0 〈 p 〈 1） the customer from the pool is transferred to the buffer for immediate service and after completion of his service we provide service to the customer who is in the buffer with probability one. If at a service completion epoch the buffer turns out to be empty, there is at least one customer in the pool and the inventory level is positive, then the one ahead of all waiting in the pool gets transferred to the buffer, and his service starts immediately. The joint probability distribution of the number of customers in the pool, number of customers in the buffer and the inventory level is obtained in the steady-state case. Various stationary system performance measures are computed and total expected cost rate is calculated. A comparative result of two models is illustrate numerically.     

PLATFORM SELECTION FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS:BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

Automation systems for buildings interconnect components and technologies from the information technology industry and the telecommunications industry.In these industries,existing platforms and new platforms（that are designed to make building automation systems work） compete for market acceptance and consequently several platform battles among suppliers for building automation networking are being waged.It is unclear what the outcome of these battles will be and also which factors are important in achieving platform dominance.Taking the fuzziness of decision makers＇ judgments into account,a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methodology called the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is applied to investigate the importance of such factors in platform battles for building automation networking.We present the relative importance of the factors for three types of platforms（subsystem platforms,system platforms,and evolved subsystem platforms）.The results provide a first indication that the set of important factors differs per type of platform.For example,when focusing on other stakeholders,for subsystem platforms,the previous installed base is of importance;for system platforms,the diversity of the network of stakeholders is essential;and for evolved subsystem platforms,the judiciary is an important factor.     

On Eigen-Matrix Translation Method for Classification of Biological Data

Driven by the challenge of integrating large amount of experimental data, classification technique emerges as one of the major and popular tools in computational biology and bioinformatics research. Machine learning methods, especially kernel methods with Support Vector Machines(SVMs)are very popular and effective tools. In the perspective of kernel matrix, a technique namely Eigenmatrix translation has been introduced for protein data classification. The Eigen-matrix translation strategy has a lot of nice properties which deserve more exploration. This paper investigates the major role of Eigen-matrix translation in classification. The authors propose that its importance lies in the dimension reduction of predictor attributes within the data set. This is very important when the dimension of features is huge. The authors show by numerical experiments on real biological data sets that the proposed framework is crucial and effective in improving classification accuracy. This can therefore serve as a novel perspective for future research in dimension reduction problems.     

关于预约服务若干问题刍议

本文对预约服务若干问题进行讨论，其中包括预约服务的研究内容、模型、要素、分类、优点和应用，以及与排队服务的比较。文章还简介预约服务经济指标优化等问题，并且着重指出，开展对预约服务的研究，具有一定的实用意义。     

基于多属性决策的动态外包信息服务商选择

竞争的加剧以及加强自身核心竞争力的考虑,许多公司尤其是中小型公司都纷纷将非核心信息系统业务外包,而信息服务提供商的选择直接影响外包的成功与否.首先根据文献结果建立信息服务提供商(Information service provider,ISP)的评价指标体系,创新性地考虑处在外包不同生命周期的信息服务使用方对信息服务提供方的评价属性侧重点有所不同,把指标属性分为关键属性, 重要属性和基本属性,并用模糊语言变量进行刻画,分不同等级的模糊语言变量表示不同确定性程度的属性, 然后,运用模糊多属性决策方法对信息服务提供商进行动态选择,最后给出具体算例.     

离岸服务外包承接地的分类决策方法

离岸服务外包已经成为企业界关注的热点,服务外包承接地的选择直接影响着外包项目的实施效果.利用UTADIS分类法中的分类规则和效用函数形式,构建了一个划分离岸服务外包承接地的多准则分类模型.该模型考虑到离岸服务外包环境的复杂性和发包决策者认知的有限性,允许决策者提供关于服务外包承接地的不完全分类信息,并根据这些分类信息对外包承接地分类.最后,采用A.T.Kearney公司2009年的全球服务区位指数数据,对50个服务外包承接国进行了分类,分类结果说明了方法的可行性.     

基于邻域粒化的小生境微粒群混合数据约简

混合决策系统中同时包含了符号型属性和数值型属性,经典粗糙集处理数值型属性时需要进行离散化,这样会造成信息的丢失。基于邻域粒化的思想,提出了小生境微粒群约简方法,分析了邻域距离函数的选择和大小对分类精度和约简属性数量的影响。邻域粒化的方法可以直接处理数值型属性,微粒群全局优化的特性可以有效的求解全部约简,小生境技术的采用避免了微粒群算法的早熟收敛。选取UCI数据集进行了仿真实验,结果表明该方法可以快速有效地求解混合决策系统的约简,而不影响系统的分类精度。     

基于生物实体的网络服务突现

自然生物系统中的关键机理和重要原理可用于设计一种新颖的生物网络结构及其仿真平台，以满足未来Internet网络的关键需求。本文在此仿真平台基础上实现了具有移动Agent和生物个体特点的生物实体及其行为算法，并根据生物实体的特点构建了各种服务，最后通过仿真实验验证了基于生物实体的网络服务构建的优点。生物网络的服务突现，将为设计未来网络节点中的智能服务和应用提供一种新颖的方法。     

基于数据中台的装备保障数据集成

针对当前装备保障数据分散和决策支持不足的问题,展开装备保障数据集成研究。首先，构建了基于数据中台(open data processing service, ODPS)的装备保障数据集成架构,从数据同步、ODPS和数据服务应用程序接口(application programming interface, API)三方面对其进行了具体分析;然后,为了统一数据视图,提出了朴素贝叶斯和特征词匹配相结合的装备保障集成数据分类方法,为实现“数据互通”提供了有效方法,也为装备保障信息系统高效集成奠定了基础。     

自适应特征熵权模糊C均值聚类算法的研究

特征权重算法对聚类效果有很大的影响,而传统的特征权重算法忽略了特征项在类间和类内的分布情况.因此,研究聚类后样本特征属性表现的有序性程度对聚类结果的影响,分析聚类后样本特征属性的分布情况,提出了一种自适应特征熵权模糊C均值聚类算法.该算法以聚类后的特征熵和信息增益作为准则调整特征权值,通过聚类与权重更新逐步迭代优化,直至获得最优的特征权值.实验表明,自适应特征熵权模糊C均值聚类算法能够有效地区分各个特征属性对聚类效果的重要程度;较于其它加权模糊C均值聚类算法,该算法能够得到更高的聚类准确率.     

数据包络分析（DEA）在电力工业的应用

本文应用数据包络分析技术，测算了八大电网的全要素相对生产率，研究了其规模效益及分类情况，并对计算结果进行了纵、横向综合分析、比较，较好的解释、印证了八大电网生产实际，为决策层对经济系统进行综合比较、评价提供了有效的技术经济手段．