Volume 9, Number 1 • January/February 2001

Expert Software Product Commercialized™

A Texas company specializing in artificial intelligence applications is marketing an expert software system developed under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. (KBSI), of College Station, Texas, is commercializing the Optimization Modeling Assistant (OMA) within its ProSim™ simulation tool. KBSI is a dynamic analysis, modeling and systems software development company specializing in business redesign and corporate integration software and services. KBSI provides tools, training and consulting for a wide range of enterprise needs, including business process analysis, project and cost management, activity-based costing, process and data modeling, discrete event simulation, workflow optimization and functional analysis.

Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. is commercializing an expert software system developed under an SBIR contract with NASA Kennedy Space Center. Photo provided by NASA Kennedy Space Center..

The OMA is a knowledge-based software tool that facilitates optimization model development. It provides intelligent assistance for developing optimization models from structured domain descriptions. The intended users of the tool include domain experts who are unfamiliar with or novices at using optimization techniques to solve their problems. The tool provides knowledge-based assistance to users in the various steps of the model development process, like knowledge acquisition, simplification, model design, interpretation of results and sensitivity analysis.

KBSI innovator Dr. Perakath Benjamin believes that the OMA will result in an increase in the use of optimization models in solving various manufacturing, operations planning, logistics, scheduling and business engineering problems. ProSim™ is marketed as a state-of-the-art process modeling tool that can visually capture corporate knowledge of key processes and allows the user to create animated simulations and visualizations of workflow, index the distributed corporate information sources with a process knowledge map, publish the knowledge base on the World Wide Web, package and distribute standardized process knowledge with the ProSim™ viewer and show cross organization processes with swimlane.

The OMA was developed under an SBIR contract with KSC. The project’s approach applies knowledge-based systems techniques to the automation of the optimization design process. ProSim™ has been used at KSC for modeling shuttle flow process. OMA optimization tools are currently targeted for integration with the KSC Spaceport Systems Processing Model. The University of Central Florida is working with KSC on this simulation model. Other federal efforts are using and extending OMA at Tinker Air Force Base and at the Corpus Christi Army Depot.

The OMA supports the automatic design of an optimization model from management’s description of a problem and statement of a set question that needs to be answered. The project attempts to improve the capability of domain experts to provide accurate descriptions of their systems, situations or problems; improve the productivity of experienced optimization analysts in technique selection, model design and execution; facilitate effective communication between domain experts and optimization analysts; and automate the design of executable optimization models.

For more information, contact Tom Gould at NASA Kennedy Space Center (321/867-6238) Thomas.Gould-1@ksc.nasa.gov. Please mention you read about it in Innovation.