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Category: Data Mining & Business Intelligence Analysis

Hybrid Discovery Wizard (HDWizard™)

HDWizard™ is a hybrid decision support toolkit that provides agent-based decision support for the automated generation of information from disparate and distributed data to support user-defined decision support goals.

Government and industry lack robust, hybridized approaches and methods for applying common sense reasoning techniques in decision support and knowledge management systems.  KBSI’s Hybrid Discovery Wizard (HDWizard™) project focused on developing a generic HDWizard™ toolkit that includes data mining, fusion, and inference/reasoning methods.

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Adaptive Trajectory Reshaping & Control System (ATRC)

The ATRC initiative developed real time solution techniques and algorithms for a reconfigurable control and guidance system for autonomous reusable launch vehicles (RLVs).  ATRC includes on-line parameter learning and real time reshaping of vehicle trajectories under uncertain damage/failure scenarios.

The U.S. Air Force, to keep pace with the demands of homeland security and global operations, is exploring methods for improved space utilization.  A significant impediment to increased space utilization is the huge cost of launching operations, and the Air Force is investigating more affordable launch operations via a number of Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) programs.  Part of the focus is on maintaining the economic viability of RLVs by enhancing operations safety and reliability;  i.e., to improve RLV capabilities for responding to various uncertainties and emerging situations.

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Intelligent Asset Tracking & Management System (IATMS)

IATMS is a unified framework for geolocation knowledge that provides instant visualization of MRO assets, improving asset utilization and scheduling and MRO flow-times.  IATMS also provides knowledge discovery for equipment task and resource relationships using geolocation and other data sources.

The Air Force’s Tinker Air Force Base (TAFB), Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) and the Hill Air Force Base (HAFB), Ogden Air Logistics Center (OO-ALC) are responsible for the maintenance, repair, and overhaul of billions of dollars worth of aircraft each year.  In addition to the actual nuts and bolts work on aircraft, a significant undertaking in itself, MRO activities involve the coordinated planning, scheduling, and moving of not only the aircraft, but also the thousands of pieces of ground support equipment (GSE) and other assets used in MRO work.  At Tinker, more than 3500 items, ranging from huge cranes and air-conditioners to wrenches and drills, are required for MRO work that is spread over an area the size of a small city.  MRO planning and coordination is a tightly orchestrated endeavor:  aircraft, parts, and GSE required for each step, large items that can be difficult and time consuming to stage and deploy, must be in place when and where they are needed and must accommodate the requirements of other ongoing MRO work.  A lag at any step in the schedule—the result of movement conflicts or double scheduled GSE, for example—can have a ripple effect, impacting other downstream MRO work and leading to missed deadlines, snowballing cost overruns, and, most significantly, compromised mission readiness.

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Pathfinder

Pathfinder is a comprehensive suite of technologies for life-cycle cost justification, cost/benefit analysis, integrated performance prediction, quantified trade-off analysis, and management decision-making for individual project selection, monitoring, and control.

Pathfinder, a KBSI-led effort in partnership with Texas A&M University (TAMU), focused on the design and development of a comprehensive suite of technologies for life-cycle cost justification, cost/benefit analysis, integrated performance prediction, quantified trade-off analysis, and management decision-making for individual project selection, monitoring, and control.  The goals of Pathfinder addressed the need for life-cycle costing in depot environments, where the operational benefits of acquiring and maintaining weapons systems must be continually balanced.

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Environment, Epidemiology, & Etiology Surveillance & Analysis Toolkit (E3SAT)

The E3SAT tool suite allows researchers to collect, integrate, and data mine medical records, environmental exposures, and deployment locations.  This provides an encompassing data view of soldier health in the military healthcare system and enables studies of environmental, epidemiological, and etiological factors driving the system.

In the aftermath of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, researchers have struggled with explaining the array of serious health impairing symptoms that have become collectively known as Gulf War Syndrome.  Approximately 30 percent of the 700,000 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen in the first Persian Gulf War have registered in the Gulf War Illness database complaining of these symptoms.  A key stumbling block in researching Gulf War Syndrome is the absence of a means for integrating relevant data—soldier medical records, environmental health and surveillance data, deployment data—and discovering and analyzing to discover patterns and correlations between deployment exposures and soldier signs, symptoms, and potential causes.

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Adaptive Toolkit for Pattern Discovery (ATPD)

The ATPD technology is combining new machine learning techniques with advanced rule based methods for automated data utilization pattern discovery.  The technology allows users to monitor information use, discover use patterns, and develop ontology models of these relations and patterns.

This capability enables users to monitor information use across systems, discover usage patterns, analyze patterns for potential new (and useful) concepts and relations, and offer intelligent assistance to enterprise knowledge modelers about the integration of newly learned concepts into evolving reference knowledge models.

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Framework for Enabling Adaptive Scenario Generation for Training (FEAST)

The FEAST technology uses an innovative methodology for dynamic scenario generation and adaption in simulation-based environments for mission operations training.  The technology’s knowledge discovery and automated reasoning methods let you evolve scenario design knowledge over time.

KBSI began by establishing the requirements for a dynamic scenario generation for individual and team learning in simulation-based environments.  This requirements building will utilize the Air Force’s Mission Essential Competencies (MECs)-based model as a means for enabling effective transformation from mission based training to competency based training in DMO training environments.

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Transformation in Maintenance & Repair (XFMR)

The XFMR solutions concept allows for interactive critical chain re-sequencing, constraint violation identification, and automated critical chain plan option generation.  These capabilities are transforming Air Logistics Center (ALC) operations to warrior-centric, highly adaptive, and more efficient sustainment enterprise activities.

The Transformation in Maintenance and Repair (XFMR, or “transformer”) research effort identified the critical method and tool technology voids that must be addressed in transforming Air Logistics Center (ALC) operations to warrior-centric, highly adaptive, and more efficient sustainment enterprise activities.  Central to addressing these voids is a set of key technologies that support a critical chain program management (CCPM) approach based on Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC).  The XFMR solution concept includes a set of Critical Chain deconfliction tools that provide critical chain re-sequencing, constraint violation identification, and automated and optimized critical chain plan option generation.

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Advanced MRO Multi-echelon Planning & Scheduling (ProPlan™ 21)

ProPlan™ 21 provides technology for the rapid definition, creation, and editing of constraint based MRO plans, enabling advanced plan analysis and plan execution for depot management decision support across all production echelons.

Key to the responsiveness of Air Logistic Centers (ALC), the hub for maintenance, repair, and overhaul of Air Force aircraft, is planning.  Responsiveness is a particularly acute need given the increased pace of Air Force operations worldwide, and ALCs are under pressure to reduce the number of aircraft on station at any given time, to speed maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) turnaround, and to meet on-time delivery commitments despite significant variability in work content, component part reliability, and replacement part acquisition lead-time—all while continuing to maintain consistently high standards of quality.

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