This paper proposes to make complex production machines more user-friendly. Improved machines help the operator in case of an error message or a process event by displaying recommendations, such as “at the last 10 occurrences of this event the operators performed the following keystrokes”. The messages are generated from statistical data on former user- interaction and previous process-events. The data represents the knowledge of all the machine operators. The data is gathered by logging user-interaction and process-events during regular operation of the production machine. This approach allows to store the operators’ expert knowledge in the production machine without human intervention.

We propose a system to make complex production machines more user-friendly by giving the operator recommendations, such as "in the last 10 occurrences of this event the operators performed the following keystrokes". We describe algorithms to generate the recommendations based on data on former user-interaction and process values and to store them in a knowledge base. We also propose algorithms to retrieve recommendations suited to the current process state. We evaluate their performance on simulated data and data gathered from real production machines.

Specialized systems aiming at offering hypertext functionality in users' computing have been discussed since the early days of hypertext. However, with the claim to also support other structure domains than node-link structures, hypertext systems had to overcome some challenges. Researchers came up with component-based approaches and low level structure services.
Due to the raising omnipresence of the Web, research on traditional hypertext systems has been fading out over the past decade. This paper focuses again on hypertext infrastructures and goes beyond ongoing Web discussions. Based on lessons learned from well thought through previous work, we present a novel design for multi-structure supporting, general purpose hypertext systems that can be used in a series of application domains. The system provides intelligence analysis which is needed for sophisticated user support. We argue that this lets us use the hypertext system also as a visual analytics tool. Furthermore, for demonstration purposes we describe the use of the system in combination with a Web-based software engineering platform, which is part of the ongoing project ODIN.

Purpose – Technologies such as smart advisors, smart factories and the “Internet of things” have again sparked large interest in IT-enabled knowledge management. Although there have been numerous case studies and empirical studies on how the management of knowledge in large organizations has benefitted from these technologies, we have only scarce information on how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can manage the corresponding digital transformation necessary. In line with the emerging paradigm of physical-cyber-social computing (Sheth, Anantharam & Henson, 2013), we intend to foster the digital transformation that might boost SMEs’ resilience concerning the increasing demands of hypercompetitive environments. The research question discussed in this paper is how enterprise knowledge infrastructure services that are available publicly can support SMEs in building knowledge capabilities that strengthen their organizational resilience. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used for this discussion consists of (1) a review of related work on the knowledge-based view, resilience and enterprise knowledge infrastructures plus (2) case examples taken from exploratory interviews with representatives of six German SMEs. As we study the relationships between IT, activities and outcomes, we build our research on the input-process-output model (McGrath, 1964) or, more specifically, an integrative framework for studying knowledge management enablers, processes, and organizational performance (Lee & Choi, 2003). Originality/value –Our contributions are two-fold: (1) we propose to employ capabilities in order to detail the concept of organizational resilience and (2) we present a model to illustrate how services of an enterprise knowledge infrastructure can support organizational resilience with the help of knowledge activities. Practical implications – The application of our approach to decompose organizational resilience into capabilities and to weave enterprise knowledge infrastructure services together with cloud service models to support such capabilities provides the basis for SMEs to benefit from comprehensive cloud-based offerings to build organizational resilience. By using such cloud offerings, SMEs can avoid issues with the development of own services. Cloud providers can use our decomposition of organizational resilience to design cloud-based IT services in a way that these services help to build capabilities for such resilience.