International Business Machines Corporation

Andrew J Davenport

Jayant R Kalagnanam

Wei Sun

Arun Hampapur

Wei Shan Dong

Juhnyoung Lee

Hongfei Li

Shilpa N Mahatma

Zhong Bo Jiang

Lexing Xie

Ho Soo Lee

Frank D Fenhagen, Iv

Ying Tat Leung

Toshiyuki Hama

Chandrasekhara K Reddy

Stuart A Siegel

An approach for infrastructure asset management is provided. This approach comprises an end-to-end analytics driven maintenance approach that can take data about physical assets and additional external data, and apply advanced analytics to the data to generate business insight, foresight and planning information. Specifically, this approach uses a maintenance analysis tool, which is configured to: receive data about a set of physical assets of an infrastructure, and analyze the data about the set of physical assets to predict maintenance requirements for each of the set of physical assets. The maintenance analysis tool further comprises an output component configured to generate a maintenance plan based on the predicted maintenance requirements for each of the set of physical assets.

Infrastructure asset management

A method and system for optimizing modules of a steel manufacturing process includes a plurality of manufacturing modules for a manufacturing process. Each of the modules have a plurality of steps. The plurality of modules include at least an upstream module, a casting module, and a downstream module. Each of the plurality of modules have parameters, and include at least one variable event. The variable event is adjustable for optimization of the manufacturing process while the parameters are being maintained for each of the plurality of modules. A communication system is used for exchanging information between the modules while the manufacturing process is occurring to adjust the at least one variable event for optimizing the manufacturing process.

Algorithmic framework for the integrated optimization of hot strip mill and upstream molten metal operations for a large-scale steel manufacturing plant

A method is provided for identifying a cost-minimizing bid set in a reverse combinatorial auction subject to various business rules for all-or-nothing bundled bids. The method includes introducing a decision variable for each bid, introducing a counting variable to indicate whether bids from a supplier are chosen in an optimal bid set, modeling demand constraints for each item using the bid variables, modeling minimum and maximum numbers of suppliers based on the counting variables, introducing dummy variables to ensure existence of feasible solutions, for a given cost formulating an objective of choosing bids that arrive early based on an additional timestamped objective with the given cost level as a constraint, and introducing price modifications to handle the formulated objective of choosing bids that arrive early.

Automatic method for generating a mathematical program to identify an optimal all-or-nothing bid set for procurement-related reverse auctions

A computer system provides one or more lists of product combinations to one or more shoppers over one or more networks. The computer system comprises one or more central processing units (CPUs), one or more memories, and one or more network interfaces to one or more networks. An electronic shopping assistant process implemented on the computer system receives one or more inputs of constraints from shoppers, sends out the inputs to one or more shopping list generating processes in one or more stores, receives one or more lists of recommended product combinations that satisfy the given constraints, and allows shoppers to view and select one or more product combinations from received lists. A shopping list generating process implemented on the computer system receives one or more inputs from the electronic shopping assistant process by using an electronic shopping list protocol, searches products in an online product catalog stored in a product database, computes one or more lists of product combinations that satisfy the constraints given in the input, and sends lists of product combinations back to the electronic shopping assistant process again by using the electronic shopping list protocol.

Electronic shopping assistant and method of use

A computer system and method uses one or more virtual wish lists of one or more shoppers over a computer network. One process extracts information from online address books or other personal databases, and creates lists of recipients for whom a shopper wants to purchase products. A second process obtains virtual wish lists of recipients by observing their visits to online stores, and other online behavior. Recipients are asked for permission to make this data available to other shoppers, online stores, and other Web sites. Recipients can modify their virtual wish lists, and selectively approve of their use by other shoppers, etc. A third process creates shopping lists for the recipients, and generates lists of recommended products for shoppers to buy for intended recipients.

System and method for using virtual wish lists for assisting shopping over computer networks

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Andrew J Davenport