International Business Machines Corporation

Agile Software Corporation

Manoranjan Kanthanathan

Arun Chandra

John Carl Grzinich

Yannis Labrou

Steven Bruce Katz

Kenneth M Rudin

A method for assisting a user with procurement decisions, sourcing decisions and strategic sourcing decisions in an enterprise is disclosed. The method implements a plurality of software modules in a logical workflow process based on the results of integrating and analyzing data. The workflow process provides a plurality of steps for discovering data, analyzing data, alerting the user about the data, recommending actions to the user based on the data, and executing those actions. The workflow process is based on a Value Chain Intelligence (VCI) system, which integrates and analyzes internal data from enterprises and external data from suppliers, catalogs, and marketplaces in real time for their impact on supply chains processes. Components for such a system may consist of internal data collection components, external data collection components, data integration components, and data application components. Various methods for searching, extracting, transforming, integrating, analyzing, and representing data internal to an enterprise and data external to an enterprise are also disclosed.

Method for managing a workflow process that assists users in procurement, sourcing, and decision-support for strategic sourcing

The present invention discloses a system and method to evaluate intrusive repair. The method and system is based on analyzing data from the field and drawing causal diagrams (cause-consequence diagrams). In an aspect of the present invention, a method and system for evaluating intrusive repair for a class of devices comprises providing a threshold time window for analyzing failure data. The system and method further includes utilizing a causal diagram based on the analysis of the failure data for the class of devices to indicate the probability of intrusive repair. In the present invention, two measures are defined to evaluate intrusive repair--intrusivability and one-fixability. Intrusivability is defined as the probability that a repair action will cause a new fault. One-fixability is defined as the probability that the diagnostic process will fix the fault on the first repair attempt. Both of these measures are determined by using the causal diagram in accordance with the present invention.

Method and system for evaluating intrusive repair for plurality of

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Foster City, CA, United States of America

Manoranjan Kanthanathan