Application of industrial engineering concepts and techniques to ambient intelligence: a case study

Abstract

Ambient intelligence (AmI) researchers have primarily come from information engineering, electrical engineering, and medical backgrounds. However, industrial engineering (IE) concepts and techniques are crucial to the sustainable development of the AmI industry. For this reason, two IE concepts and techniques, the planning cycle and cost–benefit analysis, were applied to an AmI system in this study. First, a five-step planning cycle was proposed, according to which a detailed cost–benefit analysis was performed that aggregated objectives on the client side, the server side, and in the AmI system as a whole. A restaurant recommendation system was used to illustrate the proposed methodology. The experimental results showed that the system administrator was able to perform a credible cost–benefit analysis and improve the system performance by using the proposed methodology.