Academics and practitioners have a common interest in the continuing development of methods and computer applications that support or perform knowledge-intensive engineering tasks. Operations management dysfunctions and lost production time are problems of enormous magnitude that impact the performance and quality of industrial systems as well as their cost of production. Association rule minin...

Thesis Committee and providing invaluable suggestions and feedback on my research. I thank members of Intelligent System Laboratory who have worked with me. Special thanks to my colleagues: Yaohui Zeng, who worked with me on HVAC project and introduced me to this research area; Dr. Xiupeng Wei, who worked with me on wastewater project and shared his research experiences with me; Guanglin Xu, wh...

Mining plays a very important role in the history of man. From the very beginning man's development has been accompanied by the extraction, processing and utilization of mineral substances. In the past, mining often exerted influence on economic, social, legal and cultural structures within society. The technological aspect must be emphasized as well, for the technical achievements in mining an...