Human centered processes and decision support systems

This paper emphasizes the role of human factors in Decision Support Systems and related assisting tools that can be used in the Operational Research field. It links both historical information and real life realizations concerning the human centered processes. The historical points mentioned in the paper give only partial emphasis, according to the feeling of the authors. The aim. here, is essentially to review some tools (e.g., utility theory, cognitive modeling, etc.) that are or might be used to tackle new problems in the context of anthropocentered systems, especially when considering the recent evolution of Information Systems towards distributed ones. Several real-life problems (mostly in an industrial setting) are reviewed. They all concern applications on which the authors have worked (or are working) together. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.