Submitting requests with degrees of satisfaction to be used for fuzzy evaluation of responses

• US 7,792,750 B2
• Filed: 09/22/2004
• Issued: 09/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/22/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Moeller, Stefan J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Cheung; Mary
• Assistant Examiner(s): Holly; John H
• Application Number:
  US10/947,470
• Publication Number:
  US 20060080209A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,176 Days
• Field of Search: 705/40, 705/1, 705/37, 705/35, 705/26, 705/39, 705/67, 705/80, 705/14, 283/67, 283/62, 383/127, 707/5
• US Class Current: 705/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/102 Bill distribution or payments
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

The present invention provides a system and method for providing requests using linguistic terms to describe importance and degrees of satisfaction. For example, a user may submit a bid invitation for items and use linguistic terms to describe the importance of each item and of attributes of the items. Linguistic terms may also be used to describe degrees of satisfaction with possible values of attributes of the items. The system and method of the present invention use fuzzy logic to evaluate the offers. The evaluation provides a degree of satisfaction based on the information provided by the user.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for generating a bid invitation document and evaluating bids received, comprising:

presenting a query on a display device of a bidding system to a prospective purchaser;

receiving a first selection by the prospective purchaser from the query, the first selection identifying a desired item and a first linguistic term describing a degree of importance assigned to the desired item;

receiving a second selection identifying an attribute of said desired item from the query, the second selection also identifying a second linguistic term describing a degree of importance assigned to the attribute;

receiving a third selection identifying a first value for said attribute, the third selection also identifying a third linguistic term describing a degree of satisfaction assigned to the first value for the attribute;

generating, by a processing server of the bidding system, said bid invitation document using responses to the queries and the selections;

electronically submitting said bid invitation document to prospective suppliers to notify said suppliers of the opportunity to submit a bid responsive to said bid invitation document; and

upon receipt of a bid,

retrieving each attribute from the bid,

determining whether the retrieved attribute is a discrete attribute or a continuous attribute, the discrete attribute being associated with a discrete quantitative value and the continuous attribute being associated with two closest discrete values,

for a discrete attribute, retrieving the discrete quantitative value associated with the discrete attribute,

for a continuous attribute, calculating a quantitative value by calculating contribution of the closest discrete quantitative values associated with the continuous attribute;

generating a quantitative degree of satisfaction value for the bid, the quantitative degree of satisfaction value of the bid being computed using a weighted method that takes account of a defuzzified weight for importance of the desired item, a defuzzified weight for the attribute of the desired item, and the discrete quantitative value for a discrete attribute or the calculated quantitative for a continuous attribute; and

generating a linguistic result to be presented to the prospective purchaser, the linguistic result being based on the quantitative degree of satisfaction value.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

querying said prospective purchaser to identify a second value of said attribute, including providing said prospective purchaser with a second set of degree of satisfaction fuzzy variables to select a second degree of satisfaction to describe said second value; and

generating a numerical value representing a third degree of satisfaction to describe a system generated possible value using said first degree of satisfaction and said second degree of satisfaction.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said importance fuzzy variables comprise not important, not so important, medium, important and very important.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said degree of satisfaction fuzzy variables comprise very bad, bad, medium, good, and very good.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising ranking the quantitative degree of satisfaction values value for the evaluated bid with other evaluated bid.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said prospective purchaser can modify a first set of linguistic terms that the first and second linguistic terms are selected from and a second set of linguistic terms that the third linguistic term is selected from.

7. A system for obtaining bids, comprising:

a processor;

a memory coupled to said processor; and

a bid invitation generator residing in said memory and executed by said processor, said bid invitation generator comprising;

a graphical user interface generator for generating a graphical user interface having controls to;

receive a first selection by the prospective purchaser, the first selection identifying a desired item and a first linguistic term describing a degree of importance assigned to the desired item;

receive a second selection identifying an attribute of the desired item, the second selection also identifying a second linguistic term describing a degree of importance assigned to the attribute;

receive a third selection identifying a first value for the attribute, the third selection also indentifying a third linguistic term describing a degree of satisfaction assigned to the first value for the attribute;

a bid invitation generator for generating a bid invitation for potential bidders using said input from said user and for storing at least one selection of one of said degrees of satisfaction associated with said bid invitation; and

a bid evaluation engine, upon receipt of a bid, being adapted to;

retrieve each attribute from the bid,

determine whether the retrieved attribute is a discrete attribute or a continuous attribute, the discrete attribute being associated with a discrete quantitative value and the continuous attribute being associated with two closest discrete values,

for a discrete attribute, retrieve a fuzzy the discrete quantitative value associated with the discrete attribute,

for a continuous attribute, calculate a quantitative value by calculating contribution of the closest discrete quantitative values associated with the continuous attribute;

generate a quantitative degree of satisfaction value for the bid, the quantitative degree of satisfaction value being computed using a weighted method that takes account of a defuzzified weight for importance of the desired item, a defuzzified weight for the attribute of the desired item, and the discrete quantitative value for a discrete attribute or the calculated quantitative for a continuous attribute; and

translate the quantitative degree of satisfaction value to a linguistic expression to be presented to the prospective purchaser, the linguistic express being easily understood by, the prospective purchaser.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein said bid evaluation engine ranks said quantitative value with other quantitative values obtained by evaluating other bids.

9. Computer readable medium storing thereon program instructions that, when executed, cause an executing device to:

present a query on a display device of a bidding system to a prospective purchaser;

receive a first selection by the prospective purchaser from the query, the first selection identifying a desired item and a first linguistic term describing a degree of importance assigned to the desired item;

receive a second selection identifying an attribute of said desired item from the query, the second selection also identifying a second linguistic term describing a degree of importance assigned to the attribute;

receive a third selection identifying a first value for said attribute, the third selection also indentifying a third linguistic term describing a degree of satisfaction assigned to the first value for the attribute;

generate, by a processing server of the bidding system, said bid invitation document using responses to the queries and the selections;

electronically submit said bid invitation document to prospective suppliers to notify said suppliers of the opportunity to submit a bid responsive to said bid invitation document; and

upon receipt of a bid,

retrieve each attribute from the bid,

determine whether the retrieved attribute is a discrete attribute or a continuous attribute, the discrete attribute being associated with a discrete quantitative value and the continuous attribute being associated with two closest discrete values,

for a discrete attribute, retrieve the discrete quantitative fuzzy value associated with the discrete attribute,

for a continuous attribute, calculate a quantitative value by calculating contribution of the closest discrete quantitative values associated with the continuous attribute;

generate a quantitative degree of satisfaction value for the bid, the quantitative degree of satisfaction value of the bid being computed using a weighted method that takes account of a defuzzified weight for importance of the desired item, a defuzzified weight for the attribute of the desired item, and the discrete quantitative value for a discrete attribute or the calculated quantitative for a continuous attribute; and

generate a linguistic result to be presented to the prospective purchaser, the linguistic result being based on the quantitative degree of satisfaction value.

10. The computer readable medium of claim 9, further comprising instructions that cause the executing device to:

query said prospective purchaser to identify a second value of said attribute, including providing said prospective purchaser with a second set of degree of satisfaction fuzzy variables to select a second degree to describe said second value; and

generate a numerical value representing a third degree of satisfaction to describe a system generated possible value using said first degree of satisfaction and said second degree of satisfaction.

11. The computer readable medium of claim 9, wherein said importance fuzzy variables comprise not important, not so important, medium, important and very important.

12. The computer readable medium of claim 9, wherein said degree of satisfaction fuzzy variables comprise very bad, bad, medium, good, and very good.

13. The computer readable medium of claim 9, further comprising ranking the quantitative degree of satisfaction value for the evaluated bid with other evaluated bids.

14. The computer readable medium of claim 9, wherein said prospective purchaser can modify a first set of linguistic terms that the first and second linguistic terms are selected from and a second set of linguistic terms that the third linguistic term is selected from.