Abstract
Real-time decision making reflects the convergence of several digital technologies, including those concerned with the promulgation of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that underpin real-time actions. More specifically, real-time decision making can be depicted in terms of three converging dimensions: Internet of Things, decision making, and real-time. The Internet of Things include tangible goods, intangible services, ServGoods, and connected ServGoods. Decision making includes model-based analytics (since before 1990), information-based Big Data (since 1990), and training-based artificial intelligence (since 2000), and it is bolstered by the evolving real-time technologies of sensing (i.e., capturing streaming data), processing (i.e., applying real-time analytics), reacting (i.e., making decisions in real-time), and learning (i.e., employing deep neural networks). Real-time includes mobile networks, autonomous vehicles, and artificial general intelligence. Central to decision making, especially real-time decision making, is the ServGood concept, which the author introduced in an earlier paper (2012). It is a physical product or good encased by a services layer that renders the good more adaptable and smarter for a specific purpose or use. Addition of another communication sensors layer could further enhance its smartness and adaptiveness. Such connected ServGoods constitute a solid foundation for the advanced products of tomorrow which can further display their growing intelligence through real-time decisions.
