Knowledge Mining for Intelligent Decision Making in Small and Middle Business

Small and middle businesses (SMBs) play an increasingly important role, but their decision making process mostly relies on skilled employees which are usually not available. Information systems can help to solve this problem to a certain extent, meanwhile they also cause information explosion or even knowledge overload which confuses the decision makers. As an extended research of intelligent knowledge management, a knowledge mining method which can draw a knowledge relation map based on Extension Theory (Extenics) is presented. The path from conditions to the goal or the primary causes could be found through this map Therefore it can guide the managers to take actions by following all possible paths systemically and make better decisions. The application in a garment company proved its simplicity but useful value.