%0 Journal Article
%T An ontology
%A Kun Chen
%A Ren-Yong Guo
%A Shanshan Wang
%A Si Chen
%A Zhiyong Liu
%J Journal of Information Science
%@ 1741-6485
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0165551518787693
%X The efficacy of the principal每agent contract in supply-chain quality control depends not only on contract parameters but also such noncontract parameters as cost of a high-quality effort and the diagnostic error of the inspection policy. The noncontract parameters usually fluctuate and are unobservable during contract execution, which may hinder suppliers＊ high-quality effort, or, in other words, result in a lower efficacy for the contract. This article proposes an ontology-based approach to facilitating a principal每agent contract by monitoring the contract＊s loss of efficacy. The approach consists of ontology-based models and data-centric algorithms. The ontology-based models not only formally represent concepts and relations between concepts involved in predicting whether a contract is efficient, but also organise multichannel data such as news, marketplace reports and industry databases containing information of factors impacting the unobservable noncontract parameters＊ fluctuations. Based on the ontology-based models and multichannel data, the data-centric algorithms are developed to predict whether a contract will lose efficacy. We evaluate our approach through case study, simulation and comparison against related approaches to supply-chain quality control. The case study proves that our approach is appropriate. In the simulation evaluation, a combination of our approach and principal每agent contract is more efficient than just a principal每agent contract. The comparison results against related approaches show that our approach is a novel, inexpensive and directly applicable tool for reducing both asymmetric information and moral hazard in supply-chain quality control
%K Data-centric framework
%K ontologies
%K principal每agent contract
%K quality control
%K supply chain
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0165551518787693