A Sales Support System for Agents of the Machine Tool Industry

Industrial countries regard the machine tool industry as strategic industry, and ensure its crucial role among industries by tremendous government supports. Nevertheless, due to the special characteristics of industrial products, such as marketing through regional agencies, less transaction number with higher amounts, longer purchase cycle, and various product models, the application of data mining to industrial products is relatively less. Note worthily, when a customer purchase machine tools through regional agents, he or she usually purchases special accessories for coupling with purchased machines. Most of the salesperson at regional agents recommends special accessories to customers by judging the machine type depending on their experience. That often incurs the loss of extra sales, or the delay in fulfilling orders. The back order operation brings customer complaint as well. This research not only aims to applying the CRoss Industry Standard Process for Data Ming (CRIPS-DM) to find out association rules which is helpful to make decision, but also to integrate association rules and construct support system to assist regional agents’ salespersons when they make recommendation decision. The results of this research can be used to motivate more data mining researches or applications focus on industrial related product.