The research group "Intelligent Systems and Business Informatics" (renamed 2007) was founded in 1997 by Prof. Gerhard Friedrich. At the moment the group consists of three permanent research positions, a technician and a secretary. Additional group members are founded by various research projects.

The current research activities of the group are focused on the technical level on the improvement of knowledge-based systems with a focus on applications for Production, Operations, and Management. These theoretical foundations lay the basis for the more business-oriented research topics of Mass Customization, Open Innovation, IT-strategy and Interactive Selling.

The research group actively participates in multiple international and national funded research projects and is also involved in various projects with industrial partners where research results are evaluated and implemented in industrial environments.

Research activities:

• Product configuration technology: Knowledge acquisition & -representation
• Model-based diagnosis: Diagnosis of knowledge bases and software systems
• Knowledge-based recommendation technology: Knowledge acquisition and intelligent user interfaces
• Consumer buying behaviour, decision support, explanations
• Semantic Web: Semantics-based knowledge management and information extraction, diagnosis and repair of web services
• Mass-customization: Cost models, complexity, and product configuration