Internet-based expert systems

The Internet offers a large potential for delivery of various information-based services, including the services of intelligent applications. As the availability of the Internet has grown, its value as a medium for the delivery of expert systems in particular has increased. There are now a large number of expert systems available on the Internet, including applications in industry, medicine, science and government. Though the Internet provides several advantages for expert system development, it also presents some special problems. These advantages and disadvantages are explored in more detail in this paper. The paper also presents a review of several Internet-based expert systems with a representative sample of publicly available applications, and a discussion of typical tools for developing Internet-based expert systems. A case study of an Internet-based expert system is presented as well.     

Lessons learned from developing a mission-critical expert system with multiple experts through rapid prototyping

The expert systems technology is ubiquitous among the mission-critical tasks in the defense area. Knowledge compiled through the military applications can serve as a remarkable source of learning opportunities for those in the civilian sector. In this paper, we describe the process of developing one such mission-critical military application, which contains an embedded expert system. A large number of experts simultaneously participated in numerous knowledge acquisition sessions to provide their expertise in air combat planning. The rapid prototyping methodology was employed as a vehicle to facilitate the knowledge acquisition process. By recounting the development process, we intend to share the lessons learned from this experience. These lessons are presented from three different perspectives, i.e. the knowledge engineers, the experts, and regarding the rapid prototyping methodology.     

MAG-EX: A magnetics fabrication expert systems focusing expert systems technology on improving quality control

This paper describes the development and experiences involved with creating a prototype application for the use of expert systems technology in manufacturing, specifically in quality control. The company described in the paper is an electronics manufacturer specializing in power supplies and amplifiers for military and commercial applications. It currently relies heavily on traditional manufacturing information systems technology. Quality control must meet DoD and other regulations and directly affects the bottom-line. As a potential expert system project, management felt as though product quality and the company as a whole could benefit from strategic development in Quality Assurance. The paper discusses the process, the difficulties, and the derived benefits to quality control from the development of an expert system application. Further, the paper reports on additional training benefits derived from the explanation capability of the expert system.     

Hybrid expert systems: A survey of current approaches and applications

This paper is a statistical analysis of hybrid expert system approaches and their applications but more specifically connectionist and neuro-fuzzy system oriented articles are considered. The current survey of hybrid expert systems is based on the classification of articles from 1988 to 2010. Present analysis includes 91 articles from related academic journals, conference proceedings and literature reviews. Our results show an increase in the number of recent publications which is an indication of gaining popularity on the part of hybrid expert systems. This increase in the articles is mainly in neuro-fuzzy and rough neural expert systems’ areas. We also observe that many new industrial applications are developed using hybrid expert systems recently.     

EXPERT SYSTEMS FOR BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Expert systems are becoming more prevalent in financial and business applications. With venture capital pouring into the expert systems area, there is greater interest in expert systems by commercial firms. Companies are either building in-house expert systems capabilities or contracting out to expert system developers to construct expert systems for business applications. This paper presents much of the work being done in developing expert systems in business and discusses fertile areas for constructing more business expert systems.     

Progress in systems ergonomics: a selective review

Abstract

The 1967 conference on the Human Operator in Complex Systems identified several developments required in systems ergonomics. Progress in four areas requiring development is reviewed, based on information from workshops and surveys of applications of systems ergonomics in military systems. It is concluded that there has been less progress than might have been hoped in the use of systems relevant criteria in systems ergonomics. Few applications have involved trade-offs between selection, training and equipment design. Task analysis techniques have not advanced, although their use may be changing. Although there appears to be general agreement on the major activities associated with systems ergonomics, the emphasis placed on those different activities may be changing as a result of technological developments. However, these technological developments are now providing opportunities for systems ergonomists to improve their tools and techniques.     

Expert systems: A survey of their use in UK business

A number of surveys have been carried out in the past ten years on the use of expert systems in business. This paper compares previous survey findings with a new one undertaken in the Spring of 1994; it finds significant differences in the level of use of expert systems. One thousand companies across the UK were surveyed regarding their use of information systems in general and expert systems in particular, and the results are discussed in this paper. A response rate of 22.5% showed that 50 out of 214 organisations, use expert systems for a variety of applications, ranging from strategic to operational. The analysis identifies users of expert systems by organisation size and industry sector. It also highlights their reasons for use. The paper concludes by identifying the perceived business benefits and the relative costs involved with the purchase or development of an expert system, as identified by the organisations.     

Artificial intelligence and expert systems applications in new product development—a survey

The authors review and categorize the research in applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and expert systems (ES) in new product development (NPD) activities. A brief overview of NPD process and AI is presented. This is followed by a literature survey in regard to AI and ES applications in NPD, which revealed twenty four articles (twenty two applications) in the 1990–1997 period. The applications are categorized into five areas: expert decision support systems for NPD project evaluation, knowledge-based systems (KBS) for product and process design, KBS for QFD, AI support for conceptual design and AI support for group decision making in concurrent engineering. Brief review of each application is provided. The articles are also grouped by NPD stages and seven NPD core elements (competencies and abilities). Further research areas are pointed out.     

What makes expert systems survive over 10 years—empirical evaluation of several engineering applications

This case study analyzes eight expert system applications that have successfully been in industrial use for a long time. We have personally been involved in the development of these applications and are thus in a good position to analyze what is important for a successful application and what kind of mistakes can be made. Since the development of the applications started in 1986–1990 and some of them are still in use we are able to observe what has happened to those applications during their lifetime. Our key observations are related to the scope of the applications, to the trade-off between usability and automation, to the role of human experts in the use and development of expert systems, on the technical solutions used, on aspects of the operation of the expert system and on the similarities between expert systems and information systems. The key findings are expressed as 20 hypotheses for successful expert systems. The support of each application to the hypotheses is discussed.     

An analysis of environmental expert system applications

This study outlines the current state of expert system technology in environmental protection. The paper defines general characteristics of expert systems and identifies the kind of problems in environmental protection which are well suited for expert system use. This study introduces, classifies and briefly describes twenty-one expert system approaches from Canada and the F.R.G., many of them still in an early development state.The analysis and evaluation show that not many expert systems are in actual use for practical environmental decision making. Finally the areas with the highest potential for successful employment of today's expert system technology are identified and a number of research needs stated. More progress is needed towards truly operational, “intelligent” (i.e. AI-based) environmental information systems.     

Expert systems applied to problems in geographic information systems: Introduction, review and prospects

This paper critically reviews current expert system developments relevant to geographic information systems, and identifies several research topics for application of expert system technology in geographic information systems. We have identified four major problem domains of geographic information systems in which expert system technology has been applied—automated map design, terrain/feature extraction, database management/user interface, and geographic decision support systems. Efforts in each problem domain are critically reviewed. Considering the accomplishments and shortcomings of efforts to date, we identify areas likely to gain importance in this field. Our view of these prospects is moderated by constraints of current technology and a realistic view of current efforts. Future research will place more emphasis on formal representation of both knowledge and uncertainty. Another future research area will be the development of advanced tools for geographic knowledge acquisition. Finally, better methods for working with large-scale geographic databases will be needed.     

A GUI for Jess

The paper describes JessGUI, a graphical user interface developed on top of the Jess expert system shell. The central idea of the JessGUI project was to make building, revising, updating, and testing Jess-based expert systems easier, more flexible, and more user friendly. There are many other expert system building tools providing a rich and comfortable integrated development environment to expert system builders. However, they are all either commercial or proprietary products. Jess and JessGUI are open-source freeware, and yet they are well suited for building even complex expert system applications, both stand-alone and Web-based ones. An important feature of JessGUI is its capability of saving knowledge bases in XML format (in addition to the original Jess format), thus making them potentially easy to interoperate with other knowledge bases on the Internet. Jess and JessGUI are also used as practical knowledge engineering tools to support both introductory and advanced university courses on expert systems. The paper presents design details of JessGUI, explains its links with the underlying Jess knowledge representation and reasoning tools, and shows examples of using JessGUI in expert system development. It also discusses some of the current efforts in extending Jess/JessGUI in order to provide intelligent features originally not supported in Jess.     

Strategy and impacts of expert systems for bank lending

Although banking applications of expert systems are becoming more common, little consideration has been given to either the strategies motivating their development or to the impacts resulting from their use. This paper describes the strategy and impacts of expert systems development and use in banking, in particular in the domain of bank lending. Copyright 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd     

故障诊断专家系统及其发展

文章对主要的故障诊断专家系统进行了系统的归纳和分类,主要关注故障诊断专家系统在军事领域的应用;重点讨论了基于规则的诊断专家系统、基于模型的诊断专家系统、基于人工神经网络的诊断专家系统、基于模糊推理的诊断专家系统和基于事例的诊断专家系统的技术要点、发展现状、优缺点及其在军事方面的应用;最后,对该学科的发展做出了预测,指出基于多种模型结合的诊断专家系统、分布式诊断专家系统、实时诊断专家系统是今后的发展方向。     

计算机系统在自动化仪器仪表中的应用

随着各领域技术的迅速发展和不断进步,计算机技术逐渐渗透到自动化控制技术中,其中,嵌入式计算机系统已经在仪器仪表领域获得了越来越多的应用。如今,自动化仪器仪表已具备＂工业IT＂的特征。本文首先介绍了我国仪器仪表控制系统的发展历程,阐述了嵌入式计算机系统的定义、特征、基本构架以及嵌入式计算机系统中的软件技术,对嵌入式计算机系统在仪器仪表中的应用进行了研究与分析,并展望了高级嵌入式系统对未来新型仪器仪表技术的支持及其前景。     

Expert systems and their applications in production and operations management

Recently, the world competitive environment has forced organizations to reexamine and reevaluate their manufacturing strategies. Large capital investments in machine tools and management control systems are being made. The application of expert systems in the production environment has been steadily increasing. This paper examines the concepts of expert systems and reviews the literature pertinent to the areas of application in production management such as scheduling, layout planning and tools used in applying these concepts such as simulation and optimization. It has been concluded that due to increasing automation requirements in manufacturing and the intensified organizational competitive environment, the decision making process itself will have to be automated. It has been suggested that expert systems could be a vehicle in achieving this. This paper examines the applications of expert systems in production and operations management.The technology of expert systems is still in its infancy and many researchers see learning as a major problem. As expert systems become more readily available, the management issues of safety, validity and reliability will become more crucial. The compensation on transferring of knowledge is unclear. Also, the fear of replacement of white collar jobs is growing.     

Nordic teleradiology development.

In the Nordic countries there are several reasons why teleradiology has been an interesting topic of research during the last years. The distances in rural areas are long, and radiology expert service is not available in every health centre which is able to provide X-rays. Also, the telecommunication network is on a very advanced level in the Nordic countries. The staff is well educated and they are used to operating with computers. This all means that the infrastructure to develop and use systems like teleradiology exists. This paper describes two separate systems developed in Norway and Finland. Their development has been in many respects the same. The common hardware and software features, as well as the differences and the clinical experiences, are discussed in this paper.     

The infusion of expert systems in banking: An exploratory study

Numerous studies can be found on expert systems (ES) as a specific IT in the literature. However, their focus has been mainly on system development from a technical perspective. Based on an empirical study on expert systems diffusion in 20 British banking organizations, this paper reports the findings from the study. The study finds that ES infusion concentrated in specific processes that require extensive knowledge in banking. There is a strong organizational perspective towards expert systems development in these banking organizations rather than the technical perspective. ES diffusion and top management commitment are closely associated. The existence of IT strategy aligned with business strategy (and/or with an A1 element within it) is not a good predictor for ES adoptions. Three cases of expert systems applications in banking are given in the paper. These results are useful for practitioners in managing their intelligent systems projects and researchers for further studies in this area.     

Expert systems in production planning and scheduling: A state-of-the-art survey

Intelligent solutions, based on expert systems, to solve problems in the field of production planning and scheduling are becoming more and more widespread nowadays. Especially the last decade has witnessed a growing number of manufacturing companies, including glass, oil, aerospace, computers, electronics, metal and chemical industries—to name just a few—interested in the applications of expert systems (ESs) in manufacturing. This paper is a state-of-the-art review of the use of ESs in the field of production planning and scheduling. The paper presents famous expert systems known in the literature and current applications, analyzes the relative benefits and concludes by sharing thoughts and estimations on ESs future prospects in this area.     

Systems applications of GaAs devices and ICs

Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is now being considered by the semiconductor industry as a serious challenger to the dominance of silicon in high-speed digital circuits. In addition, with the accelerated progress in developing GaAs ICs for microwave and optoelectronics applications, major future markets are projected. This paper surveys the product areas and associated system applications for GaAs and related III-V compound semiconductor devices and ICs. Particular attention is given to the three main IC product areas of digital, analogue and optoelectronics and their applications to both military and civil systems. The strongest market currently is for military analogue devices. The projected digital market in the 1990s, however, dominates the other IC product areas.