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6.3. BUSINESS SYSTEM COMPONENTS APPROACH

Another approach is to examine the Business System components, elements, and cross-components for aspects that are knowledge-intensive:

  • Customer:
    • Market and competitive intelligence and analysis
    • Customer needs and profiling
    • Cross-product marketing
  • Product:
    • Information product functionality
    • Matching customer needs to available products: assisting customers in optimizing product functionality, quality, and cost tradeoffs
    • Product configuration, customization, and pricing
    • Product performance monitoring
    • Helpdesk: product use, problem diagnosis, repair procedures
    • Optimize delivery and repair scheduling and logistics
  • Process:
    • Quality assurance for information products
    • Measurement system analyses and forecasts
    • Process modeling and simulation
    • Workflow management, control, and monitoring
  • Management:
    • Environmental scanning with intelligent assistants
    • Workflow optimization: time, quality, cost
    • Best practice application
  • Workforce:
    • Decision support
    • Work assignment: matching skills, performance, availability, preference
    • Structuring problem-solving
    • Automated appraisals
    • Personal assistant
    • Integrated performance support system: help, training, testing, examples
  • Expertise:
    • Knowledge representation and structuring
    • Knowledge repository
    • Knowledge acquisition/elicitation
    • Knowledge discovery and data mining
    • Intelligent tutoring systems
    • Advisory expert systems
    • Selection of creative thinking method
  • Infrastructure:
    • Logical knowledge representation of financial and physical infrastructures
    • Logical knowledge representation of IT infrastructure/architecture
    • Inventory management: minimize inventory and shortages
    • Logistics management: optimize the flow of material by time and cost

6.4. ES GENERIC TASK APPROACH

ES applications are plentiful in industries and companies where work is management-critical -- that is, management excellence is critical to success. In addition to identifying management tasks (such as planning, scheduling, monitoring, regulating, and controlling), the generic task approach to identifying promising ES also identifies certain types of work tasks that are highly amenable to ES. Waterman (1983) proposed a list of ten tasks that were natural ES applications, and Beckman (1996) has added several additional task types:

  • Interpreting
  • Predicting
  • Diagnosing
  • Designing/configuring
  • Planning
  • Monitoring
  • Debugging
  • Repairing
  • Instructing
  • Controlling
  • Classifying
  • Evaluating
  • Filtering
  • Regulating
  • Scheduling
  • Matching/Assigning
  • Organizing
  • Optimizing

7. BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF EXPERT SYSTEMS

In this section, numerous examples of prototypical business applications of expert systems will be described. In no sense is this list exhaustive, and it is hoped that these applications may spur additional ideas from the reader. The section is organized around the business system components.

7.1. PRODUCT APPLICATIONS OF EXPERT SYSTEMS

Many types of products can have expert systems embedded in them. For example, ES can be used to monitor the performance or health of engines, appliances, and computer systems, reporting problems to the owner or the manufacturer. In addition to monitoring, ES can make diagnoses and suggest repairs. In another type of application, ES are used to control and optimize the performance of many products. For example, ES controllers are used to minimize energy usage in air conditioners and clothes dryers. In control tasks, ES using fuzzy logic are most often employed.

Software products offer many opportunities to employ ES. E-mail and voice-mail can be screened using evaluating and filtering generic tasks so that the most important and urgent messages are presented first. In addition, the system might signal the user as to the sender and message topic on important messages. Many messages approximating junk mail can be automatically deleted. Some message categories, such as confirmation, may receive automated replies.

Intelligent meeting schedulers could be especially valuable. An electronic scheduler could determine likely participants from the topic and prior meetings. It would poll the electronic calendars of potential participants looking for the optimal time and place, taking into account prior commitments, interests, roles, and work relationships. The scheduler could also do some limited negotiation and rescheduling of subordinate calendars.


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