On the Application of Expert Systems

Abstract Expert systems have recently been arousing much interest in industry and elsewhere: it is envisaged that they will be able to solve problems in areas where computers have previously failed, or indeed, never been tried. However, although the literature in the field of expert systems contains much on their construction, on knowledge representa-tion techniques, etc, relatively little has been devoted to discussing their application to real-life problems. This article seeks to bring together a number of issues relevant to the application of expert systems by discussing their advantages and limitations, their roles and benefits, and the influence that real-life applications might have on the design of expert systems software. Part of the expert systems strategy of one major chemical company is outlined. Because it was in constructing one particular expert system that many of these issues became important this system is described briefly at the start of the paper and used to illustrate much of the later discussion. It is of the plausible-inference type and has application in the field of materials engineering. The article is aimed as much at the interested end-user who has a possible application in mind as at those working in the field of expert systems.