More on Expert Systems

User interface

The function of the user interface is to present questions and information to the operator and supply the operator's responses to the inference engine. Any values entered by the user must be received and interpreted by the user interface. Some responses are restricted to a set of possible legal answers, others are not. The user interface checks all responses to insure that they are of the correct data type.

Application of Expert Systems

Expert systems are designed and created to facilitate tasks in the fields of accounting, medicine, process control, financial service, production, human resources etc. Indeed, the foundation of a successful expert system depends on a series of technical procedures and development that may be designed by certain technicians and related experts. When a corporation begins to develop and implement an expert system project, it will use self sourcing, in sourcing and/or outsourcing techniques.
An example, and a good demonstration of the limitations of, an expert system used by many people is the Microsoft Windows operating system troubleshooting software located in the "help" section in the taskbar menu.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

• Provide consistent answers for repetitive decisions, processes and tasks
• Hold and maintain significant levels of information
• Reduces creating entry barriers to competitors
• Review transactions that human experts may overlook

Disadvantages

• The lack of human common sense needed in some decision makings
• The creative responses human experts can respond to in unusual circumstances 
• The challenges of automating complex processes
• The lack of flexibility and ability to adapt to changing environments as questions are standard and cannot be changed
• Not being able to recognize when no answer is available

Types of problems solved by expert systems

Expert systems are most valuable to organizations that have a high-level of know-how experience and expertise that cannot be easily transferred to other members. They are designed to carry the intelligence and information found in the intellect of experts and provide this knowledge to other members of the organization for problem-solving purposes.

Top of the page