? Reliability
? Provision of training
? Enhancement of Problem Solving Capabilities: ES enhances problem solving by allowing the integration of top expert s judgement into analysis. Problem solving is also enhanced by the integration of expertise of several experts.
Limitations of Expert Systems ?
? Knowledge to be captured is not always readily available.
? Expertise is hard to extract from humans.
? The approach of each expert to a situation may be different, yet correct.
? It is hard, even for a highly skilled expert to abstract good situational assessment when he is under time pressure.
? Users have natural cognitive limits, do they may not use the benefits of the system to the fullest extent.
? ES work well only in narrow domain.
? Help in building an ES is frequently required from Knowledge Engineers who are rare and expensive – a fact that would make ES construction rather expensive.
? Lack of trust by user may be a barrier to ES use.
? Knowledge transfer is subject to several perceptual and judgemental biases.
In conclusion of the discussion of ES and in order to make it more clear, some examples of application of expert systems is given:
Examples of Expert Systems ?
Example 1: Russian Trade Adviser
Problem : The economic and politically changes in what used to be the Soviet Union may provide an opportunity for many companies to trade with Eastern Europe. However there is little expertise in Western countries on what is really going on in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. So while there are opportunities, there are also risks. A stream of incomplete, frequently contradictory and even incorrect data clouds the situation. Business people want quick and reliable advice, but it is rarely available.
Solution. Deliotte and Touche, a management-consulting firm, developed an expert system. The major objective of the system is to provide advice on trade opportunities and licensing requirement s for medium to high technology products. The system started as an advisory service to the company s consultants. Now it is marketed for a fee to potential traders. Also the ES deals with export licensing requirements and provides a facsimile of an export licence application (displayed on the screen with instruction about how to complete it). The system, which includes several knowledge bases, is supported by hypertext that helps navigating through the complex forms.
Use. The system is very user friendly: it is based on simple sets of menus. The market is divided into 12 sectors, each matched with potential products. The system assesses the opportunities for general classes of products and for specific ones. Then, potential buyers are identified, as well as procedures for making contacts. Explanations are provided on request. Several other types of valuable information are provided by the system. (Source: Szuprowicz, 1991)
Example 2: Dustpro – Environmental Control in Mines ?
Problem. The majority of the 2000 active mines in the United States are medium or small sized. They cannot afford a full-time dust control engineer, whose major job is to re-evaluate and reassign facilities, each time operating conditions change. However, if a dust control engineer is not readily available, the mine must be shut down until an expert arrives. Experts are expensive but so is downtime, so this can be costly. Operating without appropriate testing and interpretation of results is a violation of federal regulations.
Solution. DustPro is a small rule-based system developed by the US Bureau of Mines. It includes about 200 rules and was developed with a Level 5 shell (from Information Builders) on a microcomputer. It took about 500 hours to develop the system. The system is now in operation in more than 200 mines.
System Characteristics. DustPro advises in three areas: control of methane gas emission, ventilation in continuous operations, and dust control of the mine s machines. Data on air quality is entered manually. The user interface is very friendly. The system is composed of 13 sub areas of expertise, and the average consultation time is 10 to 15 minutes.
System Use. DustPro, through a series of questions, determines what type of mine is most affected by the dust. Then, the system can advise the operators what to do if problems are suspected. The system ad its variants are used at the US Bureau of Mines Pittsburg Research Centre to diagnose problems telephoned in by mine operators. This saves bureau staff time and travel expense. Also, the staff can respond more quickly and devote more time to research and development. The system is so successful that more than ten countries have requested permission to use it in their mines.
CONCLUSION ?
In this seminar paper it was intended to introduce terms as knowledge building and corporate memory. Further the discussion goes on how the electronic systems are or could be used to assist in sharing the knowledge organisation-wide. In that context the term groupware is introduced to determine electronic systems that assist in human-human collaboration by using the rapidly growing systems of the computer age. The issue of corporate memory is discussed to be the most challenging point of the seminar due to the power, which the knowledge contains in it. Answer to the question why is corporate memory so poor? emphasises the complexity of organisations in the aspects of knowledge and its sharing. Consequently, the topic of the seminar leads to the tools for corporate memory. The approach for corporate memory by development of knowledge-based systems appears to be one of the most efficient solutions.
The topic of the seminar is still a subject to research and improvements. The nature of questions raised by it is complex by itself. Therefore, the combination of these is far more complicated. The main question, however, is to find the balance in use of electronic systems and human brains.
In the artifact-oriented view of work the artifacts (such as diagrams, documents, letters, reports etc.) are the focus of management attention. Moreover, tools and methods are solely for the production and modification of these artifacts. The process by which this work is done is regarded as secondary. (Conklin E. J. [1992] in Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Assisting human-human collaboration Morgan Kaufmann California p.562)
In the process-oriented paradigm there are still artifacts, but they are seen as being no more important than interactions between people (Conklin E. J. [1992] in Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Assisting human-human collaboration Morgan Kaufmann California p.563).
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