Expert Systems in a Managerial Context

At present, there is a wide range of expert systems reported as working or under development, with the number and scope increasing rapidly. They have been under development for a number of years, both as an academic study within the general area of artificial intelligence and in the industrial/medical fields. The recent increased body of experiments and working systems is due at least partly to the development of purpose‐ specific computer programming languages such as Prolog and Lisp and commercially available packages called expert system shells. Whereas traditional computer software is designed to handle data and computation, the new expert system software tools are intended to handle deductive logic in the form of rules and relations between knowledge elements. Systems can be developed in‐house or alternatively a specialist consultant can undertake this work on their client's behalf. Expert systems specifically designed for helping managers are not common at present but there is a group of management advisory expert systems available from PPL. Similar management advisory systems will become more common particularly in view of the increasing availability and use of microcomputers at all levels of management.