The expert systems product: The symbiosis with OR
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The expert systems product: The symbiosis with OR
Developing ES for learning purposes is giving way to a need for useful finished products
Georgios Doukidis
The application of ES techniques within the Operational Research Society
This article seeks to investigate the emerging market of
expert systems (ES) products and to examine how it
might evolve in relationship to OR. The analysis is based
on the results of a suivey of the applications of ES
There have been many publications on the increasing
techniques within the OR Society and is presented in terms of the dominance of the expert systems building blocks and the emergence of expert systems products.
role that ES play In management science/operational
research. A recent study at the London School of Economics (Doukidis and Paul, 1989) investigated how much activity is actually taking place at a practical level on the subject of ES and OR, and what the nature of this activity is. The survey establishes how far ideas from ES have infiltrated the work of members of the OR Society,
The academic success of expert systems since the mid-i 970s has perhaps hidden the fact that an important
market for such systems has emerged from the mid-
1980s. Land, Cornford and Doukidis (1988) claim that, to date, the market and the general research environment
at what level, their practical significance and the prospects for future use.
has concentrated on the building blocks required for
experimental and prototype expert systems. Apart from those pushing the technology in order to provide a market for their products, the primary ambition for most involved
A questionnaire was sent out to one-third of OR Society members and the response rate was 26%. Comparing general characteristics with those found in
with ES is to engage in learning, rather than in the
Carter's 1985 survey of ORS membership shows that the sample is fairly representative of the Society in most of Its aspects. The one significant difference Is that the greater management concentration of the respondents and the
construction of operational systems based on reasonable
expectation of their utility and firm economic
justifications. Whilst considerable attention has been paid to the attempt to define general areas of application, much less effort has been put into the wider issues of how
lower information systems orientation might lead to an underestimate of the Involvement of the OR community in ES. Therefore, the 12.8% involved in some way in the production of ES systems shows a considerable change over the 9% of members who were actually involved in the production of ES in 1985 (Carter, 1987).
ES fit into existing information systems or into an
organization's business plan. In short, the concentration has been on the means, rather than on the ends.
The future will be different. We foresee a process of change in the market, characterized by a shift from a situation in which the means define the ends to one in which the ends drive the means, associated with which
Table 1 shows the summary prop
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