Expert Systems

• British Telecom Labs
  Application: SPEED (Solutions Pricing and End to End Design)
  SPEED consists of two tools. Designer is a model-based expert system that understands concepts such as geographic locations/distances (GIS), applications, traffic and bandwidth requirements and available services (ISDN, SMDS, Frame Relay and Private Circuits). BT Lab's sales force uses Designer to analyze and refine "what-if" scenarios on a laptop PC and then produce on-the-spot pricing. Without Designer, the same process would take several weeks to accomplish back at base.

• Cognition Corporation
  Application: Cost Advantage™
  Cost Advantage™ is a powerful Design for Manufacturability (DFM) expert system powered by Allegro CL. The system captures manufacturing process knowledge and leverages that information to identify and reduce costs at every stage of a product's life cycle.

• University of Chicago Infolab
  Application: FAQFinder
  A knowledge-based information retrieval application developed by using Allegro CL, FAQFinder is a question-and-answer system that uses a natural language interface to search for information on FAQ lists found on the web. The FAQ lists are derived from USENET News Groups and comprise the groups' collective knowledge regarding popular topics. A user may ask a question in natural language, and FAQFinder will provide the FAQ file most likely to yield the answer, search through the file for similar questions and present the answers ordered according to likelihood of a match.

• PricewaterhouseCoopers
  Application: Comet and Planet
  Comet is a knowledge-based audit planning application. The application helps PricewaterhouseCoopers audit professionals decide which audit procedures should be undertaken at a particular company, so that the audit is both effective and efficient. The Planet application is helping PricewaterhouseCoopers dramatically reduce the time required to plan an audit.

• Signal Insurance
  Application: SIGNAL System
  The Signal information system provides information to the customer representatives (on assets, policy offers, deadlines, etc.) and also computes premiums, drafts offers, and performs other knowledge-based tasks. Because each sales situation must be treated individually, the cost of sales can be sharply reduced with a knowledge-based information system that can help sales representatives gather personal information about the customer, and compute benefit analyses based on this and other data. Running the system on laptop computers enables the representatives to take their expert system on the road.

• University of Wyoming Applied AI Lab
  Application: CARMA
  Wyoming ranchers have a new source of expert advice in responding to grasshopper infestations thanks to the Case-based Range Management Advisor (CARMA).