A FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPING AND EVALUATING EXPERT-SYSTEMS FOR TEMPORALBUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Many management problems that lend themselves to an expert system solu tion include 'time' as a problem dimension yet expert system requireme nts for temporal categories such as monitoring and planning have not b een enumerated and analyzed for business applications. This paper pres ents a framework for systems developers in business to use when select ing ol using an expert system shell for temporal problems. We describe the framework first in terms of the requirements for temporal expert systems and the problems that meeting some of these requirements produ ce. We then expand the framework by evaluating features that support t emporal requirements in expert systems that are either currently avail able or are in development, Finally, we demonstrate the use of the fra mework by applying it to an in-depth analysis of a particular expert s ystem shell for a workflow application. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.