Chapter 6 • Managerial Support Systems 243collected from individual peanut fields throughout the
growing season, EXNUT makes recommendations for
irrigation, fungicide treatment, and pest management. The
results are quite positive: The fields managed by EXNUT
have consistently produced higher yields and high-quality
peanuts using less water and less fungicide than those
managed without the expert system (Exsys Inc., 2010).
Scheduling is another important area for expert
systems. Expert systems currently in use include a truck
routing and scheduling system that determines the
sequence of stops on a route to provide the best service and
a factory design system that organizes machines and
operators to provide an efficient flow of materials through
the factory and use the resources efficiently. As another
example, General Motors created the Expert Scheduling
System, or ESS, to generate viable manufacturing sched-
ules. ESS incorporates heuristics that had been developed
by an experienced factory scheduler into the system, and
it also links directly into GM’s computer-integrated
manufacturing (CIM) environment so that real-time plant
information is used to generate the plant floor schedules.
Some expert systems specialize in sifting through
massive sets of rules or other data. For example, expert
system online advisors have been created for more than a
dozen complex areas of Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) regulations. One of these online
advisors is the Asbestos Advisor, which is available for free
download by building owners, managers, and contractors
maintaining properties potentially contaminated with
asbestos. Based on the user’s input, the system provides
guidance on how asbestos standards might apply to build-
ings. In the first year it was placed on the Internet, nearly
80,000 businesses used the Asbestos Advisor. Another
example is the Case Worker Advisor, which has been devel-
oped to support the Navajo Nation’s Tribal Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare program.
This expert system captures the expertise of case workers in
making decisions about benefits to Navajo clients. TheExpert Systems Go Mobile
Traditionally expert systems have been run on a PC or a server (often via a Web interface), but that is
changing. Software vendor Exsys Inc. now makes its Corvid expert systems software available to run
on a variety of handheld computers. This expert systems mobility could be especially useful to sales
representatives, field technicians, and repair workers—and anyone else who works outside of an
office environment.
Some of the earliest mobile expert systems have been deployed in medical applications.
Epocrates, Inc., in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Laboratory of Computer Science,
has developed a mobile disease diagnosis and treatment reference tool called Epocrates SxDx. This
mobile expert system allows clinicians to enter an unlimited number of symptoms, lab results, and
patient demographics and then generates a list of the plausible diagnoses. Furthermore, Epocrates SxDx
can prompt clinicians to refine their input list based on the likelihood of patient symptoms and findings.
SxDx then uses the potential diagnoses to identify treatment options. “This integration of a diagnosis
index and the Epocrates mobile medical reference content can help to support clinical decisions
wherever they are made,” said Octo Barnett, M.D., Senior Scientific Director of Massachusetts General
Hospital’s Laboratory of Computer Science.
Mobile phones and an expert system are being used to help control malaria in Kenya as part of
the Millennium Village Project. In this new approach to controlling malaria, community health workers
visit households on the lookout for fevers that may indicate malaria. The health workers carry rapid
diagnostic testing materials that examine a drop of blood for the presence of the malaria pathogen.
Using a mobile phone, they send a text message with the patient’s identification and test results to the
expert system, which is located on a remote computer. Within seconds, an automated text response
from the expert system informs the health worker of the proper course of treatment, if any. The system
can also send reminders about follow-up treatments or scheduled clinic visits for the patient. In addition
to the rapid testing-mobile phone-expert system procedure, the new approach to controlling malaria
includes insecticide-treated bed nets made to last for five years and a new generation of combination
drugs built around a traditional Chinese herbal treatment. This combined approach has proven to be a
remarkably effective malaria-control system.
[Based on Chabrow, 2006; Epocrates, 2006; and Sachs, 2010]