From Operational Research OR to knowledge-based systems-An industrial experience

This article gives an account of the activities and progress of Operational Research OR within BICC, a large multinational group of companies involved in construction, engineering and electronics business. To maintain an up-to-date and effective service, BICC’s Operational Research OR team has had to broaden its activities from purely Operational Research OR to a mix of Operational Research OR and information technology, particularly knowledge-based systems (KBS) and expert systems. The article outlines in some detail a significant application of OR/KBS to production planning and seheduling. Other applications using expert systems are also mentioned, and it is seen that there are considerable benefits to be gained from this approach, as opposed to one based wholly on computational methods.