Developing expert systems technology in a computer integrated manufacturing environment

Global competition is leading many corporations to differentiate themselves by the quality of their service and support to customers, in addition to product quality. Greater customer satisfaction results in better customer retention. One such developed application demonstrates how expert systems technology has been used to empower marketing employees to quickly answer a customer´s quote for a product (universal wrenches), by cutting across functional lines and performing a complete set of activities related to the manufacture of the product. This application enables the organization to radically reduce its lead time in the manufacture of universal wrenches resulting in substantial savings for the company. The purpose of the system is to automate the entire process of quoting a product. This makes the operation independent, to a certain extent, of the presence of all human factors involved in the decision making process