This five-volume set clearly manifests the great significance of these key technologies for the new economies of the new millennium. The discussions provide a wealth of practical ideas intended to foster innovation in thought and, consequently, in the further development of technology. Together, they comprise a significant and uniquely comprehensive reference source for research workers, practitioners, computer scientists, academics, students, and others on the international scene for years to come.

Contributors from major corporations present case histories of expert systems and neural networks presently implemented in manufacturing applications, for readers interested in manufacturing technology, but not necessarily with any background in expert systems or computers in general. Assesses various techniques and strategies for system development and implementation, and return on investment. Acidic paper. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Manufacturing Databases and Computer Integrated Systems is the first book to probe the problems and solutions presented by the diversity of databases within the manufacturing industry. The author examines these heterogeneous databases at both the macro (national/international) level and micro (intracompany and intercompany) level. This book is the result of an extensive international research project that involved 87 leading organizations. Manufacturing Databases and Computer Integrated Systems presents the compelling argument for using computers as database integrators, a concept beyond the obvious applications of number crunching and data storage. The book addresses several different areas of manufacturing technology, including product policies in manufacturing, fuzzy controls in plant operations, concurrent engineering, practical applications for expert systems, organizational prerequisites in manufacturing, heterogenous database environments, the benefits of object-oriented databases, and the requirements for virtual database integration. Manufacturing Databases and Computer Integrated Systems also presents case studies, including the TRW solution applied in Operation Desert Storm, Project CRONUS by BBN, the Intelligent Database Assistant (IDA) by GTE, General Motor's DATAPLEX solution, and Project Carnot by the Microelectronics and Computer Development Corporation (MCC). The book is a "must" for computer and database technologists, engineers, and senior management at most companies worldwide.

Use and development of database and expert systems can be found in all fields of computer science. The aim of this book is to present a large spectrum of already implemented or just being developed database and expert systems. Contributions cover new requirements, concepts for implementations (e.g. languages, models, storage structures), management of meta data, system architectures, and experiences gained by using traditional databases in as many areas of applications as possibble (at least in the fields listed). The aim of the book is to inspire a fruitful dialogue between developement in practice, users of database and expert systems, and scientists working in the field.

The book presents state of the art practices and research in the area of Knowledge Capture and Reuse in industry. This book demonstrates some of the successful applications of industrial knowledge management at the micro level. The Micro Knowledge Management (MicroKM) is about capture and reuse of knowledge at the operational, shopfloor and designer level. The readers will benefit from different frameworks, concepts and industrial case studies on knowledge capture and reuse. The book contains a number of invited papers from leading practitioners in the field and a small number of selected papers from active researchers. The book starts by providing the foundation for micro knowledge management through knowledge systematisation, analysing the nature of knowledge and by evaluating verification and validation technology for knowledge based system of frameworks for knowledge capture, reuse and development. A number integration are also provided. Web based framework for knowledge capture and delivery is becoming increasingly popular. Evolutionary computing is also used to automate design knowledge capture. The book demonstrates frameworks and techniques to capture knowledge from people, data and process and reuse the knowledge using an appropriate tool in the business. Therefore, the book bridges the gap between the theory and practice. The 'theory to practice' chapter discusses about virtual communities of practice, Web based approaches, case based reasoning and ontology driven systems for the knowledge management. Just-in-time knowledge delivery and support is becoming a very important tool for real-life applications.