A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1992

SS SEX (Scheduling Software Selection EXpe11), a prototype expert system whose conceptual model is being presented in this report, facilitates the decisions to be made by any potential user as to which package to acquire. SSSEX uses an expert system shell, VP-Expert, to manipulate two modules, namely COM and SAM. COM (COnsultation Module) which itself is subdivided into eleven modules, upon interface with the potential user asks different questions to acquire factual knowledge about the company. It uses its built-in rule base structure to assess the user's requirements and then stores the needs in a module named "U-DAM". The other major module, named "SAM" (Software Assessment Module), interacts with the developer/programmeronly and has no interaction with the user. Upon interface with the developer, it seeks detailed software information about dif ferent packages and uses a weighted system to rank the capabilities of the software package being _ tested. These weights were selected after consultations with professionals from the Thai construction industry and were then incorporated into SAM by the developer. The rankings of different software are then saved in another module called "S-DAM". "MAM" ( MAtch Module) which is developed in, the Pascal Language, reads user's requirements from the "U-DAM" module and starts the matching process with the saved information about software packages in the "S-DAM" module to reach the most appropriate selection. An objective evaluation and further recommendations for further research are made at the end of the report.