Patent Document ID: 8250018
Application ID: 12214347

Base Claim:
1. An expert system for aiding engineering personnel in a contact lens manufacturing, comprising: a user interface for receiving a query from a user regarding an element of business entity's industrial environment in which the user works in a contact lens manufacturing related capacity; a database containing information describing aspects of elements of the business entity's industrial environment; the inference engine subsystem receives the query via the user interface and obtains solution information from the database by matching keyterms in the query, wherein the user interface outputs the solution information to the user; an inference engine matches keyterms in the query with keyterms associated with rules to select a rule from the database; and the inference engine obtains a further question from the database associated with the selected rule; the user interface prompts the user to answer the further question; and the inference engine determines if solution information associated with a user's answer to the further question is available in the database.

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Claim 4:
4. The expert system claimed in claim 1 , wherein the inference engine subsystem determines whether query relates to a knowledge-based solution or an expert consultation-based solution by matching keyterms in the query.