Linking the Witness Simulation Software to an Expert System to Represent a Decision–Making Process

Expert systems, and artificial intelligence more generally, can provide a useful means for representing decisionmaking processes. By linking expert systems software to simulation software, an effective means of including these decision-making processes in a simulation model can be achieved. This paper demonstrates how a commercial off-the-shelf simulation package Witness can be linked to an expert systems package XpertRule through a Visual Basic interface. The methodology adopted could be used for models, and possibly software, other than those presented here.