A Knowledge-Based Expert System for Lab-Time Scheduling

Electronic switching software is tested in a system lab that is similar to a computer lab. Software developers (lab users) must schedule system lab-time to test their software. The process of scheduling lab-time for system lab users has mostly been done manually. This is a tedious, time-consuming and error-prone process. This paper describes the Automated Lab-Time Information and Scheduling System (ALTISS) that makes use of a knowledge-based expert system approach to simulate the heuristics used by a human in scheduling lab-time. The objective is to have a system that solves the above problems satisfactorily, and is user-friendly, flexible and easy to maintain.