Message Management Systems at Work: Prototypes for Business Communication

In this article, we describe two applications based on a system for office communication that is more flexible and expressive than other systems. This system allows the computerization of tasks that previously required manual intervention because of each task's complexity. The applications, one automating office tasks and the other simulating a bicycle industry, highlight the system's ability to accommodate changes to the communication language. They also highlight the utility of both the formal language used by the system and the inferential model of communications used to interpret the messages.