The paper discusses the design of an Expert Coating Analysis Tool (ECAT) to solve a wide spectrum of coating-related problems.  A combination of Data Mining and Expert System techniques were explored during the design of the tool.  Automated data analysis and model construction processes were demonstrated as part of the design.

The proposed ECAT product is capable of addressing predefined and non-predefined questions thanks to a Reasoning Module and an extensible Domain Dictionary.  An automated Knowledge Acquisition Facility will allow ECAT to continue to grow and adapt to other applications.  This includes integrated learning methods to create new models and store them into a Knowledge Base, and autonomous and continuous access to external databases to improve these models.