See also: MOBIL RAN THIS RECRUITING AD IN NATIONAL MAGAZINES BETWEEN 1988-1992. I'M IN THE CENTER OF PAGE

Mobil was my first job after college. I enjoyed six wonderful years there learning how big business works and how global information systems are built. Mobil hired me because I had just gotten my Master's Degree in Artificial Intelligence and they wanted to start capturing the knowledge of their top experts. I started their Expert Systems Department, created training programs for experts and developers, and developed a Rapid Expert System Development Methodology based on reusing Object-Oriented Components.

I developed Mobil's Global Expert System Strategy. I formalized all the processes, procedures, and standards we used in my own corporate development team so they could be duplicated by affiliate development teams in other countries. It also meant building reusable components that could be shared and reused by these other teams. We used an enterprise Object Oriented Development tool called Platinum AIONDS, which is now called Computer Associates AION. I helped select that as Mobil's standard global expert system tool because it ran on mainframes, minicomputers, and PCs. I became known as an expert in CA AION.

During six years at Mobil Oil, established Mobil's Global Expert System Strategy, implemented Mobil's global Knowledge Management Strategy, and was lead programmer of Mobil's first successful Executive Information System for Int'l Marketing Division executives. (This experience led to BIZRULES.com's very first engagement, managing development of Burger King's RoadRunner EIS.)

Captured knowledge from top experts nearing retirement. Retained expert knowledge as a corporate asset that appreciated in value over time.

These Expert Systems helped Mobil share global best practices for sales & customer service to 200 Mobil Field Sales Engineers in over 80 countries.

These systems also increased Sales Rep face-to-face time with customers.

We captured Mobil's top expertise from around the world, and we programmed it into a suite of expert systems known as the Mobil Lube Knowledge Base (LKB). The Knowledge Base enabled Mobil to share best practices, expertise, knowledge, and industry practices from around the world to anyone else in the world via a laptop and CD-ROM. These systems recommended the right product to meet the customer's requirements and the best product for their specific application, and they also diagnosed problems with the customer's equipment as a Mobil value added service.

By capturing their knowledge, documenting it, and programming it into a series of rule-based expert systems, Mobil enabled many of their Engineers, Auditors, and Sales force to make the same expert-level decisions and recommendations out in the field as the experts would have made. These systems helped Mobil increase sales and profits around the world by enabling even their newest, most inexperienced staff to operate at an "expert level".

One of the biggest lessons we learned early on was to not rely on just one expert. For example, the first system I worked on was called Alfred, and it was named after Mobil's top Rolling Oil expert from Austria. Alfred was about to retire after 30 years, and I was called in to interview him and build a system that gave the same recommendations and advice as Alfred himself. The mistake we made was naming the system after him and not talking to other experts in other countries. In turned out that the Steel Rolling Mill industry (for which Mobil sells lubricants) was quite different in Japan and the Alfred System didn't handle those differences.

We learned that you need to involve ALL the experts from all the countries and get them to work together. One of the unexpected benefits from this was that top Mobil experts from around the world got an opportunity to work together in person for the first time. We rotated our expert meetings. I brought Mobil's top experts together for a few weeks at a time in places such as Paris, London, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.

Neat Facts:

To cut travel costs, I had to use lots of "round the world tickets" that required a fourth stop somewhere along the way like Hawaii. I had to do that a few times.

Once I left Tokyo at night on my birthday, and arrived in Hawaii the next morning on my birthday!

I flew on the Concorde from Washington D.C. to London.