1. An expert system for aiding engineering personnel in a contact lens manufacturing, comprising: a user interface for receiving a query from a user regarding an element of business entity's industrial environment in which the user works in a contact lens manufacturing related capacity; a database containing information describing aspects of elements of the business entity's industrial environment; and an inference engine subsystem for receiving the query via the user interface and obtaining solution information from the database by matching keyterms in the query, wherein the user interface outputs the solution information to the user.