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Financial planners are always anxious to assist engineers and scientists in making retirement decisions. Many engineers, especially Industrial Engineers (IE), have had courses that provide the knowledge to make these retirement financial plans themselves. This paper will provide a method of estimating retirement needs utilizing Excel software and IE college coursework.

Farmers are a small group, mostly college educated who run multi-million dollar yearly operations. Recent favorable economics has allowed this sector to look at new technology and determine the best way to invest in it. New considerations in the last few years have led to minimum/alternative tillage and planting, site specific farming decisions and small technology groups of farmers. The authors have put together their thoughts and wants which should be evaluated by future suppliers of technology and farm machinery.

Fluid power is used extensively in forestry equipment with some novel applications of hydraulics to fell, move and process logs and trees. Hydraulic components undergo rugged use under severe conditions, over long periods of minimal maintenance. Selected hydraulic designs are illustrated and discussed. Design features for service requirements on forestry equipment are detailed.

A rule-based expert system for forecasting combine sales in U.S.A. was developed and coupled with an econometric simulation model. The expert rules were built based on domain human experts' knowledges and experiences. The econometric forecasting model was developed based on economic data, statistics and analysis. This combination of simulation and expert system should increase the reliability of a combine sales forecast.