Two of the most important factors contributing to national andinternational economy are processing of information for accuratefinancial forecasting and decision making as well as processing ofinformation for efficient control of manufacturing systems for increasedproductivity. The associated problems are very complex andconventional methods often fail to produce acceptable solutions.Moreover, businesses and industries always look for superior solutionsto boost profitability and productivity. In recent times, artificial neuralnetworks have demonstrated promising results in solving manyreal-world problems in these domains, and these techniques areincreasingly gaining business and industry acceptance among thepractitioners.