Rules engine are core part of any busines process automation. "When some circumstances are assessed to true, then execute some job," is an example of a Rule Engine. A rule engine may be thought of as a more advanced version of the if/then statement interpreter. Rules are what are used to understand if/then statements. A rule engine may be thought of as a system that accepts data and rules as input. It will apply the rules to the data and provide us with a result based on the rules.
The purpose of a rules engine is to provide an alternate computational model. A rules engine is based on a Production Rule System, rather than the traditional imperative paradigm, which comprises of commands in succession with conditionals and loops. This is a collection of production rules, each of which includes a condition and an action - think of it as a series of if-then statements simplified.