Expert system to assist production planning

Abstract

The authors describe the approach and implementation of the production planning consultant system (PPC). PPC is an expert system designed to support production planning for a semiconductor device line. Its purpose is not to generate an initial plan, but to deal with modifications to the plan. The planner's revision process consists of three subtasks; PPC supports each subtask by providing a bidirectional update propagation mechanism, a monitoring mechanism, and an inference engine. One of the characteristics of PPC is that it cooperates with the planner in revising a plan to make it satisfactory. An example of PPC execution is provided.