A system for case-based process planning

A new approach to automated process planning, integrating generative and case-based planning methods, is presented. Unlike most of the existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) based process planning systems, this approach makes use of a dynamic knowledge base containing old cases, i.e. part descriptions and corresponding process plans. This knowledge base grows with experience and therefore may reduce periodic human maintenance of the system. Advantages of this approach may be an increase of the planning quality and a concurrent reduction of the planning expense. Furthermore, it enables an automated improvement of similarity metrics which can be regarded as learning.