공정계획과 재료선정의 동시적 해결을 위한 계층구조 전문가시스템

Abstract

Process planning (selection and ordering of processes) and material selection for product manufacturing are two key things determined before taking full-scale manufacturing. Knowledge on product design, material characteristics, processes, time and cost all-together are mutually related and should be considered concurrently. Due to the complexity of problem, human experts have got only one of the feasible solutions with their field knowledge and experiences. We propose a hierarchical expert system framework of knowledge representation and reasoning in order to overcome the complexity. Manufacturing processes have inherently hierarchical relationships, from top level processes to bottom level operation processes. Process plan of one level is posted in process blackboard and used for lower level process planning. Process information on blackboard is also used to adjust the process plan in order to resolve the dead-end or inconsistency situation during reasoning. Decision variables for process, material, tool, time and cost are represented as object frames, and their relationships are represented as constraints and rules. Constraints are for relationship among variables such as compatibility, numerical inequality etc. Rules are for causal relationships among variables to reflect human experts knowledge such as process precedence. CRSP(Constraint and Rule Satisfaction Problem) approach is adopted in order to obtain solution to satisfy both constraints and rules. The trade-off procedure gives user chances to see the impact of change of important variables such as material, cost, time and helps to determine the preferred solution. We developed the prototype system using visual C++ MFC, UNIK, and UNIK-CRSP on PC.