A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT FOR HIERARCHICAL FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING

This article presents an approach to embedding expert systems within a n object oriented simulation environment. The basic idea is to create classes of expert system models that can be interfaced with other mode l classes. An expert system shell is developed within a knowledge-base d design and simulation environment which combines artificial intellig ence and systems modeling concepts. In the given framework, interrupti ble and distributed expert systems can be defined as components of sim ulations models. This facilitates simulation modeling of knowledge-bas ed controls for flexible manufacturing and many other autonomous intel ligent systems. Moreover, the structure of a system can be specified u sing a recursive system entity structure (SES) and unfolded to generat e a family of hierarchical structures using an extension of SES prunin g called recursive pruning. This recursive generation of hierarchical structures is especially appropriate for design of multilevel flexible factories. The article illustrates the utility of the proposed framew ork within the flexible manufacturing context.