PROCESS PLANNING WITH GENETIC ALGORITHMS ON RESULTS OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED REASONING

The paper presents a new approach to solving even unusually complex pr oblems of computer-aided process planning (CAPP). Main principles are based on the analysis of the roles and relations of CAPP in advanced m anufacturing systems. Planning is carried out in several stages, by us ing both domain-specific knowledge and domain-independent, general met hods. First, by knowledge-based reasoning, repertoires of plan element s and technological constraints are created that the final solutions m ust meet. Then, a global plan merging process generates plan variants so as to meet the given optimization objective. Among the various plan merging methods, one using genetic algorithms stands preeminent by it s performance and robustness. Domain-specific knowledge, methods of re asoning and plan merging are described in detail.