An integration of knowledge acquisition techniques and EBL for real-world production planning

Abstract The paper presents an approach to the integration of knowledge acquisition (KA) techniques and explanation-based learning (EBL). Knowledge acquisition techniques are used to delineate a problem class hierarchy for different manufacturing tasks in mechanical engineering. This hierarchy is stepwise formalized into a terminological representation language. The terminological descriptions are then combined with cases of specific manufacturing tasks and their solutions (in the form of production plans). Explanation-based learning is applied to the cases and skeletal plans are automatically constructed for the terminal classes of the problem class hierarchy. Such skeletal plans consist of a dependency structure with a sequence of operators, that can be instantiated to specific plans for all other problems of the class. An evaluation of the proposed KA/EBL integration demonstrates its strengths as well as certain limitations of explanation-based generalization.