An expert system for manufacturing systems machine selection

This work presents the development of a prototype expert system (ES) for the machine selection of manufacturing systems. This tool, called ESMRS (Expert System for Manufacturing Resource Selection) is used in a simulation based approach in order to structure the solution search mechanism and to overcome the try and error aspect. In fact, in such an approach a number of 'simulation-ES optimization' cycles are run until obtaining non-improvable performance measures. The ES main role is to suggest resource modifications based on due date related performance measures obtained through simulation. So, this paper introduces the 'ES-simulation approach' that constitutes the utilization scope of ESMRS and then describes the ES static and dynamic knowledge representation before presenting the basic ES features as well as its development using a commercial ES shell. Finally a simple case study illustrates the validity of the approach and its potential applicability for real cases. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.