State of The Art-Intense Review on Artificial Intelligence Systems Application in Process Planning and Manufacturing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems applications are widespread due to its domain independent characteristics. In this work, an attempt has been made for review on AI applications in Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) and manufacturing. Primarily, uniqueness of present review work addressed by analysis of existing review articles. The review work comprise of three main elements; 1. Feature based design, a primary input for a CAPP system, 2. Expert System (ES) usefulness in Process Planning (PP) and manufacturing and 3. Evolutionary approach applications. The review begins with an overview and the use of AT systems in decision making. Research works exemplified for the past three and half decades (1981-2016) are analyzed in terms of feature based modeling, Standards for Exchange of Product Model data approach, ES in PP, scheduling, manufacturing and miscellaneous applications. Role of Evolutionary Techniques (ET) in intelligent system development, execution of PP activities and manufacturing are described. A statistical analysis on existing review articles, number of publications, domain specific articles and percentage contribution of each area are carried out. Finally, research gaps are identified and the possible future research directions are presented. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.