Applying case-based reasoning in assembly sequence planning

Assembly sequence planning (ASP) is the foundation of the assembly process planning which plays a key role in the whole product life cycle. In this paper, a unique ASP reasoning method supported by the artificial intelligence technique of case-based reasoning (CBR) is proposed and developed. First, based on the previous ASP literature review and the CBR characteristics analysis, the systematic architecture of the CBR based ASP is presented. Then, some key techniques including assembly case modelling, similar case retrieving, case based reasoning, and case based maintenance, etc., are explored thoroughly. To enhane the efficiency and quality of the reasoning process, genetic algorithm (GA) is designed and applied to automatically inferring of the reference assembly sequence. Finally, the corresponding software system with an engineering example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the CBR based ASP.