Toward a Computational Theory of Discrete Manufacturing

Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing Research Planning Workshop, 1998

Volume

Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing Research Planning Workshop, 1998

Contents

The main thesis of this paper is that industrial plants should be modeled as artificial organisms. Like their biological counterparts, plants must be designed to adapt to, and be productive over, a wide range of external disturbances (such as unanticipated trends in the production schedule) and internal error signals (such as performance degradation due to wear). The approach to be taken is the development of a computational theory of manufacturing systems within a formal framework defined by an interpretive model of computation.