3.3 Knowledge Engineering

Since 1984 the Knowledge engineering group has carried out research on the application of AI problem solving techniques in the problem area of production and project management. The current members of the group are professor Markku Syrjänen, researcher Seppo Törmä, research assistant Lauri Siponen and assistant Jussi Tella.

Figure 4: User interface of scheduling tool developed in MUSYK project

The research of the group has covered a range of application problems from project planning to production scheduling. The approach to research has been practical. Over the years it has involved the contruction of several software tools and research prototypes:

• EXTEND: an expert system for bid preparation,
• BOSS: a distributed version of OPIS scheduling system,
• CENT: a tool for analysis of the performance of a manufacturing company,
• SMART: an expert system for scheduling coil manufacturing,
• DOM: a scheduling system for a plate-rolling line of a steel-mill,
• BEEF: a small and efficient frame system for object-oriented knowledge representation,
• BONE: a distributed frame system based on BEEF,
• DOM-Toolkit: a collection of constraint satisfaction algorithms for scheduling problems, and
• 3PM (Process Plant Project Manager): a planning and scheduling tool for industrial projects.

Various techniques for problem solving have been studied but the main emphasis has been on constraint satisfaction techniques, constraint directed search methods, and object-oriented and constraint-based knowledge representation.

Many planning problems need to be solved interactively with a user and for this reason user intefaces and visualization techniques for planning systems have received attention in the research.

In 1996 the group participated, together with other groups from HUT, VTT, and A. Ahlstrom Corporation in the Ahlglobe-project, the purpose of which is to produce one of the demonstrators for Globeman 21 which is one of the first projects in the international IMS research programme. The main idea of Alhglobe is to produce a distributed project management system working over intranet/extranet. In 1996 most of the time was devoted for preliminary analysis of the problem domain and for evaluation of available implementation techniques. In the fall, however, the design of the first version of Ahlglobe, the Proman system was launched. Proman will have a focus on the planning and integration of purchasing and shipping activities.

In 1996 the group was the main organizer of a Nordic-Baltic Summer School Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, which took place in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 1996.

In the fall 1996 the group participated in the definition phase of the "Virtual Delivery"- project of the PROSIT research programme of Tekes.

During 1996 Seppo Törmä was on sabbatical leave, financed by Helsinki Graduate School of Computer Science and Engineering (HeCSE), preparing his doctoral thesis "A model for the dynamic planning of industrial projects". He spent most of the year in Technion, Israel.