(How) Is AI Impacting Manufacturing?

CHAIR:

MarkS. Fox

Center for Integrated Manufacturing

Decision Systems Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 USA

PANELISTS:

E.J. van de Kraats Shell Research BV Postbus 60 2280 AB Rijswijk Z-H

The Netherlands

Dennis O'Connor

Intelligent Systems Technology Group

Digital Equipment Corporation

290 Donald Lynch Blvd. Marlborough, MA 01752

USA

Karl Kempf

Intel Corp. 3065 Bowers Avenue Santa Clara, CA 95051 USA

(How) Is AI Impacting Manufacturing? A Panel

Summary

Manufacturing research is broadly concerned with tasks performed throughout the product manufacturing life cycle:

• Design,
• Planning,
• Production,
• Distribution,
• Field Service, and
• Reclamation.

Decision making at each stage requires creativity, the ability to deal with complexity and coordination with other activities in the cycle. As such, manufac­ turing represents a fertile domain in which to apply Artificial Intelligence.

The potential of AI for solving manufacturing problems was was recognized in the early 1980s, resulting in the initiation of a large number of ap­ plication projects [Fox 86]. Some of the first com­ mercially successful systems, such as XCON at Digi­ tal [Bachant & McDermott 84 84], OPGEN at Hazeltine [Freedman & Frail 86], and GENAID at Westinghouse [Osborne 86] have arisen out of the manufacturing domain.

Given the plethora of manufacturing related AI projects underway in the last decade, it is time to review our experiences. In particular, it would be useful to examine the following questions:

1. Has AI made any contributions to solving manufacturing problems?
2. Are the contributions measurable, if so, how?
3. What can we do now that we could not do in the past?
4. What does it take to build, deliver and main­ tain "real" AI systems?
5. How much and what types of AI are causing the impact?
6. a little vs a lot.
7. sophisticated vs unsophisticated.
8. expert systems vs knowledge based systems
9. Is the cost worth the effort?

Each of the panel members were chosen to represent a different industry.

Dr. van de Kraatz, as head ofthe Shell's Research group in The Netherlands, has overseen the con­ struction and delivery of a number of AI based sys­ tems for the chemical processing industry.

Mr. O'Connor, director of Digital Equipment's In­ telligent Systems Technology Group, is responsible for the construction and fielding of many of Digital's AI based systems such as XCON and XSEL, in the computer industry.

Dr. Kempf is a Principal Scientist in Intel's Knowledge Applications Lab and has been respon­ sible for a number of AI based applications for process planning and factory scheduling, in both aerospace and semiconductor industries.