An application-based agenda for incorporating OR into an AI design environment for facility design

Abstract

As part of our study of expert human problem solving in design, we devised and implemented the core of a workstation-based, graphics-intensive, intellegent support system for facility planning and layout. Our experience, in that endeavor, is that neither traditional AI nor current OR/MS approaches are adequate to provide a complete design support system, but that a hybrid system might be. In this paper, we describe how such a hybridation could occur. We identify points in the problem-solving process at which appropriate AI mechanisms can be brought to bear to assist in the selection, formulation, and interpretation of existing numeric (OR/MS) methods. We conclude that it will be necessary to relax traditionalm OR/MS assumptions about the nature of the facility planning problem leg., that the problem is sequential, with facility specification followed by facility layout) and about the proper relationship between the designer/planner and the design tool. The non-sequential nature of facility design suggests that (a) a design support system will need to work in an interactive, as opposed to a batch, mode, (b) the design support system must be capable of formulating the problem to be solved as part of the solution process, as is done by the human expert, and (c) the burden of solving the problem should not be shifted to the system. Building and testing the hybrid system remains to be done.