The integration of object-oriented and logic programming to develop automatic process planning

Logic programming and the object-oriented approach have made significant contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, particularly with respect to knowledge-based system development tools. The relative strengths of these two technologies are complementary. The ability to combine object-oriented and logic programming paradigms produces an extremely flexible and powerful environment for developing knowledge-based applications. One of the important activities in Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP). The nature of process planning is knowledge-intensive. The effective representation and manipulation of process planning knowledge is one of the key issues in CAPP systems. This paper explores the benefits of integrating logic programming and the object-oriented approach to develop a generative CAPP system, utilising each technique to obtain maximum benefit. Three generic orthogonal OMT models - object model, dynamic model and functional model have been constructed and the prototype CAPP system is implemented with an object-oriented paradigm within the logic programming environment by using Prolog(++) software.