This book is based on Zozaya-Gorastiza’s PhD dissertation work. It describes a knowledge-based approach to building systems for interactive design of process planning. More specifically, the book centers around the discussion of a system architecture called PLANEX and its use in building expert process planners for two domains--construction process planning and manufacturing process planning. CONSTRUCTION PLANEX is an aid for construction project planning, while HARNESS PLANEX is intended for electrical wire harness process planning.

Many PhD dissertation books concentrate on some very specific problem that the thesis addresses, and thus tend to be poor reading material for someone not intimate with the problem. This book is definitely not in that category. The authors give a very thorough introduction to their problem in the first three chapters. These chapters (“Introduction,” “Process Planning and Scheduling,” and “Modeling Process Planning Problems”) are worthy of inclusion in a textbook, that is , they are comprehensive and introductory enough to give readers good insight into what the problem of process planning is all about and what the various approaches (knowledge-based, optimization-methods based, and so on) have achieved to date in terms of computational aids.

The next two chapters (“A Knowledge-based Architecture for Process Planning” and “Developing Process Planning Systems”) spell out the requirements for a knowledge-based process planning system and then evolve an architecture (PLANEX) that meets these requirements. A detailed discussion of how this architecture can be employed for building specific expert systems for process planning follows. The last two chapters (“CONSTRUCTION PLANEX” and “HARNESS PLANEX”) use the previously discussed approach to build two specific expert systems and describe their use on actual problems.

I enjoyed reading the first three chapters and I am sure everyone will. The last four chapters are extremely detailed and problem-specific, and I recommend them only to workers and researchers in this specific area.