Boiler erection scheduling using product models and case-based reasoning

Contractors who repeatedly construct facilities designed by copying major parts from one project to the next find that previously developed schedules associated with those designs could be reused to schedule new work. To facilitate such reuse, project characteristics must be articulated and associated schedules described to include not only traditional, numerical scheduling data, but also scheduling constraints. In addition, knowledge about how to reuse schedules must be available. The CasePlan system, presented here, supports and augments the scheduling activity of people who reason about cases-each case describing the design and schedule of a completed project-to generate new project schedules. Specifically, CasePlan reuses annotated cases to automatically schedule the erection of power plant boilers. Because such boilers have a more-or-less standardized design, a generic boiler product model can serve as the basis for assessing similarities between designs. On this basis CasePlan selects schedules for reuse. A user can also interact with CasePlan to isolate fragments of case schedules and adapt them to better suit the variables of the new project at hand.