Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling in the Context of Ontological Engineering: An Application in Railway Rolling Stock Maintenance

In this paper we consider the opportunities for KEPS within wide-spectrum projects which are aimed at creating precise ontological models of areas of industry. The goals of such projects are wide ranging, as is the related areas of enterprise modelling. Particularly in industrial applications, the benefits of ontological modelling are not only seem as improving human-human communication, but also in process analysis and animation, and specifically in the use of automated reasoning to do goal-directed planning and scheduling. Applications of AI planning within such integrated applications range from optimisation of processes and process scheduling, to the use of planning in automated manufacturing and robot manipulation. We survey the past work which relates to such endeavours, and illustrate our approach and motivation using an ongoing major Case Study - that of capturing knowledge structures within a railway depot maintenance operation for various purposes including automation