Production systems, problem
characteristics, Production
systems characteristics
Production systems
• Production systems provide appropriate
structures for performing and describing
search
• processes. A production system has four basic
components as enumerated below
• The production rules operate on the knowledge
database.
• Each rule has a precondition—that is, either satisfied
or not by the knowledge database.
• If the precondition is satisfied, the rule can be.
Application of the rule changes the knowledge
database.
• The control system chooses which applicable rule
should be applied and ceases computation when a
termination condition on
• the knowledge database is satisfied.
Control strategies
• Control strategies help us decide which rule to
apply next during the process of searching for
a solution to a problem.
• Good control strategy should:
It should cause motion
It should be Systematic
There are mainly two types of search strategies:
1. Uninformed search (blind search)
Also called blind, exhaustive or brute-force search uses no
information about the problem to guide the search and
therefore may not be very efficient.
(BFS,DFS,DLS)
2. Informed search (heuristic search)
Also called heuristic or intelligent search, uses information
about the problem to guide the search, usually guesses the
distance to a goal state, and is therefore efficient, but the
search may not be always possible.
( Best First Search, Problem Decomposition, A*, Mean end
Analysis.)
• AI problems make use of knowledge and guided search
through the knowledge
• AI can be described as the study of techniques for solving
exponentially hard problems in polynomial time by exploiting
knowledge about problem domain.
• To use the heuristic search for problem
solving, we suggest analysis of the problem for
the following considerations
1. Siva was a man.
2. Siva was a worker in a company.
3. Siva was born in 1905.
4. All men are mortal.
5. All workers in a factory died when there was
an accident in 1952.
6. No mortal lives longer than 100 years.
Suppose we ask a question: ‘Is Siva alive?’
it does not matter which path we follow. If we follow
one path successfully to the correct answer, then there is no
reason to go back and check another path to lead the solution.
CHARACTERISTICS OF PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
Production systems provide us with good ways of
describing the operations that can be performed in a
search for a solution to a problem.
At this time, two questions may arise:
1. Can production systems be described by a set of
characteristics? And how can they be easily
implemented?
2. What relationships are there between the problem
types and the types of production systems well suited
for solving the problems?
1. A monotonic production system is a production
system in which the application of a rule never prevents
the later application of another rule that could also have
been applied at the time the first rule was selected.
2. A non-monotonic production system is one in which
this is not true.
3. A partially communicative production system is a
production system with the property that if the
application of a particular sequence of rules transforms
state P into state Q, then any combination of those rules
that is allowable also transforms state P into state Q.
4. A commutative production system is a production
system that is both monotonic and partially
commutative.
For any solvable problems, there exist an infinite number of
production systems that show how to find solutions.
Any problem that can be solved by any production system can
be solved by a commutative one, but the commutative one is
practically useless.
It may use individual states to represent entire sequences of
applications of rules of a simpler, non-commutative system.
In the formal sense, there is no relationship between kinds of
problems and kinds of production systems
Since all problems can be solved by all kinds of systems.
But in the practical sense, there is definitely such a relationship
between the kinds of problems and the kinds of systems that
lend themselves to describing those problems.
Partially commutative, monotonic productions systems are
useful for solving ignorable problems.
Production systems that are not partially commutative are
useful for many problems in which permanent changes occur.
