Characteristics of Production Systems

Production system:

Production system is useful to structure AI programs in a way that is facilitates describing and performing the search process.  Don’t confuse of the word production such as to describe is done in factories.

•            A production system is consist of a set of rules. Left side (a pattern) that determines the applicability of the rule and right side that describes the operation to be performed if the rule is applied.
•           One or more knowledge / data bases that contain whatever information is appropriate for the particular task. 
•       A control strategy that specifies the order in which the rules will be compared to the database and way of resolving the conflict that arise when several rules match at once.
•        A rule applier. 

1    Requirements of a good control strategy:
                 How to decide which rule is apply is next during the process of searching for a solution to a problem  

• The first requirement is that it can cause motion: Consider the water jug problem. Suppose we implemented the simple control strategy of starting each time at the top of the list of rules and choosing the first applicable one.
•  The second requirement is that it be systematic: The requirement that a control strategy be systematic corresponds to the need for global motion as well as for local motion.

Production System Characteristics:

We have argued that production systems are a good way to describe the operations that can be performed in a search for a solution to a problem.

•  Can production systems, like problems, be described by a set of characteristics that shed some light on how they can easily be implemented?
•  If  so,  what relationships are  there  between  problem  types and the types  of  production  system  best suited  to solving the problems?