: System Architecture.
Figure 1 shows the components used to address the problem of
creating large feasible logistic plans. FORMAT is a tool that
allows people to manage all the details in large logistic problems, and define
specific logistic goals. Prodigy is a case-based planning tool
that takes a FORMAT defined high-level goal and searches its case library for
previous cases of plans that might satisfy the goal. Prodigy returns any found
plans along with extra instructions describing how to modify the plans for this
specific goal. Ditops[Smith1995],[Smith et al.
1996] is used to test the
feasibility of integrating the Prodigy produced plan with all the other ongoing
activities that might be utilizing resources the plan requires. The goal of the
Prodigy-Ditops communication is to ensure the feasibility of the plans that
Prodigy returns to FORMAT. In addition to the message passing mechanisms just
described, Prodigy and Ditops share at some level, the data describing the
current state of the system. The type of data sharing is described in
Section 
.
