ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an exhaustive survey of the various planning strategies, employed to complex decision-making problems. It begins with a formal introduction to forward and backward chaining methods for planning. The forward or backward chaining schemes exhibit exponential growth of the search space and thus are of limited use. An alternative scheme for planning based on the principles of ‘least commitment’ is then introduced. The abstract classification of a planning problem by a hierarchical approach and its possible expansion to primitive (elementary) plans is covered next in the chapter. The chapter also provides a brief discussion on ‘multi-agent planning’. The principles of heuristic planning have also been illustrated here with a ‘flow-shop scheduling’problem.
