Construction of problem-solving methods as parametric design

The knowledge-engineering literature contains a number of approaches for constructing or selecting problem solvers. Some of these approaches are based on indexing and selecting a problem solver from a library, others are based on a knowledge acquisition process, or are based on search-strategies. None of these approaches sees constructing a problem solver as a configuration task that could be solved with an appropriate configuration method. We introduce a representation of the functionality of problem-solving methods that allows us to view the construction of problem solvers as a configuration problem, and specifically as a parametric design problem. From the available methods for parametric design, we use propose-critique-modify for the automated configuration of problem-solving methods. We illustrate this approach by a scenario in a small car domain example.