“Official” Production System

Charles Forgy on the origin of Official in Official Production System (OPS):

People often ask me if the name “OPS” really stands for “Official Production System.” In fact it does, but the name doesn’t mean what most people think.

In 1975, Carnegie-Mellon University professor Allen Newell started the Instructable Production System Project, or IPS as it immediately came to be called. Project members included John McDermott, Michael Rychener, and myself. While we all had implemented and used our own production systems prior to joining IPS, the goals of the IPS project required that we work in the same language.

Accordingly, in a series of meetings in the fall of 1975 we jointly designed a language with which we all felt comfortable. This language was to be the official production system of the IPS project. The intent behind the name was no more sinister than that. We certainly weren’t trying to tell people outside the IPS group that they should consider OPS an official anything!

Forgy, C. L. “The OPS Languages An Historical Overview,” PC AI, Sep/Oct 1995, pp. 16-21.