In order to automatically determine the sequences of block assembly operations in shipbuilding, a process planning system using case-based reasoning (CBR) is developed. A block-assembly planning problem is modeled as a constraint satisfaction problem where the precedence relations between operations are considered constraints. The process planning system generates an assembly sequence by adapting information such as solutions and constraints collected from similar cases retrieved from the case base. In order to find similar cases, the process planning system first matches the parts of the problem and the parts of each case based on their roles in the assembly, and then it matches the relations related to the parts-pairs. The part involved in more operations are considered more important. The process planning system is applied to simple examples fur verification and comparison.