The Redux model is novel though it is based on previous work. It came out of experiments by me and studies of previous attemps to use a Truth Maintenance System for design synthesis. I conluded that some intermediate model was required and the Redux model resulted in 1992, based upon three years of experimentation.
The technically closest model to Redux seems to be the MINERVA work done also in 1992 by S. W. Director, <director@umich.edu>, "Design process management for CAD frameworks", 29th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference, Washington D.C. IEEE Computer Society Press (1992). He is now a Dean at the U. of Michigan and continues this work in the general area of process management.
Verisions of Redux have been used at other industrial sites. In 1994-5, I worked with Bob Seliger <seliger@aic.hrl.hac.com> at Hughes along with SHAI to build a version of Redux for case-based design. Another consultant who worked on system, SHAI <stottler@shai.com>, generated a C-version of Redux under government contract. The University of Kaiserslautern has generated several systems based upon the Redux model, one being COMMOKIT. Via transfer by hiring graduates from Kaiserslautern, some of the general Redux ideas are also in use at the the Daimler Benz Research Institute in Berlin by Ruediger Klein <klein@dbag.bln.daimlerbenz.com>. The most specific and recent industrial applications have been for Toshiba in design process management.
The basic idea of ProcessLink is to use KQML agent communications and a common model to unify and integrate heterogeneous systems. There is good precedent for the success of this approach, though with a model different from Redux. The O-Plan was the model used in an experiment that also used KQML agent technology to integrate systems from sevral different places. This was a 1997 demonstration for the US DARPA and USAF of using agents for planning, scheduling, and reactive control. Austin Tate's O-Plan, from the University of Edinburgh, was used as the unifying model with which systems from SRI, Klein Associates, University of Massachusetts, MAYA, ISX Corporation, the University of Edinburgh, Information Sciences Institute, and Carnegie Mellon University. were integrated. The O-plan model has strong similarities with Redux, as does more recent work at Edinburgh by Peter Jarvis.