In this paper,the problem of organisation and re-use of hierarchicalknowledge in the pilot production stage is described and a proposed architectureto aid this problem called Hierarchy-Oriented Case-Based Reasoning(HOCBR)isdiscussed.HOCBR consists a hierarchical case-based structure,multi-stageretrieval and hybrid adaptation.The hierarchical case-based structure provides aknowledge representation format for retaining hierarchical knowledge.Multi-stageretrieval is used to search through hierarchical case bases for the most similarcases to the input problem.Hybrid adaptation transforms the information fromthese cases into a suggested solution.A new system framework based on thisarchitecture is put forward.A description of the implementation in the pilotproduction stage is also provided.An evaluation of the HOCBR architecture isprovided along with possible future research.