In this paper, an effort has been made for intense review on Knowledge-Based Expert System (KB-ES) applications in manufacturing planning. Uniqueness of the present review work is addressed in terms of analysis on published review articles and their review gap. Research works exemplified between 1981 and 2016 were reviewed in terms of ES application in handling product variety, execution of process planning activities, machining, tool selection, tool design, welding, advanced manufacturing, product development. A statistical analysis was carried out in relation with number of publications, domain-specific area and their percentage contribution. It was inferred that, most of the work focused on ES applications related to tool design and machining apart from execution of various process planning activities. Future research can focus on the development frame-based, object oriented-based, ontology-based knowledge representation in order to develop robust system in decision-making for handling complex engineering problem. ES applications can be extended to field of micro fabrication, machine tool development and integrated system development from design to manufacturing.