Constructing and Maintaining Detailed Production Plans: Investigations into the Development of K-B Factory Scheduling

Human schedulers are typically overburdened by the complexity of this task, and conventional computer-based scheduling systems consider only a small fraction of the relevent knowledge. This article describes research aimed at providing a framework in which all relevant scheduling knowledge can be given consideration during schedule generation and revision. Factory scheduling is cast as a complex constraint-directed activity, driven by a rich symbolic model of the factory environment in which various influencing factors are formalized as constraints. Two knowledge-based factory scheduling systems that implement aspects of this approach are described.