A cooperative production planning method in the field of continuous process plants

In this paper an object-oriented representation of a continuous process plant is viewed as a directed multi-graph-based pictorial model. The associated modelling language has two components, the first describing the structure of production system in a pictorial manner and the second defining its behaviour. The structural–functional description realized through this language supports a significant reduction and so the initial multi-graph can be observed by a sequential graph. The context makes possible the natural development of the proposed cooperative production planning method. This method is mainly based on a horizontal decomposition, every department of the plant cooperates in order to obtain a good global plan. Coordination is made by the plant managers. The departments will solve multi-objective linear programming problems. In this process a large number of goals are set, including those expressed by experts. A specific rule-based computing technique is provided. This technique uses a rule constructor for expert knowledge acquisition and two facts categories defined by basic planning data and data generated by the mathematical solving method. Therefore, a production plan with high-quality technical and economic features can be constructed fast.