An integrated framework for generating and revising factory schedules

Practical solutions to the production scheduling problem must provide two broad capabilities: (i) an ability to efficiently generate schedules that reflect the actual constraints and objectives of the manufacturing environment, and (ii) an ability to incrementally revise these schedules over time in response to unexpected executional circumstances. In this paper, the authors advocate a common view of predictive and reactive scheduling as an incremental problem solving process that is opportunistically focused by characteristics of the current solution constraints. They describe the architecture of OPIS (opportunistic intelligent scheduler), which defines a genral framework for configuring scheduling systems according to this view. The authors then examine the scheduling knowledge (e.g. analysis and scheduling methods, schedule generation or revision strategies) that is exploited within this architecture by the current OPIS scheduler. Experimental studies with the OPIS scheduler have demonstrated the potential of this constraint-directed scheduling methodology in both predictive and reactive scheduling contexts.