Scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems using fuzzy inference-Realization of various scheduling objectives

In order to realize an intelligent scheduling for flexible manufacturing the authors propose a method of constructing and revising knowledge bases to accomplish high-variety of objectives in a knowledge-based scheduling. They divide the knowledge base into three modules: a schedule evaluation module, a scheduling policy development module, and a dispatching module. All of them are described by fuzzy rules in which fuzzy predicates are included. When it is needed to change the scheduling objective depending upon the manufacturing environment, the knowledge base in the present scheduling system can be easily revised by just adjusting the membership function of the fuzzy rules in the schedule evaluation module. Hence the knowledge-based scheduling system proposed in this paper could easily meet the requirement for high-variety of manufacturing objectives. [In Japanese.]