Integrated information processing for production scheduling and control

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the application of advanced software techniques for production scheduling and control in CIM systems. The paper describes work in ESPRIT Project 384, ‘Integrated Information Processing for the Design, Planning and Control of Assembly’. This project, recently completed, built a fully integrated demonstration prototype of a CIM system covering all aspects of assembly, from product design through to manufacture. The majority of the paper concentrates on the information processing aspects of the CIM subsystem that schedules and controls a workshop dedicated to the automatic assembly of products built in small batches. In particular, it describes how plans, represented in KEE be procedural nets, are matched with Petri nets describing the factory, to produce a schedule. It goes on to explain how KEE, an Artificial Intelligence toolkit, was used to control the scheduled resources in real time.