Agile and Flexible Scheduling Tool for Turbulent Environments in the Extended Enterprise

摘要

This paper presents the work done in IS-OPTIMUS (Internet based Scheduler for material Optimisation and agile ProducTion In Multi-Site enterprises), a four nation collaborative project aimed at improvements in turbulent manufacturing environments. This 21/2 year project finished in October 2003. This means that the paper will describe all the work done along the project stressing on the main benefits and results. The project covers the full product life-cycle from the initial stages where the industrial users requirements were identified and the system specification took place to the development and tuning of the final system. This system uses a dynamic finite scheduler, that takes production requirements from existing production planning systems, to schedule production resources like workers, critical tools and machines, including cutting machines. A material optimiser works closely with the finite scheduler and provides the best cutting pattern solutions for the materials in question.