The design issues of resource management information systems

摘要

Manufacturing information systems have been designed and developed for various industrial applications. The main components of these systems are planning, scheduling and control modules. Traditionally, the three modules are implemented separately and coordinated through databases and a communication mechanism. However, information incompatibility causes a hurdle for system integration. The resource description, including the bill of material, material inventory, machine capacity, tool utilization, etc., is one of the most imminent needs for format unification. In this paper, we discuss the design issues for resource calendars, which describe the formal shift representation for general resource management in manufacturing planning, scheduling, and control. We start with the graphical representation of shifts on different bases and then move to the mathematical representation for shifts that form the resource calendar. We also discuss the implementation issues, especially for a manufacturing scheduling system. We conclude with future directions, including the shift/calendar transformation, synthesis, and optimization.