Evolutionary Development of an Interactive Scheduling System for a Generalized Flowshop

摘要

The application of interactive computer techniques to the scheduling of industrial production operations has long seemed to e a potential way to break through the many problems that are encountered in this area, however, most attempts to apply such techniques have ended in failure. The author reports on a successful application created for an aircraft overhaul facility operated by the U.S. Navy. The major emphases are in the evolutionary method utilized for the development of the system and in the efforts applied during development to overcome the causes of failure in earlier interactive scheduling efforts. The project involved the development of a Management Information System (MIS) to underly the later developments associated with the creation of production schedules. Subsequent to the completion of the prototype for the MIS, the next phase was the creation of a set of computer programs designed to create production schedules for future periods. The objective function applied during the creation of schedules involved the reduction of standard deviations for the daily requirements for critical manpower resources through the judicial selection of starting dates for the different aircraft being inducted for overhaul.