A dynamic reactive scheduling mechanism for responding to changes of production orders and manufacturing resources

This research introduces a dynamic reactive production scheduling mechanism for modifying the originally created schedules when these schedules cannot be completed due to changes of production orders and manufacturing resources. Production order changes include removal of an order that is canceled by a customer and insertion of an order that has to be completed within a short period of time. Manufacturing resource changes include breakdowns of machines and sudden sickness of workers. Match-up and agent-based collaboration approaches are employed to modify only part of the originally created schedules for improving the reactive scheduling efficiency, while maintaining the scheduling quality. The dynamic reactive production scheduling system was implemented using Smalltalk, an object oriented programming language. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V Ail rights reserved.