Dynamic scheduling in a steel plant using expert system

Summary form only given. An interactive expert system application is described for scheduling of resources in continuous manufacturing of a variety of products in a hierarchically distributed control system. The system allows the relaxation of certain rule constraints to attain a feasible schedule when none is available and the processing of an expedited/special order even when this results in violating one or more constraints. The information on a scheduled production run not meeting the specification is transmitted to the expert system application from lower-level systems in the hierarchy, which perform monitoring and control of the production equipment. The technique is illustrated with an application in steel production