Production activity control: The scheduling problem

Production scheduling is inherent to manufacturing and it has always been an object of study by the research community; these activities, however, until recently had little impact on actual operations, probably because of the complexity of the problem. Two facts have changed the situation dramatically: the need of unmanned operations for FMS, and the availability of sophisticated techniques for software development. The former made the unstated common sens rules, which are the basis of manual operations, totally inadequate; the latter suggests a new promising way to tackle the problem. This paper describes the current research activities in this area performed in Esprit project 477 "Control System For Integrated Manufacturing".