A new knowledge-based approach to decision support for job scheduling of FMS

The author presents a novel approach for managing the operation of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). This knowledge-based scheduling approach integrates the heuristic knowledge scheduling algorithm, simulation, and Petri nets together to establish a decision support system for more efficiently sequencing operations within the FMS. This knowledge-based scheduling system consists of a database, a heuristic knowledge base, a simulation system, and a controller. Reasonably good schedules are obtained by taking advantage of Petri nets and heuristic knowledge