A price-directed approach to real-time scheduling of production operations

Most past approaches to job shop scheduling are either highly myopic, or they are unable to adapt effectively to the stream of unforeseen disruptions that characterizes almost all manufacturing systems. We propose a two-module scheduling system that is both robust and non-myopic. Periodically a Planning Module develops a global view of what is likely to happen in the facility over the next one to four weeks. It then passes information down to the Dispatching Module. The Dispatching Module is based on microprocessors that are located on the factory floor. Whenever a machine is about to become idle, a fast optimization algorithm is run on the closest microprocessor to decide which job should be done next. The data provided by the Planning Module allows this decision to be made in a non-myopic manner.